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.