What we will also know is that they are French and that coming from a superior culture, no, coming from the only culture country in the world, there is no reason to accept anything that does not meet their discriminating standards...
"They will have little to do with this trip or at least this trip is I conceived it; in fact they have already made their most dramatic move and have gotten the toilets locked against us. By noon of that first day, appalled by the food, the lack of a decent table wine at meals, and the crudities of river travel, they have offered to pay double passage and have been moved to VIP quarters on the top deck. They will continue to eat the same unfortunate food but alone with the captain after the rest of us..... Everything will be the same for them except that by paying double they have made a social statement and have been isolated above us with the master of the ship in a cabin, which, under the full blast of the sun, by three o'clock will begin to glow incandescently......
They will be an unseen presence on the ship, though we will be constantly aware of their aura. Their cultured vibrations clash discordantly in that emptiness of river and sky through which we are drifting and we feel that they have not earned the right to so easily penetrate this carboniferous world of three hundred million years ago. They are like drunks in church; they are having an experience that will mean little to them and that they will remember only as that week of the barbarous cooking and the badly ventilated stateroom."
- Moritz Thomsen. The Saddest Pleasure. A Journey On Two Rivers.
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