He taught me
the Russian numerals up to ten, and was very kind to my struggles over 10
and 9. He picked up the cannon-ball one day and threw it so hard that the
wall separating the men's _cour_ from the _cour des femmes_ shook, and a
piece of stone fell off. At which the cannon-ball was taken away from us
(to the grief of its daily wielders, Harree and Fritz) by four perspiring
_plantons_, who almost died in the performance of their highly patriotic
duty. His friend, The Barber, had a little shelf in The Enormous Room,
all tricked out with an astonishing array of bottles, atomizers, tonics,
powders, scissors, razors and other deadly implements. It has always been
a _mystere_ to me that our captors permitted this array of obviously
dangerous weapons when we were searched almost weekly for knives. Had I
not been in the habit of using B.'s safety razor I should probably have
become better acquainted with The Barber. It was not his price, nor yet
his technique, but the fear of contamination which made me avoid these
instruments of hygiene. Not that I shaved to excess. On the contrary, the
Surveillant often, nay bi-weekly (so soon as I began drawing certain
francs from Norton Harjes) reasoned with me upon the subject of
appearance; saying that I was come of a good family, and I had enjoyed
(unlike my companions) an education, and that I should keep myself neat
and clean and be a shining example to the filthy and ignorant--adding
slyly that the "hospital" would be an awfully nice place for me and my
friend to live, and that there we could be by ourselves like gentlemen
and have our meals served in the room, avoiding the _salle a manger_;
moreover, the food would be what we liked, delicious food, especially
cooked .
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