“_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. Bézuquet, _mère_, might hear him, or the pupil whose pestle was pounding its regular blows in the big marble mortar of the laboratory. Bézuquet 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: “_Vé!_ 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 Bézuquet 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. “_Hé!_ good night, Bézuquet,” said a shadow hurrying along in the ash-coloured twilight. “Where are you going, Pégoulade?” “To the Club, _pardi!_.. Night session... they are going to discuss Tartarin and the presidency... You ought to come.” “_Té!_ 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 assure himself that his latchkey was there, and also the American tomahawk, without which no Tarasconese whatsoever would risk himself in the streets after “taps.” Then he called: “Pascalon!.. Pascalon!..” but not too loudly, for fear of waking the old lady. Almost a child, though bald, wearing all his hair in his curly blond beard, Pascalon the pupil had the ardent soul of a partizan, a dome-like forehead, the eyes of crazy goat, and on his chubby cheeks the delicate tints of a shiny crusty Beaucaire roll. On all the grand Alpine excursions it was to him that the Club entrusted its banner, and his childish soul had vowed to the P. C. A. a fanatical worship, the burning, silent adoration of a taper consuming itself before an altar in the Easter season.