"Now be calm," said Madame Homais.

And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried "Papa! papa!"

"No, let me alone," went on the druggist "let me alone, hang it! My

word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That's it! go it! respect

nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste,

pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!"

"I thought you had--" said Emma.

"Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn't you see

anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer,

articulate something."

"I--don't--know," stammered the young fellow.

"Ah! you don't know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue

glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I

have even written 'Dangerous!' And do you know what is in it? Arsenic!

And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!"

"Next to it!" cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. "Arsenic! You

might have poisoned us all."

And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in

their entrails.

"Or poison a patient!" continued the druggist. "Do you want to see me

in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see

me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what care I take in managing

things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified

myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes

us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles'

sword over our heads."

Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the

druggist went on in breathless phrases-"That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That is how

you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on you! For

without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides

you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of figuring one day

with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull hard at the oar

if you're to do that, and get, as, people say, callosities upon your

hands. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.*"

* The worker lives by working, do what he will.

He was so exasperated he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese

or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he was in one

of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it

contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the

seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses.




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