“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.

And he went on—­

“I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up!  I should certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and the dirt in which you were born.  Oh, you’ll never be fit for anything but to herd animals with horns!  You have no aptitude for science!  You hardly know how to stick on a label!  And there you are, dwelling with me snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!”

But Emma, turning to Madame Homais, “I was told to come here—­”

“Oh, dear me!” interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, “how am I to tell you?  It is a misfortune!”

She could not finish, the druggist was thundering—­“Empty it!  Clean it!  Take it back!  Be quick!”

And seizing Justin by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of his pocket.  The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker, and, having picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth.

“CONJUGAL—­LOVE!” he said, slowly separating the two words.  “Ah! very good! very good! very pretty!  And illustrations!  Oh, this is too much!”

Madame Homais came forward.

“No, do not touch it!”

The children wanted to look at the pictures.

“Leave the room,” he said imperiously; and they went out.