ROCHEPORT'S HOTEL EXPERIENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8082, 24 September 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

ROCHEPORT'S HOTEL EXPERIENCE.

M. Roche has just returned from London, and gives the Parisians a very pleasant account of how he was taken for a thief at Panton's Hotel. "I had," he writes, "left Boulonge to pass a few hours in the bosom of that Albion 'so famous for her perfidy. I took no valise, not even a nightshirt, as I intended to return the same evening. However, the sea passage was so trying and the trains reached l.ondon so late that I couldn't think of making a second passage that night. I therefore went to Panton's Hotel iD Pantonstreet, where I had stayed formerly, and whose owner I knew. I entered deliberately without thinking of the effect my travelstained false collar and shirt cuffs would produce on the people of the house. The landlord I had known had sold out several years before, and the waiters on seeing a man so ill-brushed and luggagelesa enter the diningroom, began to look at one another very mistrustfully. I asked for a room, and was told there was 110 room. I asked for a bit of roast beef, and was told there was nothing to eat in the house. I mentioned the name of the former landlord, but that did me more harm than good. They would agree to take me in and do for me only on condition of my paying beforehand. lat once submitted to those terms, and when the employes saw the contents of my purse they cast looks at each other which plainly said, 'he has made a big haul in Paris, and escaped < without changing his dress,' The dinner was a cruel one, though paid for beforehand ; and every time the waiter brought me a dish, for which I had to wait an unreasonable time, he gave me a look which said as plain as words could have spoken it, ' Perhaps they will come and arrest him before the dessert, and that will be so much gained.' I damaged my case utterly by asking for the Paris papers. Evidently it was to see whether the police were on my track. The butler, the porter, and the doorkeeper were standing behind me as if in expectation of an extradition order. A paragraph having made me laugh, they made signs to each other whioh plainly meant, 'He sees they have lost the scent, and he can't restrain his joy.' My meal ended, I asked one of the women of the hotel to go and buy me a couple of clean shirts, but she refused to become an accessory to my crime after the fact, by helping me to destroy my identity. However, she consented to lend me a brush. . . I had my revenge. I wrote to an Irish member of Parliament, a telegram signed with my own name, and informing him that I was in London. That produced the effect of a thunderbolt, members of Parliament being taken more seriously by the English than by us. When the M.P. ■ came about ten p.m. to take me to the House in his cab, the waiter, ashamed of the mistake he had made, hid his head in a saucepan. It was agreed that my friend and I should come back and have supper at two a.m., and the unhappy waiter came out of his saucepan to sketch for us the riohest possible menu. • That'll do,' said I; give us a good supper; but you know I absolutely insist upon paying for it beforehand.' The waiter, humbled to the dust, pleaded extenuating circum* stances, and said to the M.P., 'I assure you, sir, we never took your friend for a mur« derer. We merely thought he had robbed a bank, that's all.'"