II + 

This then was the atmosphere of well-being that Millo had managed to create. He believed in giving people exactly what they wanted, for someone was certain to gain in the process, and as a rule it was the giver. Millo might sometimes smile rather wryly, he might even shake his wise head, but then he would murmur: “Le monde est ainsi fait.” And remember that he had not made it. + 

Of his vast staff whose duty it was to see that everyone got what they wanted, none so deft, so proficient, so agreeable as Gian-Luca, whose lips had acquired an automatic smile which he kept expressly for the clients. Millo, watching his clever headwaiter, would consider him well-nigh perfect. He would think: + 

“After all he was right to be ambitious; the man knows the worth of his talent, and why not? I am lucky to have him in days like these, when everyone feels so hungry!” And then he would chuckle a little to himself, thinking of the people who felt hungry. + 

But sometimes, if nobody happened to be looking, Gian-Luca’s face altered completely; it grew sullen and tired, it was quite a different face from the one that he showed to the clients. Backwards and forwards superintending the service went Millo’s clever headwaiter, and all that he did was supremely well done, for so many years had gone to his making that now he must work like a perfect machine, without hitch, without flaw, without hurry. There had been many days during that time in France when Gian-Luca had tried to work badly, to be inefficient, clumsy, forgetful of orders; hoping against hope to get sent to the Front if he ceased to give satisfaction. But then, even as now, his long training held, and he could not be other than himself, the perfect mess-sergeant, the perfect headwaiter, the master and slave of innumerable details, the man who could not see a fork out of place but that he must put it straight. He had slipped back into his groove at the Doric as though he had never been away, taking up his work just where he had left it; ordering his waiters, humoring his clients; with a watchful eye, too, for his master’s interests, which he served whenever he might. + 

Yet all the while, and herein lay the change, Gian-Luca cared nothing at all. If the Doric had suddenly fallen to pieces, and he himself with it, he would not have cared; a curious indifference had begun to possess him, he worked without interest or pleasure or ambition, because he had the habit of working. Now he would try not to think of his work, because if he thought about it too much he was filled with a sense of smallness. Everything he did now seemed infinitely small, and he himself seemed small in the doing; Millo, the Doric, Gian-Luca, all small⁠—the servants of poor Lilliputians. And yet he could never stop doing small things, he would pause to pick up a pin; a badly-drawn curtain would worry his eyes until he must go and arrange it. A crumb on the carpet, a chair out of place, would cause him acute discomfort; but after he had spoken pretty sharply to Daniele, he would think: “Dio Santo! what does it matter? What do all these trifles matter?” + 

He began to grow anxious about himself, because of this curious indifference. He who had all but reached the height of his ambition, and could buy his own restaurant now if he chose, or if he preferred it get a manager’s job and work up in time to be a rival to Millo; he who had achieved so much single-handed in the face of unpropitious fate, what had he got to complain of? Nothing⁠—and yet, somehow, the thought of his days lay heavy, like a cold, hard stone on his brain. The clashing of music, the clattering of dishes, the incessant talking and laughing; the perpetual movement of knives and forks, the perpetual chewing of food. + 

“Maître d’hotel!” + 

“Si, signore?” + 

“I want the wine-waiter.” + 

“Si, signore, I will send him at once!” + 

“Gian-Luca⁠—” + 

“Si, signore?” + 

“I’d like some more hors d’oeuvres.” + 

“Si, signore, I will send you your waiter.” + 

Food, food, food⁠—all those dozens of people thinking of it, talking of it, eating. His business in life just to see that they got it, just to see that they ate more and more. His head would feel dizzy with the fumes of the food, until he would grow almost stupid; but then he would suddenly pull himself up, while a kind of terror seized him. + 

“This is my life, my whole life,” he would mutter, “and I like it⁠—I like my work.” + 

To assure himself how much he liked his work, he took to going down to the basement again, in the time between luncheon and dinner. He would stand on the steps that led into the great kitchen, and listen to the pulsing of that mighty heart; he would think of Millo, the heart of that heart, while he tried to recapture the lure of the place that had held him before the war. Food, food, food⁠—great cauldrons of food. Food on the tables of wood and of iron; splashes of food on the walls, on the floor, on the clothes and the hands of men. The vastness of the thing would begin to oppress him⁠—grotesque that it should be so vast⁠—the vastness of the Doric and all that it stood for, the vastness of the appetites that it must appease, the vastness of that long vista of jaws. Yet the larger the Doric grew in his imagination, the smaller it seemed to become; so small that now it was crushing and squeezing; a prison, a press that closed in and in until he could scarcely breathe. But how could a thing be vast and yet small? Surely that way lay madness. + 

His hand would go up to his throat. He would think: “It is awful⁠—it suffocates!” And then he would hurry away to the larders, afraid of these fantastic fancies. + 

In the principal larder there would be much to see, the chopping and slicing of meat, for instance; great chunks of raw meat, which a chef called Henri was forever dividing with his knife. There were also those long rows of newly-plucked chickens, with their necks swinging over the shelves, and those deep, white dishes of quaking entrails, and those slabs full of slow-moving, beady-eyed lobsters, who protested that they were alive. Henri would look up from his work with a smile, and perhaps he would say: “Good morning, Gian-Luca. Would you like to select a nice, fat lobster for your pretty Milady? You are always so fussy, and no wonder, for she is extremely gourmande, she will eat it up shell and all!” + 

And Gian-Luca might answer: “She is little and lovely⁠—they are always the greediest kind.” But he would not select the fat lobster for Milady, instead he would just stand staring at Henri, and one day he said: “Do you like what you do? Do you like the feeling of food?” + 

“Ma foi! But why not?” laughed Henri, surprised. “Do I not live by their food?” + 