Summary

In Chapter 6, in London, Jacob goes out to dinner with a young woman named Florinda he has been seeing. She states cryptically several times that she is “frightfully unhappy” (74), but she does not elaborate. They have dinner together but decide to leave after two female strangers flirt with Jacob. Later, in the morning before dawn Jacob walks up a hill at night with Timothy Durrant. It is the morning of November 6th, November 5th being Guy Fawkes Day. Jacob and Timothy quote classic Greek writers like Aeschylus and Sophocles, shouting the words at the top of the hill in drunken celebration. The narration comments upon the strangeness of Jacob’s love of Greek, since his knowledge of the ancient Greek language is somewhat limited, and he knows very little of ancient Greek history.

The narrative then transitions back to Florinda, who is apparently...