"This astonished the crowd very much and they applauded loudly, till the man who had at first accused the barber of murdering his brother cried out that it was sorcery, and that this accursed barber must be in fact a foul magician, since he could not only kill good Moslims, but shave misshapen apes. On this the fickle crowd were moved against the barber, and would have fallen upon him and done him an injury had I not interfered on his behalf.
"'Stop,' said I, 'I will inquire of the barber, and he shall confess to me by what means he has caused the ape to sit still and permit himself to be shaved. If he has employed magic he shall be dealt with accordingly, but if not, why should he be punished on the accusation of one who hates him and may be envious of his skill?'
"Speaking thus to the crowd I calmed them, then bringing the barber along with us we hastened at once to the river and came on board my barge.
"When we had safely arrived here, after giving the barber something to eat and drink, I pressed him to tell me how he had contrived to render the monkey suddenly so quiet and docile, a feat which had appeared as surprising and as inexplicable to me as to the others.
"'Sir,' said the barber, 'I have during my life travelled through many distant countries and taken part in many strange adventures, but I confess that among all the singular and marvellous things I have seen or have collected, nothing is more strange nor more valuable than that by means of which I have been enabled to exhibit to you the spectacle which you have witnessed this morning.'
"I pressed him once more to tell me what this rare and precious thing might be and how he became possessed of it. Upon which the barber, saluting me as his protector and deliverer, who had saved him from the fury of the crowd, consented readily to impart his secret to me, and spoke as follows:—
THE BARBER'S STORY.
"'It is now about three months since I was called early one morning to bleed a man who was reported to be insensible. Now, notwithstanding all that that fellow asserted in his rage this morning, I am a barber and the son of a barber, and understand my craft very thoroughly. Therefore, taking with me whatever I might be likely to require to let the man blood and restore him to consciousness, I started at once.
"'On arriving at the house, which was a very poor one, to which I had been summoned, I found the patient an old white-bearded man, and also a physician whom I knew very well, and who practised in that part of the town.
"'He had sent for me to bleed the man, but he was evidently puzzled extremely by many features of the case the like of which he had never before encountered. The patient was indeed unconscious, yet he exhibited few or none of the symptoms generally characteristic of that state. He was not lying down, but sitting up. His face wore the expression not of one dead or dying, but of a man transfixed with rage and horror. His eyes wide open were staring upon us with an expression of impotent rage, as though he were witnessing some outrage which he was powerless to prevent. His mouth was opened as though uttering a cry, but no cry came out of his mouth. He did not breathe heavily, he did not appear to breathe at all. He had the appearance of a man who in the midst of some violent emotion had suddenly been turned into stone, or rather into some plastic material possessing very peculiar properties. For we found that, while every limb yielded readily to pressure and could be placed easily in any posture we pleased, it did not on being released fall to the ground, but maintained the attitude in which it had been placed as though it were modelled in wax or carved in stone.