A tram took them as far as the Piazza Dante.
“Let’s part here,” said Protos. “It’s still rather a long way off, but it’s better so. Walk about fifty paces behind me; and don’t look at me the whole time as if you were afraid of losing me; and don’t turn round either; you would get yourself followed. Look cheerful.”
He started off in front. Fleurissoire followed with downcast eyes. The street was narrow and steep; the sun blazed; sweating, hustling, effervescing, the crowd clamoured and gesticulated and sang, while Fleurissoire panted bewildered through their midst. A number of half-naked children were dancing in front of a barrel organ; a kind of mountebank was getting up an impromptu lottery at two-sous the ticket, for a fat plucked turkey, which he was holding up at the end of a stick; Protos, to seem more natural, took a ticket as he passed, and disappeared into the crowd; Fleurissoire, unable to advance, thought he had lost him for good; then, after he had managed to get through the obstruction, he caught sight of him again, walking briskly up the hill, with the turkey under his arm.
At last the houses became smaller and further apart, fewer people were to be seen, and Protos slackened his pace. He stopped in front of a barber’s shop and, turning to Fleurissoire, winked his eye; then, twenty paces further on, stopped again in front of a little low door and rang the bell.
The barber’s window was not particularly attractive but Father Cave doubtless had his reasons for pointing it out; moreover, Fleurissoire would have had to go a long way back before finding another, which would no doubt have been equally uninviting. The door was left open on account of the excessive heat; a wide-meshed curtain kept the flies out and let the air in; one had to raise it to go in; he entered.
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?