Pierre and Jean - Guy de Maupassant (top ten ebook reader .txt) 📗

woeful impulse to speak to them, to tell them all that he had to quit France, to be listened to and comforted. There was in the very depths of his heart the shamefaced need of a beggar who would fain hold out his hand⁠—a timid but urgent need to feel that someone would grieve at his departing.

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 percent. 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 shoeblack 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, père 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.”

His mind sought through all the people he knew or had known, and among the faces which crossed his memory he saw that of the girl at the tavern who had led him to doubt his mother.

He hesitated, having still an instinctive grudge against her, then suddenly reflected on the other hand: “After all, she was right.” And he looked about him to find the turning.

The beer-shop, as it happened, was full of people, and also full of smoke. The customers, tradesmen, and labourers, for it was a holiday, were shouting, calling, laughing, and the master himself was waiting on them, running from table to table, carrying away empty glasses and returning them crowned with froth.

When Pierre had found a seat not far from the desk he waited, hoping that the girl would see him and recognise him. But she passed him again and again as she went to and fro, pattering her feet under her skirts with a smart little strut. At last he rapped a coin on the table, and she hurried up.

“What will you take, sir?”

She did not look at him; her mind was absorbed in calculations of the liquor she had served.

“Well,” said he, “this is a pretty way of greeting a friend.”

She fixed her eyes on his face. “Ah!” said she hurriedly. “Is it you? You are pretty well? But I have not a minute today. A bock did you wish for?”

“Yes, a bock!”

When she brought it he said:

“I have come to say goodbye. I am going away.”

And she replied indifferently:

“Indeed. Where are you going?”

“To America.”

“A very fine country, they say.”

And that was all!

Really, he was very ill-advised to address her on such a busy day; there were too many people in the café.

Pierre went down to the sea. As he reached the jetty he descried the Pearl; his father and Beausire were coming in. Papagris was pulling, and the two men, seated in the stern, smoked their pipes with a look of perfect happiness. As they went past the doctor said to himself: “Blessed are the simple-minded!” And he sat down on one of the benches on the breakwater, to try to lull himself in animal drowsiness.

When he went home in the evening his mother said, without daring to lift her eyes to his face:

“You will want a heap of things to take with you. I have ordered your under-linen, and I went into the tailor’s shop about cloth clothes; but is there nothing else you need⁠—things which I, perhaps, know nothing about?”

His lips parted to say, “No, nothing.” But he reflected that he must accept the means of getting a decent outfit, and