Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VIII).djvu/256

 abusive. . . . You shan't have a chance to be insolent much longer.'

Pavel fired up.

'What? You dare to threaten me?' he said passionately. 'You think I'm afraid of you. No, my man, I'm not come to that! What have I to be afraid of? I can make my bread everywhere. For you, now, it's another thing! It's only here you can live and tell tales, and filch. '

'Fancy the conceit of the fellow!' interrupted the clerk, who was also beginning to lose patience; 'an apothecary's assistant, simply an apothecary's assistant, a wretched leech; and listen to him—fie upon you! you're a high and mighty personage!'

'Yes, an apothecary's assistant, and except for this apothecary's assistant you'd have been rotting in the graveyard by now. It was some devil drove me to cure him,' he added between his teeth.

'You cured me? No, you tried to poison me; you dosed me with aloes,' the clerk put in.

'What was I to do if nothing but aloes had any effect on you?'

'The use of aloes is forbidden by the Board of Health,' pursued Nikolai. 'I'll lodge a complaint against you yet. You tried to compass my death—that was what you did! But the Lord suffered it not.'

'Hush, now, that's enough, gentlemen,' the cashier was beginning.