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He thought of Marowsko. The old Pole was the only person who loved him well enough to feel true and keen 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 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."
Marowsko's old parrot-face beamed with satisfaction. The doctor tasted, smacked his lips, meditated, tasted again, meditated again, and spoke: "Very good capital; and quite new in flavour. It is a find, my dear fellow." "Ah, really? Well, I am very glad." Then Marowsko took counsel as to baptizing the new liqueur.
He went in, took a chair, and as the waiter came up, "A bock," he said. He felt his heart beating, his skin was gooseflesh. And then the recollection flashed upon him of what Marowsko had said the evening before. "It will not look well." Had he had the same thought, the same suspicion as this baggage?
At this Pierre rose, offended on his part, and taking rather a high tone he said: "You are unjust, pere Marowsko; a man must have very strong motives to act as I have done and you ought to understand that. Au revoir I hope I may find you more reasonable." And he went away. "Well, well," he thought, "not a soul will feel a sincere regret for me."
He recommended simply "Groseillette," which Marowsko thought admirable. Then they were silent, and sat for some minutes without a word under the solitary gas-lamp. At last Pierre began, almost in spite of himself: "A queer thing has happened at home this evening. A friend of my father's, who is lately dead, has left his fortune to my brother."
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.
His black frock-coat, streaked with stains of acids and sirups, 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 the 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.
At this moment, he felt sure, the old man was thinking: "You ought not to have suffered him to accept this inheritance which will make people speak ill of your mother." Perhaps, indeed, Marowsko believed that Jean was Marechal's son. Of course he believed it! How could he help believing it when the thing must seem so possible, so probable, self-evident?
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 colour of the fluid by holding it up to the gas. "A fine ruby," Pierre declared. "Isn't it?"