However, it impressed the company in the cafe. People generally take one at one's own valuation, and the few secret agents to whom I spoke obviously considered that I was not a likely person to be blackmailed. With the Greeks I was certainly popular. The seedy-smart polyglot youth who was so liberal with his cigars (which were rather a rarity then) and so fond of talking politics and drinking beer was a _persona grata_ in the circles he frequented. We talked much of revolution. "We will crucify the Young Turks," said a Greek to me one day, "and then eat them in little bits. We will----" His expressive hands suddenly paused in mid-gesture, and his mouth dropped open, but only for an instant. He had seen a detective enter. "We will continue to preserve our dignity and remain calm whatever happens," he concluded neatly. But calm the Greeks certainly were not. In the cellar of a German hotel in Pera the Greek proprietor displayed one night a collection of rusty swords and old revolvers which were the nucleus of the New Age of brotherly love, when the streets were to run with Turkish blood, and the Cross replace the Crescent in San Sophia. I was privileged to be present at this conclave of desperadoes. After swearing each other to eternal secrecy we sampled some of the contents of our host's cellar, and talked very big about what we were going to do. But our host, beyond dancing a hornpipe and declaring that he was going to murder everybody in the hotel (after they had paid their bills), propounded no very definite scheme. Out of this atmosphere of melodrama one emerged into the sombre, silent streets and went rather furtively home, feeling that there was something to be said for the Turks after all. But I need hardly say that no influential Greeks had a share in these proceedings: they were always on the side of moderation. One had been a fool to consort with fools.