Tuesday. Roderick awakes, exits the bed and pads over to the dresser, where he withdraws one of the neatly folded white Oxford button-down shirts, threads his arms into the sleeves and fastens the buttons. Then he dons one of his identical pairs of khaki-colored pleated pants, a pair of argyle socks and casual shoes.
Roderick slept alone last night. He thinks this is preferable to sleeping with two companions given the size of his bed, but he misses Molly when she's absent for the evening.
On the way to the Dining Hall, Roderick sees the impact of Hurricane Sandy on the Old Ivy campus: leaves blown off trees, a couple of branches down and, at the far end of the Quad near the river, an entire tree down. Still standing tall: Thinking Tree, Kissing Tree and the nameless tree that shields other student activities.
Mr. Rothschild's History of Banking lectures have completed a survey of the ancient world and Byzantine banking; today, he covers the early Florentine banking families beginning in the twelfth century. The Peruzzi and Bardi companies built fortunes by trading in English wool woven in Bruges, tinted in Florence and marketed throughout the Mediterranean. They then loaned this wealth out to princes, popes and kings, a practice that continued for some years until Edward III of England defaulted on his loans, sending the Peruzzi and Bardi into bankruptcy in 1345.
"This is a common pattern in the history of banking," observes Mr. Rothschild. "People create wealth through skill and ingenuity, then lose it all by lending to the government. Margaret Thatcher once said that the problem with socialism is that 'sooner or later you run out of other people's money.' What she did not say is that when you do run out of other people's money, the first thing you do is default on your debts."
Roderick eats dinner with Molly, who spent the afternoon posing again for Mr. Splatter, the contemporary artist in residence.
"He wanted to smear chocolate all over me again," says Molly, wrinkling her nose. "I had to shower for fifteen minutes to get it off."
"Is he doing your portrait?"
"No, I think it just inspires him to see me standing there wearing nothing but chocolate syrup."
Roderick comments that he, too, would likely find that inspiring.
After dinner, Molly and Roderick work on Logic and Rhetoric together. Roderick makes a quick call home. Mrs. Smith answers; he asks her to give Laddie and Knuckles a hug.
Then it's off to bed for the two of them.
Snuggling together with Molly, Roderick wonders aloud: "I wonder what Mr. Smiley is up to?"
