Three days in Rouen left one with the knowledge that it is dangerous to transport suddenly a body of Australians, after eighteen months' residence on Anzac and in Egypt, to a land where the wine is cheap and every girl is pretty. CHAPTER II BILLETED The natural course was to advertise. The _Journal de Rouen_ received us tolerantly, even compassionately. No one of us could speak French, but one pretty member of the office staff (more accurately, one member of the pretty office staff) could speak a kind of English. The first demand was for a _petite annonce_ in French. And when the lady saw this was out of the question for us, she offered a translation of an English paragraph. It brought a shoal of responses in French. A kind of horse-sense had led us to get them addressed "to this office," where the fair translator could be requisitioned. They were seductive replies--in the inevitable language of proprietresses. Some offered rooms and meals; some rooms and breakfast; some rooms and no more; others specified a _femme de chambre_ of the first quality (and these were looked at twice). None offered a bath. This is the most extraordinary country. It drives you to the conclusion, anyhow, that a bathroom is necessary neither to health nor good looks, and thereby runs counter to a long-established English prejudice. A bathroom is by no means a necessary part of the furniture of a good hotel. Those that have been driven by the English occupation into adding one, brag about it in their advertisements and charge "a franc a time." Those that steadily decline to add it are losing custom. The conclusion of the matter was we yielded to none of their blandishments, but went to an hotel, and that for good reasons. They resolve themselves into a question of feeding--_i.e._, of meal-hours. You go into lodgings in a flat, and of necessity there are more or less definitely limited periods for meals. This is killing, even when not regarded in the light of irregular working hours. To be tied to 8 for breakfast, 1 for lunch, and 6 for dinner, is to be in gaol. The chief beauty of an hotel is that you may have breakfast from 6.30 to 10, lunch from 12 to 2.30, and dinner from 6 to 9.30. This leaves you, to some extent, at freedom with the leisure an exacting Headquarters does sometimes throw to you. Breakfast is altogether French. You'll get no more than _café au lait_ and roll--not even _confiture_, without paying through the nose for this violation of French usage. If you order eggs or _omelette_ (or both) you not only wait long for it, but are looked on with disfavour even in a first-class establishment. But the coffee is so rich and mellow and the roll so crisp and the butter so creamy that you can make a large meal of them. You usually eat and drink far more than it's good form to consume. He's a barbarian who asks for anything better.