I said I wanted to be shaved. The barber inquired where my room was. I

said never mind where my room was, I wanted to be shaved--there, on the

spot. The doctor said he would be shaved also. Then there was an

excitement among those two barbers! There was a wild consultation, and

afterwards a hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors

from obscure places and a ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a

little mean, shabby back room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs

and placed us in them with our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss

vanished into thin air!

I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-making

villains lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by

plastering a mass of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with

a strong English expletive and said, "Foreigner, beware!" Then this

outlaw strapped his razor on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six

fearful seconds, and then swooped down upon me like the genius of

destruction. The first rake of his razor loosened the very hide from my

face and lifted me out of the chair. I stormed and raved, and the other

boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not strong and thick. Let us draw the

curtain over this harrowing scene.

Suffice it that I submitted and went through with the cruel infliction of

a shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my

cheeks now and then, but I survived. Then the incipient assassin held a

basin of water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and

into my bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of

130

The Innocents Abroad