One morning Lewis noticed that the public square was in a ferment. Two men were standing on chairs and hurling their black fingers about. The audience was shouting and answering them with raised hands, trying to attract their attention; on inquiry Lewis found out that they were arguing about rates of insurance and that they always gambled like this at the beginning of the harvest of what are known as Corinthian raisins, which was just about to begin. He began to gamble, too. It reminded him of something.... Suddenly there before him, as in a fairy tale, stood another Greek temple also full of enigmatic gods. It was half-past twelve, and 1,500 miles away the Paris Bourse was about to open. Already the earliest quotations were being made in the street. Groups of runners, motionless as the square columns black with figures, pencil marks and caricatures, were straining at the leash. In their oak cubicles, behind green curtains, the bank representatives were taking their final orders on their private wires. Then the bell rang and pandemonium broke loose. The tide flowed in both directions up to the baskets where the orders lost their individuality, swallowed up and absorbed by cross entries, whilst in the greenish glass roof prices were already going up in columns. What a lovely toy! Sadly Lewis longed for the West, with its sloping roofs, its rivers full of water, hard butter, the wide views of fertile country, the odourless milk, scavengers, the Bois de Boulogne full of women wearing stays, his old Martial, his spotless flat, Elsie Magnac, his other little friends, warm or cold, even Waldeck with his Lavallière tie and his little sideways hop. (Proust once said, "He looks like an aborted partridge.") The Mediterranean appalled him with its volcanic rages, its spasmodic mountains, its barren coast inhabited by sluggish people, its plains scorched like railway embankments, its hard colours, and the monotonous flow of classic torrents beneath the boisterous sun. Oh, for a little grass! He could understand the nostalgia from which Queen Sophie of Greece must have suffered when she asked permission from King Constantine, her husband, to grow ivy on the Acropolis. But Irene joined him, and while yet far off said anxiously:-- "You seem depressed; aren't you happy?" This question was so tactless, so artless, that Lewis could only make a gesture of despair, without daring to lift his eyes. "Profoundly happy," he answered. "I am asking you for the truth." "Well then ... if you love me let's go back to Paris ... just for a week. I feel I shall go mad if I don't see a cloud soon, if you can understand that." V THEY went back. It was midsummer. Paris was just like Greece: the Madeleine full of Americans, the Champs Elysées deserted, burnt up and inhabited by goats. There was a water famine. The Grand Prix had been won by a Greek.