meantime, my industry and knowledge gained me the goodwill of my
master, who would often say in French, "Mardy! c'est un bon garcon."
He had a great deal of business; but he was mostly employed among
his fellow refugees, his profits were small. However, his expense for
medicines was not great; for he was the most expert man at a succedaneum
of any apothecary in London, so that I have been sometimes amazed to see
him, without the least hesitation, make up a physician's prescription,
though he had not in his shop one medicine mentioned in it.
Oyster-shells he could convert into crab's eyes; common oil into oil
of sweet almonds; syrup of sugar into balsamic syrup; Thames water into
aqua cinnamoni; and a hundred more costly preparations were produced in
an instant, from the cheapest and coarsest drugs of the materia medica:
and when any common thing was ordered for a patient, he always took care
to disguise it in colour or taste, or both, in such a manner that it
could not possibly be known; for which purpose cochineal and oil of
cloves were of great service. Mr. Lavement had attempted more than once
to introduce a vegetable diet into his family, by launching out into
the praise of roots and greens, and decrying the use of flesh, both as
a physician and philosopher; but all his rhetoric could not make one
proselyte to his opinion, and even the wife of his bosom declared
against the proposal.

One afternoon, when her husband was abroad, and his daughter gone to
visit, this lady ordered me to call a hackney-coach, in which she and
the captain drove towards Covent Garden. Miss came home in the evening,
and, supping at her usual hour, went to bed. About eleven o'clock my
master entered, and asked if his wife was gone to sleep: upon which
I told him, my mistress went out in the afternoon, and was not yet
returned. This was like a clap of thunder to the poor apothecary, who
starting back, cried, "Mort de ma vie! vat you tell a me? My vife not at
home!" At that instant a patient's servant arrived with a prescription
for a draught, which my master taking, went into the shop to make it up
with his own hand. While he rubbed the ingredients in a glass mortar,
he inquired of me, whether or no his wife went out alone; and no sooner
heard that she was in company with the captain, than with one blow he
split the mortar into a thousand pieces, and grinning like the head of
a bass viol, exclaimed, "Ah, traitresse!" It would have been impossi