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the world may have kept you from care for your salvation.

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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

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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—

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‘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,

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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 he was eating his 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!’

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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?’

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.

She returned to the subject; he pretended not to

understand, and turned the conversation.

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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