"IT's scarcely credible," said Lewis to himself, as though the words he had uttered a few hours earlier behind the hearse were still ringing in his ears. Neither reflection nor folly had anything to do with his determination. It was just that he had been struck whilst Pastafina was speaking, by the wholly southern character of the approach to La Roquette. Pretty work girls wearing pearls, suits for hire, turtle-doves, songs going up in spirals, corsets. When the road narrowed into a sort of corridor the hearse traced its way with difficulty through a Neapolitan riot of food and life which seemed to overflow on to the passing dead: the dinner dishes, sweet wines, snails, choice tripe. He learnt later that in the adjacent passages lived Bergamask table-leg turners and the Parmesan chauffeurs of the Say refineries, who help to give this quarter its Italian air. Was it not in this way, by association of ideas, that his most successful speculations had been carried through? He often said, "When in doubt never bring common sense into play." What he did not say was that the arrangement of letters in a document, the hour at which a telegram arrived, the hidden meaning of colours, the symbolism of numbers constantly intervened in his decisions and influenced him in the moments preceding the signature of a contract. "Things have not changed," he used to say, "since the time when the smell of a chicken's entrails decided the fate of an empire." Hardly three hours had passed since Lewis in full mourning had, with an indifferent clod of earth, blessed the trench where Monsieur Vandémanque, like a Kanaka chief, with his weapons and his helmet of shells had gone down in answer to the calling of his number, in dress clothes, patent-leather boots and with the insignia of a Commander of the Legion of Honour round his neck, to be guarded henceforth by graphite allegorical figures.