Explore "The Gamblers" by William Le Queux on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Reader, have you ever lived in an English _pension_ on the Riviera? Have you ever inhabited a small cubicle containing a chair, a deal table, a narrow bed -- with mosquito curtains -- and a hung-up looking-glass, and partaken of that cheap, ill-cooked food, the stale-egg omelette and the tough _biftek_, served in the bare _salle-à-manger_ by one of those seedy, unshaven waiters who appear to be specially bred for the cheap Riviera boarding-houses? Have you ever spent an evening with that mixed crowd of ascetic persons who nightly congregate in the fusty _salon_, play upon a cracked piano, screech old-fashioned sentimentalities, exhibit their faded finery, paste jewels and bony chests, and otherwise make the hours, following dinner absolutely hideous? If not, a week of this life will be found to be highly amusing.
"My dear," Ulrica whispered, as we followed the proprietress, a buxom Frenchwoman in black satin, along the bare, white-washed corridor to our rooms, "hotel or work-house -- which?"