“Good. He beat me. When I told him you were here he was very pleased. There’s nobody here for him to play with.”
Count Greffi was ninety-four years old. He had been a contemporary of Metternich and was an old man with white hair and mustache and beautiful manners. He had been in the diplomatic service of both Austria and Italy and his birthday parties were the great social event of Milan. He was living to be one hundred years old and played a smoothly fluent game of billiards that contrasted with his own ninety-four-year-old brittleness. I had met him when I had been at Stresa once before out of season and while we played billiards we drank champagne. I thought it was a splendid custom and he gave me fifteen points in a hundred and beat me.
“Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”
“I forgot it.”
“Who else is here?”
“No one you know. There are only six people altogether.”
“What are you doing now?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on out fishing.”
“I could come for an hour.”
“Come on. Bring the trolling line.”
The barman put on a coat and we went out. We went down and got a boat and I rowed while the barman sat in the stern and let out the line with a spinner and a heavy sinker on the end to troll for lake trout. We rowed along the shore, the barman holding the line in his hand and giving it occasional jerks forward. Stresa looked very deserted from the lake. There were the long rows of bare trees, the big hotels and the
