it I never would believe, not if you
proved it to me black and white, sir! Love-ly skin you've got,
sir,--it's just like a woman's. The intellect is a snare, that's what
it is,--ah, yes! You think with me, sir, don't you?"

But Helwyse had relapsed into silence. The little hair-dresser was
happy, was he?--happy, and hopeful, and conscious of spiritual
progress?--had no misgivings and feared no danger,--because he had
eliminated reason from his scheme of religion! Divine reason,--could
man live without it? A snare?--Well, had not Balder found it so?

True, that was not reason's fault, but his who misused reason. True,
also, that he who believed on others' authority believed not ideas but
men, and was destitute of self-reliance or dignity. Yet the
hair-dresser seemed to find in that very dependence his best
happiness, and to have built up a factitious self-respect from the
very ruin of true dignity. His position was the antipodes of Balder's,
yet, if results were evidence, it was tenable and more successful.

This plump, superficial, smiling little hair-dresser was a person of
no importance, yet it happened to him to modify not only Helwyse's
external aspect, but the aspect of his mind as well,--by the
presentation of a new idea; for strange to say, Helwyse had never
chanced to doubt that seraphim were higher than cherubim, or that
independence was the only ladder to heaven. To be taught by one
avowedly without intellect is humiliating; but the experience of many
will furnish examples of a singular disregard of this kind of
proprieties.

When the shaving was done to the artist's satisfaction, he held the
mirror before his customer's face. Helwyse looked narrowly at his
reflection, as was natural in making the acquaintance of one who was
to be his near and intimate companion. He beheld a set of features
strongly yet gracefully built, but shorn of a certain warm, manly
attractiveness. The immediate visibility of mouth and chin--index of
so large a part of man's nature--startled him. He was dismayed at the
ease wherewith the working of emotion might now be traced. Man wholly
unveiled to himself is indeed an awful spectacle, be the
dissection-room that of the surgeon or of the psychologist. Hardly
might angels themselves endure it. A measure of ignorance of ourselves
is wise, because consciousness of a weakness may lead us to give it
rein. Perfect strength can coexist only with perfect knowledge, but
neither is attainabl