The Hôtel de Genève is probably the least objectionable of the hotels of Annecy; but the Poste-bureau is at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, and it was much too hot for me to fight with the waiters there, and carry off my knapsack to another house. It is generally a mistake--a great mistake--to sleep at a house which is the starting-place and the goal of many diligences. All the night through, whips are cracking, bells jingling, and men are shouting hoarsely or blowing hoarser horns. Moreover, the Hôtel d'Angleterre had apparently needed a fresh coat of paint and universal papering for many years, and the latter need had at this crisis been so far grappled with that the old paper had been torn down from the walls and now lay on the various floors, while large pies of malodorous sizing had been planted at the angles of the stairs. The natural _salle-à-manger_ was evidently an excellent room, with oleander balconies, but it was at present in the hands of joiners, and a card pointed the way to the 'provisionary _salle-à-manger'_--not a bad name for it--in the neighbourhood of the kitchen. There was one redeeming feature. The people of the house were nice-looking and well-dressed. But experience has taught me to view such a phenomenon in French towns of humbler rank with somewhat mixed feelings. When the house is superintended with a keen and watchful eye by a young lady of fashionable appearance, who takes a personal interest in a solitary traveller, and suggests an evening's _course_ on the lake, or a morning's drive to some good view, and makes herself most winning and agreeable; who takes the words, moreover, out of the mouth of a man meditating an ordinary dinner, and assures him that she knows exactly what he wants, and he shall be well satisfied, with a sisterly air that makes the idea of francs and sous not sordid only, but impossible; I have slowly learned to expect that this fashion and condescension will appear in the bill. Prettiness is a very expensive item in such a case; and as these three were all combined to a somewhat remarkable degree at the Hôtel d'Angleterre, the eventual bill made me angry, and I should certainly try the Hôtel de Genève on any future visit to Annecy.