to tell him to enter the kitchen and ask for the third cook. Watch the cook and when Clearchos comes in follow him and bring him up the rear staircase without attracting attention. Now repeat all that."
The Lydian went over what had been said, was dismissed, saluted and went out.
For perhaps half an hour the ephors dealt with other matters, then Clearchos was ushered in. After the usher left the door was rebarred. Clearchos gravely saluted, without speaking any word, was offered a stool by a gesture of the first ephor, and seated himself in silence. He wore a black-felt traveling hat whose hemispherical crown fitted close to his head like a cap and whose broad brim shaded his dark face. He kept it on, as it was no part of Greek manners to remove one's hat. A voluminous red cloak, with a broad wall-of-Troy border done in black, wrapped him from his neck to his ankles. His military boots were of red leather, gilded along the edges of the soles after the fashion of Lydian and other Asiatic bootmakers. Seated he regarded steadfastly this autocratic committee, the five irresponsible senilities who created, guided and drove the entire foreign policy of Lacedaemon. As ostentatious models of austerity they were all barefooted and clad in scanty cloaks of the roughest woolen cloth, woven of
