the entire floors of which were covered two feet
deep with nuts. I never saw one-hundredth part so many before. The good
agoumenos, it seems, had been speculating in hazel-nuts; and a vessel
was to come to the little tower of the scaricatojo down below to be
freighted with them: they were to produce a prodigious profit, and
defray the expense of finishing the new buildings of Caracalla.

"Take some," said he; "don't be afraid; there are plenty. Take some, and
taste them, and then you can tell your friends at Constantinople what a
peculiar flavour you found in the famous nuts of Athos; and in all Athos
every one knows that there are no nuts like those of Caracalla!"

They were capital nuts; but as it was before dinner, and I was
ravenously hungry, and my lord the agoumenos had not brought a bottle of
sherry in his pocket, I did not particularly relish them. But there had
been great talking during the morning between the agoumenos and Pater
Joasaph about a famous large fish which was to be cooked for dinner;
and, as the important hour was approaching, we adjourned to my sitting
room. Father Joasaph was already there, having washed his hands and
seated himself on the divan, in order to regulate the proceedings of the
lay brother who acted as butler. The preparations for the banquet were
made. The lay brother first brought in the table-cloth, which he spread
upon the ground in one corner of the room; then he turned the table
upside down upon the table-cloth, with its legs in the air: next he
brought two immense flagons, one of wine, the other of water; these were
made of copper tinned, and were each a foot and a half high; he set them
down on the carpet a little way from the table-cloth; and round the
table he placed three cushions for the agoumenos, Pater Joasaph, and me;
and then he went away to bring the dinner. He soon reappeared, bringing
in, with the assistance of another stout catechumen, the whole of the
dinner on a large circular tray of well-polished brass called a sinni.
This was so formed as to fix on the sticking-up legs of the subverted
table, and, with the aid of Pater Joasaph, it was soon all tight and
straight. In a great centre-dish there appeared the big fish in a sea of
sauce surrounded by a mountainous shore of rice. Round this luxurious
centre stood a circle of smaller dishes, olives, caviare, salad (no
eggs, because there were no hens), papas yaknesi, and several sweet
things. Two cats followed the d