II + 

Gian-Luca discovered that on certain days there would be more to watch than on others; on certain days interesting people would arrive, people whose faces appeared in the papers, together with their outlandish doings. Perhaps Jane Coram would come in with her friends, satellites surrounding the star⁠—a generous star too, who provided them with money, and invariably paid for their meals. Gian-Luca would hasten to find them a table, for such people were always welcome at the Doric; they amused other clients, who could go home and say: “I saw Jane Coram at luncheon.” + 

She was still very young, the famous Jane Coram, and on rare occasions quite sober; but Gian-Luca knew the lure that would catch her, and almost before she could ask he would bring it; then she would sometimes look up with a grin, possessing a great sense of humor. She would sit lolling loosely back in her chair, with her long legs sprawled beneath the table; and as like as not she would have some grievance, a grievance with its tongue in its cheek. + 

“I’m a most unfortunate woman,” she would say, “everyone seems to be down on Jane⁠—if I try to help people there’s sure to be a row, I’m always misunderstood. Got my brandy-and-soda, Gian-Luca? All right, now get us something to eat.” And then all the satellites called for brandy, just to show that they were satellites. + 

After a time they would get very loving, loving and jealous of each other. Their eyes would grow veiled and mysterious and pensive; but Jane’s eyes never changed, they were always the same, the eyes of a homesick monkey. There she would sprawl, this darling of the people, this plaything of the gallery and pit, with her body of an athlete and her mind of a buffoon and her soul of a Solitary. And now it would be the turn of Roberto to bring her those double-brandies, Roberto who had been such a fine man in the war, Roberto who had flown with d’Annunzio. While Gian-Luca, always watchful, would be thinking to himself: + 

“She cannot last very long at this rate.” But never a twinge of pity would he feel for those eyes of a homesick monkey. + 

Perhaps a pair of young lovers would arrive, temperate children who drank little as a rule, but because they wished to appear worldly, they must now order cocktails and wine. And gradually the fine ardor of their love would be superseded by something less fine, by something that made them look flushed and coarsened⁠—a stupid, fictitious, unworthy thing, that sat ill on their fresh young faces. They would eat the rich food of the restaurant and their skins would look hot and even rather greasy; then the girl must get out her powder-puff to correct the effects of eating. And now their perceptions would have grown a little blurred, and their sense of values a little untrue, so that they felt much richer than they were, felt that the world was made for their buying, with all its delightful baubles. When they looked across the table at each other and smiled, they were looking through a mist of illusion. Not so Gian-Luca, the quietly observant, he had no illusions about them. He saw them precisely as they were at that moment, when the beauty and the glory of their youth had left them, and into its place had crept something ugly, something that reminded him of Doria. + 

He would think: “What fools, what intolerable fools! They need neither food nor wine for their loving, and yet they must do as the others are doing⁠—as Ugo Doria did.” + 

Compassion? He had none; let them eat, let them drink, the more they consumed the better! “A generation of fools,” he would mutter; and then his anger would flare up afresh. So much splendor of suffering and sacrifice and death, and now this, a generation of fools! + 

Oh, but the aged who must needs feed alone, having neither lover nor friend⁠—the people who drank their lonely champagne and ordered long, lonely meals! Sometimes a woman and sometimes a man, and how carefully they studied their menus; they would have the food-expression in their eyes, in their hands, in their backs, in their whole intent persons. They had come to an age when all other things failing, their meals must provide their diversion, when the garden of Kama must give place to the Doric, and passion to the lusts of the palate. Poor old pitiful, greedy babies, with their unreliable teeth; with their receding gums and their gouty knuckles; with their aches and their pains and their Continental Cures. Four weeks of strict diet then back at the Doric⁠—but dear God! they had to do something for Old Age, he was really terribly insistent⁠ ⁠… + 

Gian-Luca detested these senile gourmets, they made him feel physically sick; and yet he would watch them as he watched all the others, in order the better to hate. + 