Let us draw the curtain over this harrowing scene.
Suffice it that I submitted and went through with the cruel infliction of a shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my cheeks now and then, but I survived.

Then the incipient assassin held a basin of water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and into my bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of washing away the soap and blood.

He dried my features with a towel and was going to comb my hair, but I asked to be excused.

I said, with withering irony, that it was sufficient to be skinned--I declined to be scalped.
I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face, and never, never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian barber-shops anymore.
The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no barber shops worthy of the name in Paris--and no barbers, either, for that matter.

The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and napkins and implements of torture to your residence and deliberately skins you in your private apartments.