mpanion of Pizarro, rolls flaming eyes in selling haberdashery
to induce the purchase of two sous' worth of thread. And Bezuquet,
labelling liquorice and _sirupus gummi_, resembles an old sea-rover of
the Barbary coast.

When the shutters were put up and secured by iron bolts and transversal
bars, "Listen, Ferdinand..." said Tartarin, who was fond of calling
people by their Christian names. And thereupon he unbosomed himself,
emptied his heart full of bitterness at the ingratitude of his
compatriots, related the manoeuvres of "Cock-leg," the trick about to
be played upon him at the coming elections, and the manner in which he
expected to parry the blow.

Before all else, the matter must be kept very secret; it must not
be revealed until the moment when success was assured, unless some
unforeseen accident, one of those frightful catastrophes--"Hey,
Bezuquet! don't whistle in that way when I talk to you."

This was one of the apothecary's ridiculous habits. Not talkative by
nature (a negative quality seldom met with in Tarascon, and which won
him this confidence of the president), his thick lips, always in the
form of an O, had a habit of perpetually whistling that gave him an
appearance of laughing in the nose of the world, even on the gravest
occasions.

So that, while the hero made allusion to his possible death, saying, as
he laid upon the counter a large sealed envelope, "This is my last will
and testament, Bezuquet; it is you whom I have chosen as testamentary
executor..." "Hui... hui... hui..." whistled the apothecary, carried
away by his mania, while at heart he was deeply moved and fully
conscious of the grandeur of his role.

Then, the hour of departure being at hand, he desired to drink to the
enterprise, "something good, _que?_ a glass of the elixir of Garus,
hey?" After several closets had been opened and searched, he remembered
that mamma had the keys of the Garus. To get them it would be necessary
to awaken her and tell who was there. The elixir was therefore changed
to a glass of the _sirop de Calabre_, a summer drink, inoffensive
and modest, which Bezuquet invented, advertising it in the _Forum_
as follows: _Sirop de Calabre, ten sous a bottle, including the glass
(verre)_. "Sirop de Cadavre, including the worms (_vers_)," said that
infernal Costecalde, who spat upon all success. But, after all,
that horrid play upon words only served to swell the sale, and the
Tarasconese to this day delight in the