My Italian escort had, meanwhile, kindly procured a newspaper to act as fan, and now, hurriedly brushing away these horrible pests, he took a silk handkerchief out of his pocket to cover my neck. “What a magnificent husband you will make for someone,” I said, smiling with gratitude; and he blushed with all the charm of his twenty-one years. In another moment my eye fell on the hard brown faces and big “Jewish” noses of the moneylenders, forcing a smile as they call on you to “buy.” They have very much the same expression as Southern Italians; keeping one eye, it would almost seem, to make a pleasant impression on possible purchasers, while the other betrays the keen and swift reckoning of profits to the uttermost farthing. Seated behind little tables topped with boxes of glass, they are eagerly displaying their filthy paper money; haggling, arguing, smiling, and cheating you in one breath! Surely no type of humanity could carry us further from the heroes of our schoolday imaginings! Wearied with fly-dodging, in fact, I had scant energy left for a “good bargain,” over this “paper filth” for honest English sterling. Sympathy now prompted me to ask the Italian Whether his eyes were not in pain; and, by the power of auto-suggestion, the inquiry caused my own to ache as they had never ached before. Before we landed the captain had given me a solemn warning on no account to rub my eyes, however tormented by the continual glare of a bright sun on white houses, or I should be certain to “catch an incurable eye-disease and go on ‘weeping’ to the end of my days.” “Never, never speak of disease again,” I had answered. “Misfortunes come quickly enough, without our going to fetch them.” Fortunately even the flies could not make it a _long_ journey from Piræus to Athens; and we could glance in passing at the quaint and not unattractive bookstalls, now showing large photographs of modern “Heroes”—the Greek generals! After all, they had done their best. _They_ were no more responsible for the mistakes of _their_ Government, than we are for ours. Taking train for the last part of our route, we were packed like sardines among the ugliest possible types of human beings one could imagine; but, luckily, soon alighted at a station whose magic name should thrill the dullest heart. We were in Athens! But the Italian could only exclaim: “What women!” I reminded him that they were, after all, descended from Helen of Troy, for whose beauty the world in its youth made war. Yet it seemed almost a heresy to name that name in such surroundings. If only one could show all men what a tragedy is here.