‘The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the cause ceases – ’
‘The effect must cease,’ said Homais, ‘that is evident.’
‘Oh, save her!’ cried Bovary.
And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing the hypothesis, that it was ‘perhaps a salutary paroxysm,’ Canivet was about to administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It was Doctor Larivière.
The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled off his skullcap long before the doctor had come in.
He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he was angry; and his students so revered him that they tried, as soon as they were themselves in practice, to imitate him as much as possible. So that in all the towns about they were found wearing his long wadded merino overcoat and black frock-coat, whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny hands – very beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be more ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles, and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie behind all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along, full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a laborious and irreproachable life.
He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the cadaverous face of Emma stretched out on her back with gaping mouth. Then, while apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his fingers up and down beneath his nostrils, and repeated – ‘Good! good!’
But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary watched him; they looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he was to the sight of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill.
He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed him.
‘She is very ill, isn’t she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything! Oh, think of something, you who have saved so many!’
Charles caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly, imploringly, half-fainting against his breast.
‘Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be done.’
And Doctor Larivière turned away.
‘You are going?’
‘I will come back.’
He went out only to give an order to the coachman, with Monsieur Canivet, who did not care either to have Emma die under his hands.
The chemist rejoined them on the Place. He could not by temperament keep away from celebrities, so he begged Monsieur Larivière to do him the signal honour of accepting some breakfast.
He sent quickly to the Lion d’Or for some pigeons; to the butcher’s for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for cream; and to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself aided in the preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she pulled together the strings of her jacket – ‘You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn’t been told the night before – ’
‘Wine glasses!’ whispered Homais.
‘If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed trotters.’
‘Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!’
He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some details as to the catastrophe.
‘We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then intolerable pains at the epigastrium, super-purgation, coma.’
‘But how did she poison herself?’
‘I don’t know, doctor, and I don’t even know where she can have procured the arsenious acid.’
Justin, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to tremble.
‘What’s the matter?’ said the chemist.
At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the ground with a crash.
‘Imbecile!’ cried Homais, ‘you awkward lout! blockhead! you confounded ass!’
But suddenly controlling himself – ‘I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately introduced a tube – ’
‘You would have done better,’ said the physician, ‘to push your fingers down her throat.’
His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a severe lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and so verbose at the time of the club-foot, was today very modest. He smiled without ceasing in an approving manner.
Homais dilated in amphitryonic pride, and the affecting thought of Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the manchineel, vipers.
‘I have even read that various persons have found themselves under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by black-pudding that had been subjected to too vehement a fumigation. At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn up by one of our pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de Gassicourt!’
Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines that are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make his coffee at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised it, and mixed it himself.
‘Saccharum, doctor?’ said he, offering the sugar.
Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the physician’s opinion on their constitutions.
At last Monsieur Larivière was about to leave, when Madame Homais asked for a consultation about her husband. He was making his blood too thick by going to sleep every evening after dinner.
‘Oh, it isn’t his blood that’s too thick,’ said the physician.
And, smiling a little at his unnoticed joke, the doctor opened the door. But the chemist’s shop was full of people; he had the greatest difficulty in getting rid of Monsieur Tuvache, who feared his spouse would get inflammation of the lungs, because she was in the habit of spitting on the ashes; then of Monsieur Binet, who sometimes experienced sudden attacks of great hunger; and of Madame Caron, who suffered from tinglings; of Lheureux, who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had rheumatism; and of Madame Lefrançois, who had heartburn. At last the three horses started; and it was the general opinion that he had not shown himself at all obliging.
