For two days I felt like an
etching. I looked something like one too.
In Vienna we could not get a bedroom with a bathroom attached
--they did not seem to have any--but we were told there was a
bathroom just across the hall which we might use with the utmost
freedom. This bathroom was a large, long, loftly, marble-walled
vault. It was as cold as a tomb and as gloomy as one, and very
smelly. Indeed it greatly resembled the pictures I have seen of
the sepulcher of an Egyptian king--only I would have said that
this particular king had been skimpily embalmed by the royal
undertakers in the first place, and then imperfectly packed. The
bathtub was long and marked with scars, and it looked exactly like
a rifled mummy case with the lid missing, which added greatly to
the prevalent illusion.
We used this bathroom ad lib.: but when I went to pay the bill I
found an official had been keeping tabs on us, and that all baths
taken had been charged up at the rate of sixty cents apiece. I
had provided my own soap too! For that matter the traveler provides
his own soap everywhere in Europe, outside of England. In some
parts soap is regarded as an edible and in some as a vice common
to foreigners; but everywhere except in the northern countries it
is a curio.
So in Vienna they made us furnish our own soap and then charged
us more for a bath than they did for a meal.
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