same day, as the last stroke of ten was sounding
from the tower of the town-hall, the streets being already deserted, a
man, after brusquely slamming a door, glided along through the
darkened town, where nothing lighted the fronts of the houses, save
the hanging-lamps of the streets and the pink and green bottles of the
pharmacy Bezuquet, which projected their reflections on the pavement,
together with a silhouette of the apothecary himself resting his elbows
on his desk and sound asleep on the Codex;--a little nap, which he took
every evening from nine to ten, to make himself, so he said, the fresher
at night for those who might need his services. That, between ourselves,
was a mere tarasconade, for no one ever waked him at night, in fact
he himself had cut the bell-wire, in order that he might sleep more
tranquilly.

Suddenly Tartarin entered, loaded with rugs, carpet-bag in hand, and
so pale, so discomposed, that the apothecary, with that fiery local
imagination from which the pharmacy was no preservative, jumped to the
conclusion of some alarming misadventure and was terrified. "Unhappy
man!" he cried, "what is it?.. you are poisoned?.. Quick! quick! some
ipeca..."

And he sprang forward, bustling among his bottles. To stop him, Tartarin
was forced to catch him round the waist. "Listen to me, _que diable!_"
and his voice grated with the vexation of an actor whose entrance
has been made to miss fire. As soon as the apothecary was rendered
motionless behind the counter by an iron wrist, Tartarin said in a low
voice:--

"Are we alone, Bezuquet?"

"_Be_! yes," ejaculated the other, looking about in vague alarm...
"Pascalon has gone to bed." [ Pascalon was his pupil.] "Mamma too; why do
you ask?"

"Shut the shutters," commanded Tartarin, without replying; "we might be
seen from without."

Bezuquet obeyed, trembling. An old bachelor, living with his mother,
whom he never quitted, he had all the gentleness and timidity of a
girl, contrasting oddly with his swarthy skin, his hairy lips, his
great hooked nose above a spreading moustache; in short, the head of an
Algerine pirate before the conquest. These antitheses are frequent in
Tarascon, where heads have too much character, Roman or Saracen, heads
with the expression of models for a school of design, but quite out
of place in bourgeois trades among the manners and customs of a little
town.

For instance, Excourbanies, who has all the air of a _conquistador_,
co