It was not good form to mention prices at the Grand Babylon; the prices were enormous, but you never mentioned them.

At the conclusion of your stay a bill was presented, brief and void of dry details, and you paid it without a word.

You met with a stately civility, that was all.

No one had originally asked you to come; no one expressed the hope that you would come again.

The Grand Babylon was far above such manoeuvres; it defied competition by ignoring it; and consequently was nearly always full during the season.
If there was one thing more than another that annoyed the Grand Babylon--put its back up, so to speak--it was to be compared with, or to be mistaken for, an American hotel.