Explore "The Innocents Abroad, Volume 2" by Mark Twain on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The next morning we were up and dressed at ten o'clock. We went to the 'commissionaire' of the hotel -- I don't know what a 'commissionaire' is, but that is the man we went to -- and told him we wanted a guide. He said the national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen and Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a good guide unemployed. He said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand, but he only had three now. He called them. One looked so like a very pirate that we let him go at once. The next one spoke with a simpering precision of pronunciation that was irritating and said:
"If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande honneur to me rattain in hees serveece, I shall show to him every sing zat is magnifique to look upon in ze beautiful Parree. I speaky ze Angleesh pairfaitemaw."