Mando, pleading her cause, must have said that Dr. Brown was the most distinguished physician in the United States of America, for our man poured out his symptoms and drew a madly waving line indicating the irregularity of his pulse.
"He's got high blood pressure, too, and bum kidneys", the doctor said to me.
"Transparent look, waxy skin -- could well be uremia".
He looked disapprovingly at an ash tray piled high with cigarette stubs, shook his head, and moved his hand back and forth in a strong negative gesture.
The little official hung his head in shame.
Seeing this, his colleague at the next desk gave a short, contemptuous laugh, pushed forward his own ash tray, innocent of a single butt, thumped his chest to show his excellent condition, and looked proud.
The doctor gravely nodded approval.

At this moment Mando came hurrying up to announce that the problem was solved and all Norton had to do was to sign a sheaf of papers.
We went out of the office and down the hall to a window where documents and more officials awaited us, the rest of the office personnel hot upon our heels.
By this time word had got around that an American doctor was on the premises.
One fellow who had liver spots held out his hands to the great healer.
It was funny but it was also touching.
"You know", Norton said to me later, "I am thinking of setting up the Klinico Brownapopolus.
I might not make any money but I'd sure have patients".

After luncheon we took advantage of the siesta period to try to get in touch with a few people to whom our dear friend Deppy had written.
Deppy is Despina Messinesi, a long-time member of the Vogue staff who, although born in Boston, was born there of Greek parents.
Several years of her life have been spent in the homeland, and she had written to friends to alert them of our coming.
"All you have to do, Ilka dear, is to phone on your arrival.
They are longing to see you".
The wear and tear of life have taught me that very few friends of mutual friends long to see foreign strangers, but I planned on being the soul of tact, of giving them plenty of outs was there the tiniest implication that their cups were already running over without us.
My diplomacy was needless.
Greek phone service is worse than French, so that it was to be some little time before contact of any sort was established.

In the late afternoon Mando came back to fetch us, and we drove to the Acropolis.
We stopped first at the amphitheater that lies at the foot of the height crowned by the Parthenon.
The curving benches are broken, chipped, tumbled, but still in place, as are the marble chairs, the seats of honor for the legislators.
The carved statues of the frieze against the low wall are for the most part headless, but their exquisitely graceful nude and draped torsos and the kneeling Atlantes are well preserved in their perfect proportion.

Having completed our camera work, we started our climb.
I suppose the same emotion holds, if to a lesser degree, with any famous monument.
Will it live up to its reputation?
The weight of fame and history is formidable, and dreary steel engravings in schoolbooks do little to quicken interest and imagination.
Uh huh, we think, looking at them, so that's the Parthenon.
And then perhaps one day we get to Athens.
We are here!
We've come a long way and spent a lot of money.
It had better be good.
Don't worry about the Acropolis.
It is awe-inspiring.
Probably every visitor has a favorite time for his first sight of it.
We saw it frequently afterward, but our suggestion for the very first encounter is near sunset.
The light at that time is a benediction.
The serene, majestic columns of the Parthenon, tawny in color against the pure deep blue sky, frame incredible vistas.
All we wanted to do was to stand very quietly and look and look and look.

More than twenty-four hundred years old, bruised, battered, worn and partially destroyed, combining to an astounding degree solidity and grace, it still stands, incomparable testimony to man's aspiration.
In 1687 the Turks, who had been in control of the city since the fifteenth century, with a truly shattering lack of prudence used the Parthenon as a powder magazine.
It was hit by a shell fired by the bombarding Venetian army and the great central portion of the temple was blown to smithereens.

Nearby is the temple of Athena.
The architectural feature, the caryatides upholding the portico, famous around the world as the Porch of the Maidens, was referred to airily by Mando as the Girls' Place.
Another beautiful building is the Propylaea, the entrance gate of the Acropolis.

My other nugget of art and architectural knowledge -- besides remembering that it was Ghiberti who designed the doors of the baptistery in Florence -- is the three styles of Greek columns.
For some happy reason Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian have always stuck in my mind.
Furthermore I can identify each design.
It remained, however, for Mando to teach me that Doric symbolized strength, Ionic wisdom, and Corinthian beauty, the three pillars of the ancient world.
The columns of the Parthenon are fluted Doric.

Another classic sight that gave us considerable pleasure was the Evzone sentry, in his ballet skirt with great pompons on his shoes, who was patrolling up and down in front of the palace.
Gun on shoulder, he would march smartly for a few yards, bring his heels together with a click, make a brisk pirouette, skirts flaring, and march back to his point of departure.
We did not dare speak to so exalted a being, but Norton aimed his camera and shot him, so to speak, on the rise, the split second between the halt and the turn.

The evening of our first day we drove with Christopher and Judy Sakellariadis, who were friends and patients of Norton, to dine at a restaurant on the shores of the Aegean.
On the way out Mr. Sakellariadis detoured up a special hill from which one may obtain a matchless view of the Acropolis lighted by night.

The great spectacle was a source of rancor, and Son et Lumiere, which the French were trying to promote with the Athenians, was the reason.
These performances were being staged at historical monuments throughout Europe.
By a combination of music, lighting effects, and narration, famous events that have transpired in these locations are evoked and re-created for large audiences usually to considerable acclaim.
The Acropolis had been scheduled for the treatment too, but apparently it was to take place at the time of the full moon when the Athenians themselves, out of respect for the natural beauty of the occasion, were wont to forgo their own usual nocturnal illumination.

Athenian society was split into two factions, the Philistines and the Artists.
The Artists contended that the Philistines, gross of soul, were all for having Son et Lumiere, since the French were footing the bill and the attraction, wherever it had been done, had proven popular.
This was the crassest kind of materialism and they, the Artists, would have no truck with it.
The Acropolis was unique in the world and if that imcomparable work flooded by moonlight wasn't enough for both natives and tourists, then they were quite simply barbarians and the hell with them.
It was very stimulating.

The restaurant to which the Sakellariadises took us on this night of controversy was the Asteria, on Asteria beach.
This is a public bathing beach, easily accessible by tramway from the center of Athens.
Office workers frequently go out there to lunch and swim during the siesta period, which, during the summer, lasts from two until five in the afternoon, when shops and offices are again open for business.
They close sometime after eight.
Nine o'clock is the rush hour, when the busses are jammed, and by nine-thirty the restaurants are beginning to fill.
Bedtime is late, for the balmy evenings are delightful and everyone wants to linger under the stars.

The sand is fine and pleasant, the cabanas are clean, and the parasols, green, raspberry, and butter yellow, are very gay.
Although open to the general public it is not overcrowded;
the atmosphere is that of an attractive private beach club at home.
We went there a couple of times to swim and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
This agreeable state of affairs is explicable, I think, on two counts.
One is Greece is not yet suffering from overpopulation.
The public may still find pleasure in public places.
The other is that the charge for cabanas and parasols, though modest from an American point of view, still is a little high for many Athenians.
We were struck by the notable absence of banana skins and beer cans, but just so that we wouldn't go overboard on Greek refinement, perfection was side-stepped by a couple of braying portable radios.
Greek boys and girls also go for rock-and-roll, and the stations most tuned to are those carrying United States overseas programs.
A good deal of English was spoken on the beach, most educated Greeks learn it in childhood, and there were also American wives and children of our overseas servicemen.

For a delightful drive out of Athens I should recommend Sounion, at the end of the Attic Peninsula.
The road, a comparatively new one, is very good, winding along inlets, coves, and bays of deep and brilliant blue.
I suppose the day will inevitably come when the area will be encrusted with developments, but at present it is deserted and seductive.
Three beneficial hurdles to progress are the lack of water, electricity, and telephones.

At Sounion there is a group of beautiful columns, the ruins of a temple to Poseidon, of particular interest at that time, as active reconstruction was in progress.
Gaunt scaffoldings adjoined the ruins, and on the ground segments of columns two and a half to three feet in thickness were being fitted with sections cunningly chiseled to match exactly the fluting and proportion of the original.
Later they would be hoisted into place.

There is a mediocre restaurant at Sounion and I fed a thin little Grecian cat and gave it two saucers of water -- there was no milk -- which it lapped up as though it were nectar.
I think its thirst had never been assuaged before.

Norton and I dined one night in a sea-food restaurant in Piraeus right on the water's edge.
To enter it, you go down five or six steps from the road.
Across the road is the kitchen, and waiters bearing great trays of dishes dodge traffic as nimbly as their French colleagues at the restaurant in the Place Du Tertre in Paris.

This restaurant, too, had a cat, a dusty, thin little creature.
How can a cat be thin in a fish restaurant?
But this one was.
When offered a morsel it glanced right and left and winced, obviously frightened and expecting a kick, but too hungry not to snatch the tidbit.
Greece was one of the highlights of our trip, but beginning in Greece and continuing around the world throughout Southeast Asia the treatment of animals was horrifying, ranging from callous indifference to active cruelty.
This of course was not true of the educated and sophisticated people we met, who loved their pets, but kindness is not a basic human instinct.

We met some charming Athenians, and among them our chauffeur Panyotis ranked high.
His English was limited, and the little he knew he found irritating.
A particularly galling phrase was "O.K., Panyotis, we have time at our disposal".
This he claimed was the favorite refrain of the English.
They would be lolling under a tree sipping Ouzo, relishing the leisurely life, assuring him that the day was yet young.