washing away the soap and blood. He dried my features with a towel and

was going to comb my hair, but I asked to be excused. I said, with

withering irony, that it was sufficient to be skinned--I declined to be

scalped.

I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face, and never,

never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian barber-shops anymore.

The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no

barber shops worthy of the name in Paris--and no barbers, either, for

that matter. The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and

napkins and implements of torture to your residence and deliberately

skins you in your private apartments. Ah, I have suffered, suffered,

suffered, here in Paris, but never mind--the time is coming when I shall

have a dark and bloody revenge. Someday a Parisian barber will come to

my room to skin me, and from that day forth that barber will never be

heard of more.

At eleven o'clock we alighted upon a sign which manifestly referred to

billiards. Joy! We had played billiards in the Azores with balls that

were not round and on an ancient table that was very little smoother than

a brick pavement--one of those wretched old things with dead cushions,

and with patches in the faded cloth and invisible obstructions that made

the balls describe the most astonishing and unsuspected angles and

perform feats in the way of unlooked-for and almost impossible

scratches" that were perfectly bewildering. We had played at Gibraltar

with balls the size of a walnut, on a table like a public square--and in

The Innocents Abroad