stranger Barber, as the Minister and General von Schabacker, with whom I had it in view to exchange perhaps more than one fiery statement.
The common Hotel Barber was ushered in to me; but at first view you noticed in his polygonal zigzag visage, more of a man that would finally go mad, than of one growing wiser. Now, madmen are a class of persons whom I hate incredibly; and nothing can take me to see any madhouse, simply because the first maniac among them may clutch me in his giant fists if he like; and because, owing to infection, I cannot be sure that I shall ever get out again with the sense which I brought in. In a general way, I sit (when once I am lathered) in such a posture on my chair as to keep both my hands (the eyes I fix intently on the barbering countenance) lying clenched along my sides, and pointed directly at the midriff of the barber; that so, on the smallest ambiguity of movement, I may dash in upon him, and overset him in a twinkling.
I scarce know rightly “how it happened; but here, while I am anxiously studying the foolish twisted visage of the shaver, and he just then chanced to lay his long-whetted weapon a little too abruptly against my bare throat, I gave him such a sudden bounce on the abdominal viscera, that the silly varlet had well-nigh suicidally slit his own windpipe. For me, truly, nothing remained but to indemnify the man; and then, contrary to my usual principles, to tie round a broad stuff cravat, by way of cloak to what remained unshorn.
And now at last I sallied forth to the General, drinking out the remnant of the Pontac, as I crossed the threshold. I hope, there were plans lying ready within me for answering rightly, nay for asking. The Petition I carried in my pocket, and in my right hand. In the left I had a duplicate of it. My fire of————————36. And so I should like, in all cases, to be the First, especially in Begging. The first prisoner-of-war, the first cripple, the first man ruined by burning (like him who brings the first fire-engine), gains the head subscription and the heart; the next-comer finds nothing but Duty to address; and at last, in this melodious mancando of sympathy, matters sink so far, that the last (if the last but one may at least have retired laden with a rich “God help you!”) obtains from the benignant hand nothing more than its fist. And as in Begging the first, so in Giving I should like to be the last: one obliterates the other, especially the last the first. So, however, is the world ordered.
