h 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 single 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 recognizing the
doctor, came forward to meet him, holding out both hands.

His black frock coat, streaked with stains of acids and syrups, was
much too wide for his lean little person, and looked like a shabby old
cassock; and the man spoke with a strong Polish accent which gave a
childlike character to his thin voice, the lisping note and
intonations of a young thing learning to speak.

Pierre sat down, and Marowsko asked him: "What news, dear doctor?"

"None. Everything as usual, everywhere."

"You do not look very gay this evening."

"I am not often gay."

"Come, come, you must shake that off. Will you try a glass of
liqueur?"

"Yes, I do not mind."

"Then I will give you something new to try. For these two months I
have been trying to extract something from currants, of which only a
syrup has been made hitherto--well, and I have done it. I have
invented a very good liqueur--very good indeed; very good."

And quite delighted, he went to a cupboard, opened it, and picked out
a bottle which he brought forth. He moved and did everything in jerky
gestures, always incomplete; he never quite stretched out his arm, nor
quite put out his legs; nor made any broad and definite movements. His
ideas seemed to be like his actions; he suggested them, promised them,
sketched them, hinted at them, but never fully uttered them.

And indeed, his great end in life seemed to be the concoction of
syrups and liqueurs. "A good syrup or a good liqueur is enough to make
a fortune," he would often say.

He had compounded hundreds of these sweet mixtures without ever
succeeding in floating one of them. Pierre declared that Marowsko
always reminded him of Marat.

Two little glasses were fetched out of the back shop and placed on the
mixing-board. Then the two men scrutinized the color of the fluid by
holding it up to the gas.

"A fine ruby