“Well, here you are again, lad.  Do you bring poison again to-day?  This will end by being found out, and the police...”

Just then he discerned Koupriane’s form in the shadow, drew close to make out who it was, and fell to his knees as he saw who it was.  Rouletabille tried to raise him, but he insisted on prostrating himself.  He was sure the Prefect of Police had come to his house to hang him.  Finally he was reassured by Rouletabile’s positive assertions and the great chief’s robust laugh.  The Prefect wished to know how the young man came to be acquainted with the “alchemist” of the police.  Rouletabille told him in a few words.

Maitre Alexis, in his youth, went to France afoot, to study pharmacy, because of his enthusiasm for chemistry.  But he always remained countrified, very much a Russian peasant, a semi-Oriental bear, and did not achieve his degree.  He took some certificates, but the examinations were too much for him.  For fifty years he lived miserably as a pharmacist’s assistant in the back of a disreputable shop in the Notre Dame quarter.  The proprietor of the place was implicated in the famous affair of the gold ingots, which started Rouletabille’s reputation, and was arrested along with his assistant, Alexis.  It was Rouletabille who proved, clear as day, that poor Alexis was innocent, and that he had never been cognizant of his master’s evil ways, being absorbed in the depths of his laboratory in trying to work out a naive alchemy which fascinated him, though the world of chemistry had passed it by centuries ago.  At the trial Alexis was acquitted, but found himself in the street.  He shed what tears remained in his body upon the neck of the reporter, assuring him of paradise if he got him back to his own country, because he desired only the one thing more of life, that he might see his birth-land before he died.  Rouletabille advanced the necessary means and sent him to St. Petersburg.  There he was picked up at the end of two days by the police, in a petty gambling-game, and thrown into prison, where he promptly had a chance to show his talents.  He cured some of his companions in misery, and even some of the guards.  A guard who had an injured leg, whose healing he had despaired of, was cured by Alexis.  Then there was found to be no actual charge against him.  They set him free and, moreover, they interested themselves in him.  They found meager employment for him in the Stchoukine-dvor, an immense popular bazaar.  He accumulated a few roubles and installed himself on his own account at the back of a court in the Aptiekarski-Pereoulok, where he gradually piled up a heap of old odds and ends that no one wanted even in the Stchoukine-dvor.  But he was happy, because behind his shop he had installed a little laboratory where he continued for his pleasure his experiments in alchemy and his study of plants.  He still proposed to write a book that he had already spoken of in France to Rouletabille,