Or he had, insensibly, while he was abroad, got into the way of thinking about politics.
And then looking up and seeing the sharp outline, his meditations were given an extraordinary edge; Greece was over; the Parthenon in ruins; yet there he was.
(Ladies with green and white umbrellas passed through the courtyard--French ladies on their way to join their husbands in Constantinople.) Jacob read on again.

And laying the book on the ground he began, as if inspired by what he had read, to write a note upon the importance of history--upon democracy--one of those scribbles upon which the work of a lifetime may be based; or again, it falls out of a book twenty years later, and one can't remember a word of it.

It is a little painful.

It had better be burnt.
Jacob wrote; began to draw a straight nose; when all the French ladies opening and shutting their umbrellas just beneath him exclaimed, looking at the sky, that one did not know what to expect--rain or fine weather?
Jacob got up and strolled across to the Erechtheum.

There are still several women standing there holding the roof on their heads.