and scorn the cosmopolitan turned on his heel,
leaving his companion at a loss to determine where exactly the
fictitious character had been dropped, and the real one, if any,
resumed. If any, because, with pointed meaning, there occurred to him,
as he gazed after the cosmopolitan, these familiar lines:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
Who have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."

CHAPTER XLII.

UPON THE HEEL OF THE LAST SCENE THE COSMOPOLITAN ENTERS THE BARBER'S
SHOP, A BENEDICTION ON HIS LIPS.

"Bless you, barber!"

Now, owing to the lateness of the hour, the barber had been all alone
until within the ten minutes last passed; when, finding himself rather
dullish company to himself, he thought he would have a good time with
Souter John and Tam O'Shanter, otherwise called Somnus and Morpheus, two
very good fellows, though one was not very bright, and the other an
arrant rattlebrain, who, though much listened to by some, no wise man
would believe under oath.

In short, with back presented to the glare of his lamps, and so to the
door, the honest barber was taking what are called cat-naps, and
dreaming in his chair; so that, upon suddenly hearing the benediction
above, pronounced in tones not unangelic, starting up, half awake, he
stared before him, but saw nothing, for the stranger stood behind. What
with cat-naps, dreams, and bewilderments, therefore, the voice seemed a
sort of spiritual manifestation to him; so that, for the moment, he
stood all agape, eyes fixed, and one arm in the air.

"Why, barber, are you reaching up to catch birds there with salt?"

"Ah!" turning round disenchanted, "it is only a man, then."

"_Only_ a man? As if to be but a man were nothing. But don't be too sure
what I am. You call me _man_, just as the townsfolk called the angels
who, in man's form, came to Lot's house; just as the Jew rustics called
the devils who, in man's form, haunted the tombs. You can conclude
nothing absolute from the human form, barber."

"But I can conclude something from that sort of talk, with that sort of
dress," shrewdly thought the barber, eying him with regained
self-possession, and not without some latent touch of apprehension at
being alone with him. What was passing in his mind seemed divined by the
other, who now, more rationally and gravely, and as if he expected it
should be attende