The Adventures of Captain Horn by Frank R. Stockton

It was early in December, -- two months after the departure of Edna and her little party from New York, -- and they were all comfortably domiciled in the Hotel Boileau, in a quiet street, not far from the Boulevard des Italiens. This house, to which they came soon after their arrival in Paris, might be considered to belong to the family order, but its grade was much higher than that of the hotel in which they had lived in San Francisco. As in the former place, they had private apartments, a private table, and the service of their own colored men, in addition to that of the hotel servants.

But their salon was large and beautifully furnished, their meals were cooked by a French chef, every one, from the lordly porter to the quick-footed chambermaid, served them with a courteous interest, and Mrs. Cliff said that although their life in the two hotels seemed to be in the main the same sort of life, they were, in reality, as different as an old, dingy mahogany bureau, just dragged from an attic, and that same piece of furniture when it had been rubbed down, oiled, and varnished. And Ralph declared that, so far as he knew anything about it, there was nothing like the air of Paris to bring out the tones and colorings and veinings of hotel life. But the greatest difference between the former and the present condition of this little party lay in the fact that in San Francisco its principal member was Mrs. Philip Horn, while in Paris it was Miss Edna Markham.