Officials of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers patrol the place. They represent one of the few old guilds which are still actively interested in the trades they represent. These inspectors have the power to condemn anything unfit for sale. * * * And the smell! How many cats sniff it at the Bank, I wonder! Smell is a marvellous thing. It can awaken the most tender memories of love and passion, of moments under a red moon, blowing roses, blue nights. Were I a woman I would never allow the man I loved to go far without a bottle of my favourite scent. A photograph is a dead thing; a smell is alive. How strange, I thought, that Billingsgate should appeal to the same sense that thrills to a laced handkerchief. Here you have the harmony and discord of smell. Billingsgate in this musical metaphor is like a cat walking across a piano--worse, it is a blare of smell, an assault on the senses. I wondered if, with study, a keen nose could in time learn to disentangle the various strains that go to swell the mass effect, as a musician is able to deafen himself to a symphony and follow the steady hum of an individual 'cello. I was conscious, it is true, of the steady hum of haddock and a sharp piccolo-like movement from the plaice, but, apart from perhaps the steady drumming from the cod stalls, the finer, more subtle emanations escaped me, such as mullet. Remembering a handkerchief I once had, so long ago that I can write of it as if it were a museum specimen, but in its time a marvellous thing that held within its creased folds all the nightingales of Monte Cattini, I asked myself this problem: Suppose a fishmonger had a passionate love-affair in Billingsgate, would fish remind him or would it not? At first I was inclined to say no, but on reflection I thought yes. He would meet the girl every day for months among the lobsters. He would see her come to him, so graceful and lissom, down an avenue of oysters. He would whisper to her above the whiting, and they would kiss among the crabs. Gradually turbot would come to have a deeper meaning for this man. He would hesitate over the whitebait, and--remember. When the first Danish herrings came in during February he would have to pull himself together and be strong. Years after, if he wished to sentimentalize, what simpler, or more poignant, than a quick sniff at a kipper? But the agony of living in this hall of memories! If you treasure a piece of scented cambric, just think how harrowing it would be to live in the perfume factory.... Such speculation is vain. Do not pity Billingsgate. I hardly like to tell you because I fear you may not believe me, but----Billingsgate smells nothing! No; not even the faintest odour as of melons. Its nose is atrophied. I discovered this by the merest chance. "By jove," I said, "that's a pretty loud fish. What is it?" "I don't smell anything," said the owner.