On hearing this, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. The figure spoke, and spoke Greek, the purest Attic. There was no doubting that it was the man himself, dead for twenty centuries, brought back from the grave, and as alive as if he had come straight from cutting off his poor dog’s tail, as he so famously did. It was clear that, without a moment’s thought, I had just taken a great stride forward along the path of spiritualism. But, silly me, I didn’t, at first, realize this, and I allowed myself to be caught off guard. He repeated the question, looked around him, and sat down in an armchair. He saw that I was cold and trembling (as I still am even now), and spoke to me rather tenderly, even trying to laugh and joke so as to put me at my ease. As deft as ever! What more can I say? A few minutes later, we were chatting away in ancient Greek, he reclining nonchalantly in his chair, I earnestly begging all the saints in heaven to send some sort of distraction—a servant, a visitor, a local constable, or even, should it prove necessary, for a fire to break out.

Needless to say, I gave up on the idea of consulting him on modern-day dress; I had summoned a ghost, not a “real-life” man, as children say. I limited myself to replying to his questions; he asked me for news about Athens, and I obliged; I said that Athens was finally the capital of a unified Greece; I told him about the long years of Muslim domination, then about independence, Botsaris, and Lord Byron. The great man hung on my every word and, when I expressed surprise that the dead had told him nothing of all this, he explained to me that when one stood at the gates of the other world, one’s interest in this world waned considerably. He had met neither Botsaris nor Lord Byron—firstly, because there is such a vast multitude of spirits that it’s very easy to miss someone, and secondly, because there the dead are grouped not according to nationality or some similar category, but according to their temperament, customs, and profession. Thus he, Alcibiades, forms part of a group of elegant, passionate politicians, alongside the Duke of Buckingham, Almeida Garrett, our very own Maciel Monteiro, etc. Then he asked me about current affairs; I briefly told him what I knew; I spoke of the Hellenic parliament and the rather different way in which his compatriot statesmen, Voulgaris and Koumoundouros, are going about imitating Disraeli and Gladstone in taking turns at government, and, just like them, trading oratorical blows. Alcibiades, a magnificent orator himself, interrupted me:

“Bravo, Athenians!”