ooking
at the cramped and resolute little writing on the envelope, the postmark
"Interlaken" and the broad purple stamp of the "Hotel Jungfrau, kept
by Meyer," the tears filled his eyes, and the heavy moustache of the
Barbary corsair through which whispered softly the idle whistle of a
kindly soul, quivered.

"_Confidential. Destroy when read._" Those words, written large at
the head of the page, in the telegraphic style of the pharmacopoeia
("external use; shake before using") troubled him to the point of
making him read aloud, as one does in a bad dream: "_Fearful things
are happening to me_..." In the salon beside the pharmacy where she was
taking her little nap after supper, Mme. Bezuquet, _mere_, might hear
him, or the pupil whose pestle was pounding its regular blows in the big
marble mortar of the laboratory. Bezuquet continued his reading in a low
voice, beginning it over again two or three times, very pale, his hair
literally standing on end. Then, with a rapid look about him, _cra
cra_... and the letter in a thousand scraps went into the waste-paper
basket; but there it might be found, and pieced together, and as he was
stooping to gather up the fragments a quavering voice called to him:

"_Ve!_ Ferdinand, are you there?" "Yes, mamma," replied the unlucky
corsair, curdling with fear, the whole of his long body on its hands and
knees beneath the desk. "What are you doing, my treasure?" "I am... h'm,
I am making Mile. Tournatoire's eye-salve."

Mamma went to sleep again, the pupil's pestle, suspended for a moment,
began once more its slow clock movement, while Bezuquet walked up and
down before his door in the deserted little square, turning pink or
green according as he passed before one or other of his bottles. From
time to time he threw up his arms, uttering disjointed words: "Unhappy
man!.. lost... fatal love... how can we extricate him?" and, in spite of
his trouble of mind, accompanying with a lively whistle the bugle "taps"
of a dragoon regiment echoing among the plane-trees of the Tour de
Ville.

"_He!_ good night, Bezuquet," said a shadow hurrying along in the
ash-coloured twilight.

"Where are you going, Pegoulade?"

"To the Club, _pardi!_.. Night session... they are going to discuss
Tartarin and the presidency... You ought to come."

"_Te!_ yes, I 'll come..." said the apothecary vehemently, a
providential idea darting through his mind. He went in, put on his
frock-coat, felt in its pocket to