The shave over, the barber says, "S'il vous plaît, monsieur," or its equivalent in Flemish, motioning meanwhile toward a small wash basin that is placed in front of the chair. To the uninitiated this is somewhat bewildering, but the professor desires that monsieur will kindly wash his own face. The ablution performed, he proceeds to rub a piece of alum over the face, after which he sprays it with perfumed water, then dries and powders it much in the manner of the American barber. When one becomes accustomed to this performance--which costs two to three cents in the villages and five to ten cents in the large towns--he is apt to prefer it to the American method. Certainly it is vastly superior to the hot towel torture so deservedly caricatured some years ago by Weber and Fields. In the smaller villages of the industrial provinces we found that the first and second class distinction that one encounters everywhere in Belgium extends even to the barber's chair. The rough clad workman is simply shaved--a few fierce scrapes with the razor and it is all over--and is left to wipe off the remnants of lather as best he can, usually with a red bandanna handkerchief. For this the charge is only two cents--the alum, the spraying and the powder being reserved for first-class patrons only. On our way back to the hotel from these early morning promenades the Professor and I kept on the look-out for some _patisserie_ where _brioches_ or _cuches au beurre_ could be had with a pot of coffee. This formed our usual breakfast for, it may as well be admitted right now, we did not feel that we could afford the extravagance of a three-franc breakfast at the hotel. The ladies were ready to join us by eight o'clock--before that hour it would be useless to look for a place open for business--and we conducted them to the _patisserie_ we had discovered. The _brioche_, it may be remarked, is a light spongy preparation--half cake and half biscuit--while the _cuche au beurre_ is apparently made from a kind of light pie-crust, rolled thin and built up in several layers with butter between. When served fresh and hot from the oven the latter is most delicious, but when cold it is as tough and soggy as a day-old griddle-cake. The usual charge for these delicacies was five centimes (one cent) each, and as three made a very substantial meal, and the coffee cost three or five cents per cup, our total expenditure for four people was less than two francs. If, as often happened--in addition to getting everything hot and delicious--we were served on little tables out of doors with a view of a cathedral or Hotel de Ville thrown in, we felt that we were getting a very good bargain indeed.