Then he got a pair of callipers, and measured my head in two directions, from back to front and across, all the time calling out the fatal figures which, in case of need, would have identified me among ten million men. [Illustration: The Bureau of Anthropometry, Ile Nou.] After this he descended to minor matters, ears, nose, lips, thumb- and finger-joints, eyelids, and so on. Then he stood me on a box on which was rudely outlined a human foot. I put my right foot on this, bent forward, and rested my right hand on a table, using my left leg and foot to keep my balance. When I was steady my foot was measured. Then I rested my right arm on a table, standing on one leg the while. It was measured from the elbow to the point of the middle finger. After this the prints of my thumb and three fingers were taken, and duly impressed on the _fiche_, or identification card. Then came the most trying part of the ordeal, the general observation. I stood to attention in the middle of the floor. The gimlet-eyed official walked round me, and looked through and through me, what time the clerk at the table asked questions from the schedule he was filling up. No detail was so minute as to escape those all-searching eyes. A scar which I had got twenty years before in a football match, though half hidden under an eyebrow, was detected, measured, and noted. The scars of a couple of old knife-stabs in my left hand, and the trace of a parrot-bite on one of my fingers—nothing escaped. The colour of my hair and moustache fell into a certain category. My eyes were examined, and the colours of the iris duly placed in their proper category. By this time I began to feel as though I were being taken to pieces and examined bit by bit. It was a sort of mental and physical vivisection without the knife and the chloroform. Finally, the gentleman at the desk asked the question, “Intellectuality?” “Mediocre,” replied Mr. Gimlet-eyes, with brutal frankness. Then I laughed, and the Commandant suggested that I should be photographed. “_Pas artistique, mais exact_,” he said, as we went into the other room. “And, therefore,” I said, “it will resemble the remarks of your anthropometric expert. I never had such an exact account of myself before. Anthropometry strikes me as being a pretty good medicine for human vanity.” [Illustration: An Arab Type of Convict. A combination of Ideality and Homicidal Mania.] Out of the depth and width of his experience the Commandant agreed with me, and then I was photographed. There was no artistic posing or anything of that sort. I was planted on a chair with my back straightened up and my head in a vice such as other photographers were once wont to torture their victims with. The camera was brought within three feet of me. I was taken full face, staring straight into the lens, and then I was taken _en profile_. When, many weeks afterwards, I showed the result to my wife, she was sorry I ever went; but for all that it’s a good likeness.