the town known as Ingouville.

He had known old Marowsko-_le pere Marowsko_, he called him--in the
hospitals in Paris. He was a Pole, an old refugee, it was said, who
had gone through terrible things out there, and who had come to ply
his calling as a chemist and druggist in France after passing a fresh
examination. Nothing was known of his early life, and all sorts of
legends had been current among the indoor and outdoor patients
and afterward among his neighbours. This reputation as a terrible
conspirator, a nihilist, a regicide, a patriot ready for anything and
everything, who had escaped death by a miracle, had bewitched Pierre
Roland's lively and bold imagination; he had made friends with the old
Pole, without, however, having ever extracted from him any revelation as
to his former career. It was owing to the young doctor that this worthy
had come to settle at Havre, counting on the large custom which the
rising practitioner would secure him. Meanwhile he lived very poorly in
his little shop, selling medicines to the small tradesmen and workmen in
his part of the town.

Pierre often went to see him and chat with him for an hour after dinner,
for he liked Marowsko's calm look and rare speech, and attributed great
depth to his long spells of silence.

A simple gas-burner was alight over the counter crowded with phials.
Those in the window were not lighted, from motives of economy. Behind
the counter, sitting on a chair with his legs stretched out and
crossed, an old man, quite bald, with a large beak of a nose which, as a
prolongation of his hairless forehead, gave him a melancholy likeness to
a parrot, was sleeping soundly, his chin resting on his breast. He woke
at the sound of the shop-bell, and recognising the doctor, came forward