Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/148

 out of the head of Turenne, who had been buried two hundred years or more. How did he get that tooth? Why, during the revolution the Jacobins—ancestors of our present-day anarchists—smashed the royal graves at Saint Denis and flung the royal bones to the winds. Turenne happened to have been buried among his peers at the feet of Louis XIV. That is the reason why he was dispossessed. Now comes a commercially inclined Frenchman who had read that Turenne had been blessed with exceptionally fine molars. So he breaks all the teeth out of the dead man's jaws and sells them to the highest bidder. I was told there was only one left and I could have it for 100 francs. But I was more interested in my own teeth than in Turenne's and refused to do business with the antiquarian. However, to have my little joke I said to him, 'If you had the "Henri Quatre" of the 4th Henry I might buy.'

"'The Jacobins plucked that out, too,' he replied, 'but there isn't a hair left for sale nowadays. However, I may locate one or more by diligent hunting and I'll let you know if I succeed.'

"Think of it! Henri Quatre's Henri Quatre torn out by the roots and sold at so much per hair! That mustache and goatee that was next to so many sweet lips—the sweetest in France. I have seen the originals of some of his letters in the Musee de Cluny, Paris, 144