There is no real luxury at Geneva itself, though there are high prices and immense hotels. Instead of having good music at fixed hours, they have indifferent music all day long. The whole air is full of a continual tinkle-tinkle; louder than the tinkle-tinkle rises the hooting of the steamers and the trams; louder still are the voices of the trippers, mostly Americans, inquiring the prices of things, or complaining that they have lost their luggage. The society at the boasted Kursaal is an unpolished horde, mainly composed of the Geneva clerks and shop-assistants losing their salaries at _petits chevaux_. Nor are things much better elsewhere on the Swiss shore. Nyon, for instance, is by nature an earthly paradise, and they have formed a society for developing it. What they really want is a society for cleaning it, since it is the present practice of the inhabitants to empty their dustbins over their garden walls into the lake, with results appalling to the nostrils of the stranger. At Lausanne, or Vevey, or Montreux--other earthly paradises--you escape this nuisance; but even there, in the season, you have the feeling that the place is one vast hotel, and that everybody is waiting with packed boxes for the omnibus. But cross to Evian. The town is a little smaller than Montreux, but just as full. Yet it never seems to be crowded. There is no hurrying or bustling. You are in nobody's way, and nobody is in your way; which means that Evian is properly managed. They do not encourage you to come to Evian in the capacity of tripper. On the contrary, they try to arrange things so that you must sacrifice your lunch in order to get there, and your dinner in order to get home. But this is a part of the secret of good management, as you will appreciate if you stay there. No knickerbockered army, headed by a polyglot guide in a straw hat with a label on it, will invade your peace, but you will be free to live your lotus-eating life in your own way. You will probably live most of it in the casino, which is a proper casino, differing from the Geneva Kursaal as cheese from chalk. There is so much shade that it is always cool there, even on the hottest day. You will lunch there on a shaded terrace, assisted by a sympathetic waiter, who understands that a good lunch is an end in itself, and not merely a device for keeping body and soul together until the evening. You will linger long and agreeably over the coffee and liqueurs, without feeling that someone else wants your seat. Nor will you be bothered, as in Geneva, by the squeaking of a futile fiddle, or by hawkers offering picture postcards. But, at the appointed hour, there will be a proper concert with a programme, and a well-behaved and well-dressed audience: beautiful French ladies looking as if they had stepped out of fashion plates; beautiful French children looking as if they had been cut out of Aunt Louisa's picture-book; fantastic Frenchmen, looking as if they were dressed for amateur theatricals.