Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to
afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to
risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of
injuring some important region that he did not know.
Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an
interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren,
about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took
away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook,
minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his
tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table
lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of
bandages--every bandage to be found at the druggist’s. It was Monsieur
Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations,
as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles
pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the
operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over
Bovary’s hands to cover them with kisses.
"Come, be calm," said the druggist; "later on you will show your
gratitude to your benefactor."
And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were
waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would reappear
walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the
machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door.
She threw herself on his neck; they sat down to table; he ate much,
and at dessert he even wanted to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he only
permitted himself on Sundays when there was company.
The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They
talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in
their house; he saw people’s estimation of him growing, his comforts
increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh
herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some
tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe
for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to
Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth.
They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly
entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It
was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de Rouen." He brought it
for them to read.
"Read it yourself," said Bovary.
He read--
"‘Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of Europe
like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country
places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the
scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of
loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished
practitioners--’"
"Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with emotion.
"No, no! not at all! What next!"
"‘--Performed an operation on a club-footed man.’ I have not used the
scientific term, because you know in a newspaper everyone would not
perhaps understand. The masses must--’"
"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"
"I proceed," said the chemist. "‘Monsieur Bovary, one of our most
distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man
called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at
the hotel of the "Lion d’Or," kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place
d’Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the
subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was
a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The
operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a
few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the
rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The
patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained
of no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be
desired. Everything tends to show that his convelescence will be brief;
and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our
good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus
of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve
and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants!
Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the
amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour!
Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame
walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science
now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to
the successive phases of this remarkable cure.’"
This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days after,
scared, and crying out--
"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"
Charles rushed to the "Lion d’Or," and the chemist, who caught sight
of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared
himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone who was going up
the stairs--
"Why, what’s the matter with our interesting strephopode?"
The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine
in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to
break it.
With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb,
the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines
of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed
about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous
machine. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No
attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not
been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly had
the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit
to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten
matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it
any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised
at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with
blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid. Matters
were taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mere
Lefrancois, had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so
that he might at least have some distraction.
But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of
such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room.
He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale with long beard,
sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the
dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him.
She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged
him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days,
when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him,
fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled.
"How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah! you’re not
up to much, it seems, but it’s your own fault. You should do this! do
that!" And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured
by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added--
"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the
same, old chap, you don’t smell nice!"
Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned
sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him
with eyes full of terror, sobbing--
"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! How
unfortunate I am!"
And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself.
"Don’t listen to him, my lad," said Mere Lefrancois, "Haven’t they
tortured you enough already? You’ll grow still weaker. Here! swallow
this."
And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of
bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the
strength to put to his lips.
Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him.
He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he
ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take
advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven.
"For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected
your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is
it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work,
that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your
salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don’t despair. I have
known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet
at this point I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in
the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a
good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying
morning and evening a ‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ and ‘Our Father which
art in heaven’? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won’t cost
you anything. Will you promise me?"
The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted
with the landlady; and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and
puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he
fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression
of face.
His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire
to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur
Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better
than one; it was no risk anyhow.
The druggist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the
priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte’s convalescence,
and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him
alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism." But the good woman
would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit
of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin
filled with holy-water and a branch of box.
Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and
the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards
the stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the
poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last
Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois,
asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet
of Neufchatel, who was a celebrity.
A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position
and self-possessed, Charles’s colleague did not refrain from laughing
disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then
having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the
chemist’s to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such
a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted
out in the shop--
"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry
of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of
monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do
the clever, and they cram you with remedies without, troubling about
the consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants,
coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should
not dream of operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten
club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished,
for example, to make a hunchback straight!"
Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his
discomfort beneath a courtier’s smile; for he needed to humour Monsier
Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he
did not take up the defence of Bovary; he did not even make a single
remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the
more serious interests of his business.
This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the
village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande
Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as
if an execution had been expected. At the grocer’s they discussed
Hippolyte’s illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the
mayor’s wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to
see the operator arrive.
He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right
side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it
happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and
on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red
sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly.
After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion d’Or," the
doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he
went into the stable to see that she was eating her oats all right; for
on arriving at a patient’s he first of all looked after his mare and his
gig. People even said about this--
"Ah! Monsieur Canivet’s a character!"
And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The
universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed
the smallest of his habits.
Homais presented himself.
"I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come along!"
But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to
assist at such an operation.
"When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know,
is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!"
"Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined
to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn’t astonish me, for you chemist fellows
are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your
constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o’clock;
I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don’t wear flannels, and
I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way,
now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I
am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a
Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say,
habit! habit!"
Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with
agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation,
in which the druggist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a
general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out
on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon, it as a sacred office,
although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back
to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same
that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for someone to hold the
limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having
turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the druggist
stayed with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons,
and with ears strained towards the door.
Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house.
He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless
chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring.
"What a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Perhaps, after all, he had
made some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the
most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would
ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would
spread as far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could
say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue;
he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute
him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination,
assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty
cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves.
Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt
another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if
twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity.
Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the
floor.
"Sit down," she said; "you fidget me."
He sat down again.
How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed
herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had
she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her
instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of
marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded
swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself,
all that she might have had! And for what? for what?
In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending
cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her
brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this
creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he
was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name
would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love
him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another!
"But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was
meditating.
At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a
leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised her head in
order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked at the other in
silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they
by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed at her with the dull look of
a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the
sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by
sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered.
Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral
that she had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes
like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated
her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his
existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and
what still remained of it rumbled away beneath the furious blows of her
pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery.
The memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she
threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh
enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as
absent forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about
to die and were passing under her eyes.
There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up, and
through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in
the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his
handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his
hand, and both were going towards the chemist’s.
Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Charles
turned to his wife saying to her--
"Oh, kiss me, my own!"
"Leave me!" she said, red with anger.
"What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; compose yourself.
You know well enough that I love you. Come!"
"Enough!" she cried with a terrible look.
And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the
barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.
Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover
what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping,
and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round
him.
When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress
waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw
their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow
beneath the warmth of that kiss.
Chapter Twelve
They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the
day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to
Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe
would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that
her husband was odious, her life frightful.
"But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently.
"Ah! if you would--"
She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look
lost.
"Why, what?" said Rodolphe.
She sighed.
"We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!"
"You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be possible?"
She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned
the conversation.
What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair
as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her
affection.
Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her
husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed
the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have
such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found
themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing
the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose
black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once
so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience
in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she
filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never
enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs.
She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he
was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and
prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince.
The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite
did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her
company, watched her at work.
With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he
greedily watched all these women’s clothes spread about him, the dimity
petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running
strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.
"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the
crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
"Why, haven’t you ever seen anything?" Felicite answered laughing. "As
if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn’t wear the same."
"Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a meditative air, "As
if she were a lady like madame!"
But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six
years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, was
beginning to pay court to her.
"Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You’d better be
off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you
meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you’ve got a beard to your
chin."
"Oh, don’t be cross! I’ll go and clean her boots."
And he at once took down from the shelf Emma’s boots, all coated with
mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his
fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight.
"How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn’t so
particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff
of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.
Emma had a number in her cupboard that she squandered one after the
other, without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So
also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought
proper to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork,
and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black
trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring
to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him
another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray
the expense of this purchase.
So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him
running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar
the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction.
It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order;
this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her
about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made
himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to
this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have
a very handsome ridding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker’s at Rouen
to give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her
table.
But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and
seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed;
all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a
fortnight’s wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any
quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur
Derozeray’s account, which he was in the habit of paying every year
about Midsummer.
She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost
patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some
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