They sat at an overburdened table round which an old butler carried out all sorts of funereal rites like those of the Orthodox Church, wandering about as they wander round the churches in Athens act Easter. In the centre of the table stood a bowl full of flowers whose object was not so much to decorate the table as to hide the guests from one another, thereby minimising the number of dreadful disputes and the threats of expulsion from the house that devastated the family dinner at every other course. The food was plentiful. Oriental and heavy. But the old father, Solon, was only interested in the china on which it was served. "And now," he said, addressing Lewis and rubbing himself to get the uric acid out of his joints, "you are going to have..." Lewis waited expectantly for a tale of some noble vintage. " ... my blue and gold Vincennes; there are only seventeen pieces left. Prince V---- has two and there are three at South Kensington; I have got the other twelve, which you see here." There was no general conversation in honour of Lewis. The only subjects discussed were family affairs, baptismal names, charity, Greek politics; austerely formal discussions on liturgy, the size of Paschal candles and so on. Then followed long silences in which one listened to the old man munching his anti-diabetic rusks. Lewis remarked on the beauty of their pearls. Irene explained that uncle Solon had rushed into a mad whirl of expenditure when confronted by the fall of the drachma; inasmuch as he had been thrifty all his life ("Don't handle things too much," he said; "a gold coin disappears altogether in eight thousand years"), now, feeling in his old age that the end of all economy, patrimony and capitalism was approaching, he disdained the arbitrary value of post-war money and never stopped repeating, sometimes in a frenzy and sometimes light-heartedly, "Spend the money, my children, spend the money!" And so, without wanting to, just because they were accustomed never to dispute this man's authority, the two sisters began to squander money, returning each evening tired out, having spent the day ransacking sales, stores and antique dealers' shops, and having changed their fortune into utterly useless articles. At night they shut themselves into, and all light out of their rooms, put on a hundred thousand pounds worth of jewelry and sat and looked at themselves in the glass. Uncle Solon was repeating himself. "In three years' time the entire organization of the world will have changed." He had two cruisers, costing two million pounds each, and a fortified villa for Venizelos with underground cellars built at his own expense for the "Cause." "I don't want to offend you, uncle Solon," said Irene, taking the sort of liberty with him that her ancestors used to take with Jove, "but, personally, I think we ought to be more optimistic. I have given the Prefect of Athens ten thousand pounds to reconstruct the prison." XII