In order to please the unfortunate fellow they bound me. He turned over towards me and began to pull out hairs, one by one, with the patience and the regularity of a professional hair remover. When I saw what this new punishment was to be, I believed that the wounded man, touched by my misery, and sympathizing with me because of his own sufferings, wished to shield me from his comrades, and give me an hour's respite. The extraction of one hair is not so painful, by a good deal, as the prick of a pin. The first twenty came out, one after the other, without any discomfiture. But soon I changed my tune. The scalp, irritated by a multitude of imperceptible lesions, became inflamed. A dull itching began on my head; it became a little livelier; and at last it was intolerable. I would like to have raised my hands to my head; I understood with what intuition the wretch had had me bound. Impatience but aggravated the trouble; all the blood in my body rushed to my head. Every time Sophocles approached his hand to my scalp, a woful shivering seized my whole body. A thousand inexplicable stingings tormented my arms and legs. The nervous system, irritated at every point, enveloped me in a network more exasperating than Dejanire's tunic. I rolled over on the ground, I groaned, I cried for mercy, I regretted the bastinado. The executioner had pity on me only when he had completely exhausted himself. When he felt his eyes become dim, his head heavy, and his arm weary, he made a last effort, plunged his hand into my hair, seized a fist full, and fell over on his pallet, drawing from me a despairing cry. "Come with me," said Moustakas. "Thou shalt decide, in a corner by the fire, if I can compete with Sophocles, and whether I merit a lieutenancy." He raised me like a feather and carried me to the camp, in front of a heap of resinous wood and piled up brushwood. He took off the bonds, he stripped me of my clothes, leaving me only my trousers. "Thou shalt be my under-cook," he said. "We will make the fire and we will prepare the King's dinner, together." He lighted the stack of wood and laid me out on my back, about two feet from the mountain of flames. The wood crackled, the red cinders fell like hail around me. The heat became unbearable. I hitched along with my hands a little distance, but he came with a frying-pan in his hand, and pushed me back with his foot to the place where he had first laid me. "Look well, and profit by my lessons. Here are the heart, liver, and kidneys from three sheep; there is enough to feed twenty men. The King will choose the most delicate morsels; he will distribute the remainder to his men. Thou wilt have none of it for the present, and if thou tastest my cooking, it will be with the eyes only."