She was in tears when she left me. I descended the stairs almost immediately after her to go in search of a guarantor, and to tell the truth I was considerably puzzled to put my hands on one. As I bowed my head in my hands I realized that I had a beard of eight days' growth, which might render me an object of suspicion; so I betook myself at once to my barber’s at the corner of the Rue St. Guillaume. This barber was a very worthy fellow named Larisse, as tall as a poplar and as restless as an aspen. When I entered his shop he was attending to a wine merchant of the neighbourhood, who with his face smothered in lather was pouring out all sorts of playful threats. “Ah, my fine fellow, you dandifier of fine ladies,” he was saying, “your head will be cut off and stuck on the end of a pike to gratify your aristocratic inclinations. Every enemy of the people must add his quota to the basket,[20] from the fat Capet to the slim Larisse. And, _ça ira_, so it will be!” ----- Footnote 20: The basket into which the heads of the guillotined fell. (TRANS.) ----- Monsieur Larisse, paler than moonshine and fluttering like a leaf, observed the utmost precautions as he shaved the chin of the abusive patriot. I can affirm that never did barber experience greater terror. And from this circumstance I drew a happy augury for the success of the design I had suddenly conceived. It was my intention, to be plain, to ask Monsieur Larisse to accompany me before the committee as the second guarantor. “He is such a coward,” I reflected, “that he will never dare to protest.” The wine merchant withdrew muttering fresh threats, and left me alone with the barber, who, still trembling, fastened a napkin round my neck. “Ah, monsieur!” he whispered in my ear, in a voice feebler than a sigh, “hell is let loose upon us! Was it for the accommodation of demons like this that I studied the art of hairdressing? The heads which did honour to my skill are now in London or in Coblentz. How is Monseigneur le Duc de Puybonne? He was a good master.” I informed him that the Duke was living in London, and giving writing lessons. Indeed, the Duke had managed recently to convey to me a paper in which he told me that he was living, perfectly contented, in London, on four shillings and sixpence a day. “It may be so,” replied Monsieur Larisse, “but in London hairdressing is not performed as it is in Paris. The English can make constitutions, but they don’t know how to make wigs, and their powder is not nearly white enough.” Monsieur Larisse soon had me shaven. I had not a very harsh beard at that time. Scarcely had he closed his razor than, seizing him by the wrist, I said to him firmly— “My dear Monsieur Larisse, you are a valiant man; you are coming with me before the General Assembly of the Section des Postes in the one-time church of St. Eustache. There you will bear witness jointly with me that Monsieur Eustance has never been an _émigré_.”