He must have told his young fellow craftsmen first, for youth goes first to youth with its hallucinations.  And they, what could they have said?  You cannot say of madness that it is mad, you cannot call absurdity absurd.  To have criticized would have revealed jealousy; and as for praise you could not praise a thing like that.  They probably shrugged, made gestures; and perhaps one friend warned him.  But you cannot warn a man against a madness; if the madness is in possession it will not be warned away:  why should it?  And then perhaps he went to the old barbers of the Court.  You can picture their anger.  Age does not learn from youth in any case.  But there was the insult to their ancient craft, bad enough if only imagined, but here openly spoken of.  And what would come of it?  They must have feared, on the one hand, dishonour to their craft if this young barber were treated as his levity deserved; and, on the other hand, could they have feared his success?  I think they could not have guessed it.

And then the young idiot with his preposterous inspiration must have looked about to see where he could practise his new absurdity.  It should have been enough to have talked about it among his fellow barbers; they would have gone with new zest to their work next day for this delirious interlude, and no harm would have been done. ``Fritz,’’ (or Hans) they would have said, ``was a bit on last night, a bit full up,’’ or whatever phrase they use to touch on drunkenness; and the thing would have been forgotten.  We all have our fancies.  But this young fool wanted to get his fancy mixed up with practice:  that’s where he was mad.  And in Potsdam, of all places.

He probably tried his friends first, young barbers at the Court and others of his own standing.  None of them were fools enough to be seen going about like that.  They had jobs to lose.  A Court barber is one thing, a man who cuts ordinary hair is quite another.  Why should they become outcasts because their friend chose to be mad?

He probably tried his inferiors then, but they would have been timid folk; they must have seen the thing was absurd, and of course daren’t risk it.  Again, why should they?

Did he try to get some noble then to patronize his invention?  Probably the first refusals he had soon inflamed his madness more, and he threw caution insanely to the winds, and went straight to the Emperor.

It was probably about the time that the Emperor dismissed Bismarck; certainly the drawings of that time show him still with a sane moustache.

The young barber probably chanced on him in this period, finding him bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should come.  Perhaps he was attracted by the barber’s hardihood, perhaps the absurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he merely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber have his way.  And so the frivolity became a fact, the absurdity became visible, and honour and riches came the way of the barber.