And they would tell him stories about people who had all been cured by remedies different from his own; then they would add, by way of consolation:
“The thing is, you’re cosseting yourself! You should get up! You pamper yourself like royalty! Oh, never mind, you old wag! How vile you smell!”
Indeed, the gangrene was climbing higher and higher. Bovary himself felt sick about it. He would come by at any hour, from one moment to the next. Hippolyte would look at him with eyes full of terror and, sobbing, would stammer:
“When will I be cured? … Oh, save me! … How miserable I am! How miserable I am!”
And the doctor would go away again, always advising a restricted diet.
“Don’t listen to him, my boy,” Mère Lefrançois would say; “haven’t they tormented you enough already, as it is? You’ll only make yourself weaker. Here, swallow this!”
And she would offer him some good broth, a slice of roast mutton, a piece of bacon, and now and then a small glass of eau-de-vie, which he did not feel strong enough to bring to his lips.
The Abbé Bournisien, learning that he was getting worse, asked to see him. He began by sympathizing with him over his illness, at the same time declaring that he should rejoice in it, since it was the will of the Lord, and lose no time taking advantage of the opportunity to reconcile himself with heaven.
“For,” said the clergyman in a fatherly tone, “you were neglecting your duties a little; one rarely saw you at the divine service; how many years has it been since you approached the holy altar? I understand that your occupations, the hustle and bustle of the world, may have distracted you from tending to your salvation. But now it’s time to reflect on it. Do not despair, however; I have known some great sinners who, when they were about to appear before God (you’ve not yet reached that point, I’m well aware), implored His mercy and certainly died in the best of situations. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a good example! For instance, as a precaution, why not recite a ‘Hail Mary, full of grace’ and an ‘Our Father, who art in heaven’ every morning and every evening? Yes! Do this for me, to oblige me. What will it cost you? … Will you promise?”
The poor devil promised. The curé came back on the following days. He would chat with the innkeeper and even tell anecdotes full of jokes and puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as the situation allowed, he would revert to religious subjects, his face assuming a suitable expression.
His zeal appeared to be succeeding; for the strephopod soon evinced a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he should recover: to which Monsieur Bournisien answered that he saw no objection to that; two precautions were worth more than one. One risked nothing.
The apothecary was furious at what he called the priest’s scheming; it would interfere, he claimed, with Hippolyte’s convalescence, and he kept saying to Madame Lefrançois:
“Leave him alone! Leave him alone! You’re disturbing his peace of mind with your mysticism!”
But the good woman would not listen to him. He was the cause of everything. In a spirit of contrariness, she even hung a full basin of holy water by the patient’s bedside, along with a sprig of boxwood.
Yet religion appeared to be of no more help to him than the surgery, and the invincible rot continued to rise from his extremities toward his abdomen. It was no use their varying the potions and changing the poultices, the muscles dissolved more every day, and at last Charles responded with an affirmative nod when Mère Lefrançois asked him if she could not, as a last resort, send for Monsieur Canivet, of Neufchâtel, who was a celebrity.
A medical doctor, fifty years old, who enjoyed a good position and was full of self-assurance, the colleague did not scruple to laugh in scorn when he uncovered the leg, gangrenous up to the knee. Then, after declaring bluntly that it would have to be amputated, he went off to the pharmacist to rail against the donkeys who had managed to reduce an unfortunate man to such a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his frock coat, he expostulated in the pharmacy:
“These are inventions originating in Paris! They’re notions belonging to those gentlemen from the Capital! Like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity—a collection of monstrosities that ought to be outlawed by the government! But they want to look smart, and they cram you with remedies without worrying about the consequences. We out here aren’t as clever as that; we’re not scientists, dandies, ladies’ men; we’re practitioners, healers, and we would never consider operating on someone who was in marvelous health! Correct a clubfoot? How do you correct a clubfoot? It would be like trying to straighten a hunchback, for example!”
Homais was pained, listening to this speech, and he concealed his suffering under an obsequious smile, since he needed to humor Monsieur Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville; he therefore did not take up Bovary’s defense, but refrained from making any comment at all, and, abandoning his principles, sacrificed his dignity to the more serious interests of his business.
It was a considerable event in the village, this midthigh amputation by Doctor Canivet! All the inhabitants, that day, had risen earlier than usual, and the Grande-Rue, though full of people, had something ominous about it, as though an execution were about to take place. In the grocery, people were talking about Hippolyte’s illness; the shops were selling nothing; and Madame Tuvache, the mayor’s wife, did not budge from her window, so impatient was she to see the surgeon appear.
He arrived in his cabriolet, which he was driving himself. But because over time the springs on the right side had yielded under the weight of his corpulence, the carriage tipped a little to one side as it came on, and one could see, on the other cushion, next to him, an enormous chest covered in red sheep leather whose three brass fastenings shone magisterially.
When he had passed like a whirlwind under the porch of the Lion d’Or, the doctor, shouting loudly, ordered them to unharness his horse; then he went into the stable to see if it was really being given oats to eat; for whenever he arrived at the home of one of his patients, he would first look after his mare and his cabriolet. People even said, because of this: “Ah! Monsieur Canivet—what a character!” And he was all the more respected for his unshakable self-possession. The universe might have perished down to the last man, and he would not have neglected the least of his habits.
Homais came up to him.
“I’m counting on you,” said the doctor. “Are we ready? Off we go!”
But the apothecary, blushing, confessed that he was too sensitive to be present at such an operation.
“When one is a mere onlooker,” he said, “one’s imagination, you know, becomes overexcited! And my nervous system is so …”
“Bah!” interrupted Canivet. “On the contrary, you seem to me disposed to apoplexy. And what’s more, that doesn’t surprise me; because you gentlemen, you pharmacists, are always cooped up in your kitchens, which must end by altering your constitutions. Now, look at me: Every day I get up at four in the morning, I shave in cold water (I’m never cold), and I don’t wear flannel, I never catch cold, I’m sound in wind and limb! I eat sometimes one way, sometimes another, and accept it philosophically, taking my meals where I can. That’s why I’m not delicate like you, and it’s all the same to me whether I cut up a good Christian or some chicken that’s put in front of me. It’s all a matter of habit, you’ll say …, just habit! …”
Then, without any regard for Hippolyte, who was sweating with anguish under his bedclothes, the two gentlemen embarked on a conversation in which the apothecary compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general; and this comparison was agreeable to Canivet, who launched into some remarks on the demands of his art. He looked upon it as a sacred calling, though the officers of health brought dishonor to it. At last, returning to the patient, he examined the bandages Homais had brought, the same ones that had appeared at the time of the clubfoot operation, and asked for someone to hold the limb for
him. They sent for Lestiboudois, and Monsieur Canivet, having rolled up his sleeves, went into the billiards room, while the apothecary remained with Artémise and the innkeeper, both of them whiter than their aprons and straining their ears toward the door.
Bovary, during this time, did not dare move from his house. He stayed downstairs, in the parlor, sitting by the cold fireplace, his chin on his chest, his hands joined, his eyes fixed. What a mishap! he was thinking, what a disappointment! And yet he had taken every precaution imaginable. Fate had had a hand in it. Even so! —if Hippolyte should die later, he was the one who would have killed him. And then, what reason would he give during his visits to patients, when they asked him? Maybe, though, he had made a mistake somewhere? He searched his mind, found nothing. But even the most famous surgeons certainly made mistakes. That’s what people never wanted to believe! No—instead, they were going to laugh at him, talk about him! The news would spread as far as Forges! Neufchâtel! Rouen! All over! Who could tell if his colleagues wouldn’t write against him? There would be a controversy; he would have to answer in the newspapers. Hippolyte himself might sue him. He saw himself dishonored, ruined, lost! And his imagination, assaulted by a multitude of possibilities, pitched back and forth among them like an empty cask carried out to sea and rolling about in the waves.
Emma, sitting opposite, was watching him; she did not share his humiliation, she was experiencing a humiliation of a different sort: that she had imagined such a man could be worth something, as though twenty times over she had not already been sufficiently convinced of his mediocrity.
Charles paced back and forth in the room. His boots were creaking on the parquet floor.
“Sit down,” she said. “You’re annoying me!”
He sat down again.
Really, how had she (she who was so intelligent!) managed to misjudge things yet again? And through what lamentable folly had she spoiled her life this way, with one sacrifice after another? She recalled all her natural fondness for luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordid details of marriage, housekeeping, her dreams falling in the mud like wounded swallows, everything she had desired, everything she had denied herself, everything she could have had! And for what! For what!
In the midst of the silence that hung over the village, a harrowing cry rang out through the air. Bovary turned so white he seemed about to faint. Her brows contracted in a nervous gesture, then she went on. Yet it was for him, for this creature, for this man who understood nothing, who felt nothing! —for there he was, quite calm, not even suspecting that from now on, the ridicule attached to his name was going to soil her as well as him. She had made efforts to love him, and she had repented in tears for having yielded to another.
“Why, perhaps it was a valgus!” exclaimed Bovary suddenly, meditating.
At the unexpected shock of that sentence falling upon her thoughts like a lead ball on a silver plate, Emma, with a shudder, lifted her head to try to understand what he meant; and they looked at each other in silence, almost dumbfounded to see each other there, so far apart had their thoughts taken them. Charles was contemplating her with the clouded gaze of a drunken man, even as he listened, motionless, to the amputee’s last cries, which followed one another in lingering modulations punctuated by sharp shrieks, like the howling of some animal whose throat is being cut in the distance. Emma was biting her pale lips, and, as she rolled in her fingers one of the fragments of coral she had broken off, she fastened on Charles the burning points of her eyes, like two arrows of fire about to be loosed. Everything about him irritated her now—his face, his clothes, what he was not saying, his entire person, his very existence. She repented her past virtue as though it had been a crime, and what remained of it crumbled under the furious blows of her pride. She relished all the wretched ironies of triumphant adultery. The memory of her lover returned to her with dizzying enticements: she flung her soul at it, swept away toward that image by a new fervor; and Charles seemed to her as detached from her life, as forever absent, as impossible and annihilated, as if he were about to die and were suffering his death throes before her eyes.
There was a sound of footsteps on the sidewalk. Charles looked out; and through the lowered blind, he saw by the edge of the market, in the full sun, Doctor Canivet wiping his forehead with his kerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying in his hands a large red box, and they were both heading in the direction of the pharmacy.
Then, in sudden tenderness and discouragement, Charles turned to his wife, saying:
“Kiss me, my dear!”
“Leave me alone!” she said, red with anger.
“What is it? What is it?” he said, stupefied. “Calm yourself! Don’t be upset! … You know how much I love you! … Come to me!”
“Stop!” she shouted with a terrible look.
And rushing out of the room, Emma shut the door so hard that the barometer leaped from the wall and shattered on the floor.
Charles sank back in his chair, overwhelmed, trying to think what could be wrong with her, imagining a nervous illness, weeping, with the vague sense that in the air around him was something deadly and incomprehensible.
That night, when Rodolphe came into the garden, he found his mistress waiting for him at the bottom of the flight of steps, on the lowest step. They fell into each other’s arms, and all their animosity melted away like snow in the heat of that kiss.
[12]
Their love had been reawakened. Often, Emma would even write to him suddenly in the middle of the day; then, through the windowpane, she would signal to Justin, who, quickly untying his apron, would fly off to La Huchette. Rodolphe would come; what she wanted to tell him was that she was bored, that her husband was hateful and her life hideous!
“How can I do anything about it?” he exclaimed one day, impatient.
“Oh! If you wanted to! …”
She was sitting on the ground, between his knees, her hair loosened, her gaze absent.
“Well, what?” said Rodolphe.
She sighed.
“We could go live somewhere else … somewhere …”
“You’re really mad!” he said, laughing. “Did you really say that?”
She returned to the idea; he seemed not to understand, and changed the direction of the conversation.
What he did not understand was all this disturbance over such a simple thing as love. She had a motive, a reason, a sort of auxiliary force strengthening her passion for him.
This affection, indeed, grew each day with her aversion for her husband. The more fully she gave herself to the one, the more she despised the other; Charles had never appeared to her so unpleasant, with such square fingers, such clumsy wit, such common manners, as when they happened to be together after her meetings with Rodolphe. Then, even as she played at being the wife and virtuous woman, she would become inflamed at the thought of that head with its black hair turning in a curl over the suntanned forehead, of that body at once so robust and so elegant, of that man so experienced in his judgment, so passionate in his desire! It was for him that she would file her nails with the care of an engraver, and that there was never enough cold cream on her skin, nor patchouli on her handkerchiefs. She would load herself with bracelets, rings, necklaces. When he was coming, she would fill her two large blue glass vases with roses, and arrange her room and herself like a courtesan waiting for a prince. The maid had to launder her linens constantly; and so all day long, Félicité would not move from the kitchen, where young Justin, who often kept her company, would watch her as she worked.
His elbow on the long board where she was ironing, he would stare avidly at all these women’s things spread out around him: the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawstring pantalets, vast at the hips and narrowing lower down.
“What’s this for?” the boy would ask, running his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
“Have you never seen a thing
?” Félicité would answer, laughing; “as if your own mistress, Madame Homais, don’t wear just the same sort.”
“Well, yes! Madame Homais!”
And he would add in a meditative tone:
“Is she a lady like Madame?”
But Félicité would lose patience when he hovered around her like this. She was six years older, and Théodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, was beginning to court her.
“Leave me in peace!” she would say, moving her jar of starch. “Go grind your almonds; you’re always poking your nose into women’s affairs; don’t get mixed up in all that till you have some hair on your chin, you wicked scamp.”
“Oh, don’t get mad. I’m going to go and do her boots for you.”
And immediately he would reach up to the mantelpiece for Emma’s boots, which were caked in mud—the mud from her rendezvous; it would fall away as dust under his fingers, and he would watch it rising gently in a ray of sunlight.
“How frightened you are of harming them!” said the servant, who took no such care when cleaning them herself, since as soon as the material had lost its freshness, Madame would pass them on to her.
Emma had a quantity of them in her cupboard, and she went through them one after another, without Charles ever allowing himself the slightest comment.
In the same way, he laid out three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she felt ought to be given to Hippolyte as a gift. The leg was lined with cork and had joints with springs; it was a complicated mechanism covered with a black pant leg ending in a patent leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to procure him another that would be more convenient. The doctor, of course, covered the expense of this acquisition, too.
And so the stableboy gradually resumed his job. One would see him passing through the village as he used to, and when from far away Charles heard the sharp rap of his stick on the paving stones, he would quickly change his route.