“It’s the cold,” said the sneezer, running a red knuckle under his hairy nostrils. “He’ll kill us all.” Karl sniffed and probed deep into his nose with a finger.

“Stop that!” commanded Zygmunt Wolenciewicz. His elongated, aristocratic countenance took on the aspect of a man who had detected the reek of month-old crabmeat.

“Why should I?” Gruenfeldt asked. His face bore a waxy jailhouse pallor.

“It’s unaesthetic,” Wolenciewicz said.

“Some people make an art of it,” the sneezer insisted, “like the Italians of the Piedmont.”

“The Piedmontese are barbaric,” Wolenciewicz said with insufferable hauteur. “Their amusements are limited—what else have they got to do?”

“The nail of the little finger of a Piedmontese is grown long and spadelike to facilitate the procedure…”

“You exhaust me with your erudition,” a tall, gaunt man said contemptuously, his eyes splashing with distemper.

“Stay out of this, Treblant.” Gruenfeldt turned back to Wolenciewicz. “And it is not only the Italians. Everybody picks.”

“Not everybody.” They turned to me. I should have kept my big gob shut.

For a moment the heavy silence was relieved only by the clanking radiator. Then Gruenfeldt sounded me with his watery eyes. “And who is this person to whom you refer—this paragon who does not pick?”

“What I mean—some very remarkable people didn’t have a nose to pick,” I said lamely.

“Boy,” said Henri-Jacques Treblant, “you are ridiculous.” He had the mien of a warrior, fierce, straight-spined, unfrivolous. Without a doubt the prickliest pear of the common room.

“Tycho Brahe lost his nose in a student duel over who was the better mathematician.”

“He must have been a pretty sight,” Baker said with a heartwarming smile.

“He was,” I went on. “He had the original replaced by a gold one.”

“Now that’s the kind of nose I would pick,” Wolenciewicz said. “Imagine the satisfaction of mining gold from your very own nose.”

“You may think it’s funny,” Karl sniffed, “but I think we should draft a petition…”

“Splendid idea,” said Zygmunt. “Gold noses for everybody.”

“…If everybody signs it maybe Chatterton will turn up the heat.”

“Gruenfeldt,” George Desmond said, “you’ve got to realize that one man’s cold is another man’s comfort. When I was at Harvard…”

“There he goes again,” Gorelik said in a loud aside. “Hey, Desmond, you think you can say your little piece without boring us with your triumphs?”

“…at Harvard,” Desmond went on, “we had as efficient a heating system as any in an American institution, and I for one am happier here than I ever was there.”

“Why,” asked Treblant, “do you Americans place such emphasis on happiness?” His voice was solemn and emphatic, like thunder bounding across the Juras. “Nothing of value was ever accomplished by a happy man. Happiness is for children, if they’re lucky.”