But in spite of the most precise and categorical directions, I was unable to find it. The hotel, therefore, supplied me with a diminutive page, who marched me through the streets with that pompous, measured tread that one usually connects with bishops in the rear of processions. This called forth hoots of ridicule from other boys engaged in window-cleaning and doorstep-scrubbing. Finally I was left in the hands of an obese commissionaire, from whose chin descended a luxuriant growth of grizzled beard parted in the middle. Instead of directing me to the Letter of Credit Department, he impelled me into the middle of the road, and with the gestures of a Franciscan preacher, proceeded to declaim the glories of his bank: not only was this side of the street all Deutsche Bank, but also that. What beautiful buildings! and what we saw here was not all; there was more round the corner. Round the corner we went; I changed my money; and taking a short cut for foot passengers only, came out on the Unter den Linden, next door to a barber’s, into which I went, as my hair needed cutting. It was with difficulty that the man could be persuaded to take enough off, so alarmed was he lest he should be thought to admire the ordinary shaven scalp of his country. An English Weekly Graphic showed pictures of Simon’s expedition removing the stone engraved with an Inca inscription that Simon had discovered on the beach of some remote islet. Simon himself was not visible; nor did he appear to have accompanied the others in their friendly advances to the giant lizards six feet long, that had previously existed only in the illustrations to Wells’ History of the World.

After buying a piece of soap I walked down the Unter den Linden to the broad space at the end, and entered the Kaiser Frederick Museum. Being as yet unfamiliar with their native surroundings, the naturalism of the Greek sculptures seemed to convey to me little more than photography in three dimensions. The masterpiece of the collection is a superb head of Athene by Pheidias. Only the greatest sculptors have realised that one side of the human face is seldom a symmetrical counterpart of the other. The museum was full of family parties ranging from infancy to dotage, all doing their duty by the famous works of art and reading to one another analyses of the respective merits of the statues from out of large but closely-printed handbooks. The salient feature of the building was, however, a penetrating smell, reminiscent of washing hung to dry before the kitchen stove. This drove me out. Next door was the cathedral, which I tried to enter, but, unfortunately, by the wrong door, and found myself sitting in a queue of stranded mothers seeking charity. After a few minutes’ rest, I returned to the hotel on top of a ’bus. Simon and David were dressed, and we went to the Bristol Bar – where everyone in Berlin is said to drink cocktails before lunch.

‘Everyone’ consisted of an American in a straw hat talking business with another in a Lincoln Bennett Hamberg bound in white; an Englishman in chocolate suede shoes and a Guards’ moustache, who looked as if he had been turned out of England; and a Mr Hutten, London-tailored, a friend of David’s early days in Germany, who now conducts a furniture business in New York. I heard of him when I returned to England, from other sources. He told us to lunch at Pelzer’s. Simon explained that the plethora of ‘Bristol’ Hotels in Europe was due to the restlessness of a former Lord Bristol, also a bishop, who travelled so incessantly and in such magnificence, that the very fact of his having stopped at an hotel gave it a reputation which it could only preserve by assuming his name.

We lunched at Pelzer’s in a bower formed of gilded trellis-work and real vines, the back of which was decorated with scene-painters’ landscapes. I ate nothing. David had a haunch of venison stuffed with foie gras and covered with cherries, but was too lazy to touch it. Afterwards Simon went home to read, while David and I scoured the city for a cinema. None were open till six o’clock. Berlin has not sunk to the depravity of afternoon amusements.

That evening, after dining early, we drove out to Charlottenburg to a musical comedy called ‘Anna Marie’. The hotel had reserved us seats in the front row; but when we arrived late there were only two instead of three. David fell into the most extravagant rage and abused the officials, old men in pinces-nez, with such effect that they compelled a man to vacate his seat for one of us. Then Simon decided that it was too hot and that he would prefer to sit in the beer garden outside after all.