The Normandie

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           We went to go have a look at the ship. Third-class passengers don't see the ship on which they travel. They aren't allowed into either the first class or the coach class areas. The coach-class passengers don't see the Normandie either, since either, since they also aren't allowed to cross the border. First-class is the real Normandie. It takes up at least nine-tenths of the entire ship. Everything in first class is huge: the promenade decks, and restaurants, and smoking salons, and card salons, and special ladies' salons, and a greenhouse where plump French sparrows hop on glass branches and hundreds of orchids hang from the ceilings, and a theater that seats four hundred, and a bathing pool with water illuminated with green electric lamps [...]. Even the pipes on the Normandie, which you would think belong to the entire ship, do not - they actually belong to just the first-class passengers. There is a room for the first-class passengers' dogs in one of them. Beautiful dogs sit in cages and get terribly bored. Usually they are seasick. Sometimes they're taken out for walks on a special deck. Then they bark hesitantly, peering sadly at the rough ocean.

Chapter One: The Normandie.