But the house soon filled up, for Lewis was always known to be in during the morning. Clients, Stock Exchange runners, commission agents and brokers began to arrive. The telephone rang continuously in a sharp querulous way, punctuated by the alphabetic hail of typewriters. A private exchange was installed at the head of his bed, keeping him in touch with his offices, his engineers, his desk at the Bourse. (When he woke late he could listen to the tidal sound of buying and selling from the depths of his bed clothes.) All this agitation, this modern comfort, this life of violence, of expenditure of nervous energy and of speculation was in curious contrast with the portly seventeenth-century mansion in a leafy road on the Rive Gauche. Through the windows a Le Nôtre garden unfolded itself, restored in every detail (even to a reinforced concrete pergola) by the actual owners, who were Mexicans. The trees and artificial lakes were blue with frost, for it was mid-winter. There was nothing to remind one of Sicily but some labelled samples of sulphur in a bowl, and occasional patches of ultramarine in the sky. Lewis was dictating from his bed, laying down the facts of some disputed question. "I am only an amateur, really," he used to say. "I don't work to 'woo the fickle goddess Fortune' or to be a 'money baron' or any of the other Yellow Press expressions. I work to amuse myself. Negotiating loans amuses me more than yachting, and floating companies more than playing poker. That's all it is." Lewis did not lay the results of his journey to Sicily before the directors of the Franco-African. Obstinately, in accordance with his first idea, he got together the necessary capital and floated a limited company on his own account; the share certificates were being printed. As soon as they were fully issued he would have them quoted on the Paris Bourse; in a year they would be quoted at Trieste and in New York. A whole army of technical men, chemists, mechanics, etc., was on its way out. Lewis counted on work being seriously begun at San Lucido by the end of the month.