I turned rather hastily, while my hands were yet clammy with the
skull, thinking that this accusation of Philistinism was aimed at me.
But Hohenfels thought of nothing less than of a personality, being
in his cloudiest mood of generalization. So I only concealed the
handkerchief, while I said, as easily as I might, "You need not accuse
your German blood, for I have lived long enough in my American's
Paradise to know that civilized Paris is considerably worse in this
particular respect, with the addition of a certain goblin levity
particularly French. How often have I seen babies frightened by the
skulls in the dentists' windows, with their cynical chewing action!
It is said that a child sat next a dentist's apprentice once in an
omnibus, and was observed to turn rigid, fixed and white, but unable
to speak: he had sat on one of these skulls, and it had bitten him.
Silver-mounted skulls set as goblets, in imitation of Byron, are to
be seen at any of the china-shops rubbing against the chaste cheeks
of the old maid's teacup. Skeletons are sold, bleached and with gilded
hinges, to the medical students, who buy the pale horrors as openly
as meerschaum pipes. Have I not often found young Grandstone
supping among his doctors' apprentices of the Ober restaurant after
theatre-hours, a skeleton in the corner filled with umbrellas like
a hall-rack, and crowned with the triple or quintuple tiara of the
girls' best bonnets? Ay, Mimi Pinson's cap has known what it is to
perch on the bony head of Death. The juxtaposition is but an emblem.
The sewing-girl, like Hood's shirtmaker, scarcely fears the
'phantom of grisly bone.' Poor Francine! where have you taken _your_
artisanne's cap to, I wonder? Are you left alone, all alone again, and
thinking of the pretty solitude you have left behind you at Carlsruhe?
Who uses those polished keys now?"

Hohenfels interrupted me, complaining that my monologue was