The evening of that 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 Bézuquet, 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, qué 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, Bézuquet?”
“Bé! 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.”
Bézuquet 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, Excourbaniès, who has all the air of a conquistador, companion of Pizarro, rolls flaming eyes in selling haberdashery to induce the purchase of two sous’ worth of thread. And Bézuquet, 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, Bézuquet! don’t whistle in that way when I talk to you.”