Georges rolled up the half-dozen steps and entered the room.
Aristides was a man of great resource and some courage, and when his mind, trumpet-like, had shouted to him: “My moment has arrived!” he ran quickly to the outer door, bolting and locking it. Then he sped to a little chamber, turned on a light and seized a razor....
There is no disguise like disfigurement, and within two minutes Aristides had shaved off his eyebrows, taken out his prominent false teeth, and cut a deep gash in his right cheek. The sight of his own blood, as it fell into the bowl of water he had prepared, excited him excessively, and as he swathed the lower part of his face in bandages he breathed stertorously, and his eyes began to glitter with internal light. But he worked quickly and without clumsiness, and he smiled with satisfaction as he saw his thin blood creeping and spreading on the bandage like red ink on blotting-paper.
“It must just show,” he said to himself, “not enough to alarm or sicken him, but sufficient to assure him that my bandage is necessary.”
By now Georges was clapping his hands and calling for cognac, and it was a very large glassful that Aristides, obsequiously bowing, handed to him a moment later.
“God!” exclaimed Georges, “you are bleeding.”
“Yes,” said Aristides, “but it is nothing.”
“But I wanted a massage, and you look ill.”
“I assure you, it is nothing. It does not even hurt.”
Georges drank the cognac with a gulp, and sighed with vexation.