"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.