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 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 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.