Truly, a skilful fellow, this barber! After soaping Amédée’s chin, he cautiously pushed aside the lather with a corner of his towel and brought to light the fiery pimple, which his nervous client pointed out to him. Oh, somnolence! Oh, warmth and drowsiness of the quiet little shop! Amédée, half lying in the leather arm-chair, with his head leaning comfortably back, let himself drift. Ah! just for one short moment to forget! To think no more of the Pope and the mosquitoes and Carola! To imagine himself back to Pau with Arnica; to imagine himself somewhere--anywhere else--no longer to know where he was!... He shut his eyes, then half opening them, saw as in a dream on the wall opposite him, a woman with streaming hair issuing out of the Bay of Naples, and bringing up from the watery depths, together with a voluptuous sensation of coolness, a glittering bottle of hair-restorer. Above this advertisement were arranged, on a marble slab, more bottles, a stick of cosmetic and a powder puff, a pair of tweezers, a comb, a lancet, a pot of ointment, a glass jar in which a few leeches were indolently floating, a second glass jar which contained the long ribbon of a tapeworm and lately a third jar which was without a lid, half full of some gelatinous substance, and had pasted on its crystalline surface a label, inscribed by hand, in large fancy capitals, with the word ANTISEPTIC. The barber now, in order to bring his work to perfection, spread afresh an unctuous lather over the already shaven chin, and with the gleaming edge of a second rasor, which he sharpened on the palm of his damp hand, he set about his final polishing. Amédée thought no more of his appointment, thought no more of leaving, began to doze off.... It was just at this moment that there came into the shop a loud-voiced Sicilian, rending the peacefulness with his clatter; it was then that the barber, plunging at once into talk, began to shave with a less attentive hand, and with a sudden sweep of his blade--pop! the pimple was beheaded! Amédée gave a cry and was putting his hand to the cut, from which a drop of blood came oozing: “_Niente! Niente!_” said the barber, holding back his arm; then, taking a piece of discoloured cotton-wool from the back of the drawer, he lavishly dipped it into the ANTISEPTIC and applied it to the place. Without caring now whether the passers-by turned to look at him, Amédée fled down the hill towards the town--where else but to the first druggist’s he could find? He showed his hurt to the man of healing--a mouldy, greenish, unhealthy-looking old fellow, who smiled and, taking a little round of sticking-plaster out of a box, passed his broad tongue over it and....