n emotion, and the doctor at once
determined to go and see him.

When he entered the shop, the druggist, who was pounding powders in a
marble mortar, started and left his work.

"You are never to be seen nowadays," said he.

Pierre explained that he had had a great many serious matters to attend
to, but without giving the reason, and he took a seat, asking:

"Well, and how is business doing?"

Business was not doing at all. Competition was fearful, and rich folks
rare in that workmen's quarter. Nothing would sell but cheap drugs, and
the doctors did not prescribe the costlier and more complicated remedies
on which a profit is made of five hundred per cent. The old fellow ended
by saying: "If this goes on for three months I shall shut up shop. If I
did not count on you, dear good doctor, I should have turned shoe-black
by this time."

Pierre felt a pang, and made up his mind to deal the blow at once, since
it must be done.

"I--oh, I cannot be of any use to you. I am leaving Havre early next
month."

Marowsko took off his spectacles, so great was his agitation.

"You! You! What are you saying?"

"I say that I am going away, my poor friend."

The old man was stricken, feeling his last hope slipping from under him,
and he suddenly turned against this man, whom he had followed, whom he
loved, whom he had so implicitly trusted, and who forsook him thus.

He stammered out:

"You are surely not going to play me false--you?"

Pierre was so deeply touched that he felt inclined to embrace the old
fellow.

"I am not playing you false. I have not found anything to do here, and I
am going as medical officer on board a Transatlantic passenger boat."

"O Monsieur Pierre! And you always promised you would help me to make a
living!"

"What can I do? I must make my own living. I have not a farthing in the
world."

Marowsko said: "It is wrong; what you are doing is very wrong. There is
nothing for me but to die of hunger. At my age this is the end of all
things. It is wrong. You are forsaking a poor old man who came here to
be with you. It is wrong."

Pierre tried to explain, to protest, to give reasons, to prove that he
could not have done otherwise; the Pole, enraged by his desertion, would
not listen to him, and he ended by saying, with an allusion no doubt to
political events:

"You French--you never keep your word!"

At this Pierre rose, offended on his part, and taking rather a high tone
he said:

"You