Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  Which did not prevent Mère Lefrançois, five days later, from arriving in a state of wild distress and crying out:

  “Help! He’s dying …! I’m going to go mad!”

  Charles rushed toward the Lion d’Or, and the pharmacist seeing him passing by on the square, hatless, deserted the pharmacy. He appeared himself, puffing, red-faced, uneasy, and asking all those going up the stairs:

  “So what’s the matter with our interesting strephopode?”

  The strephopode was writhing about in atrocious spasms, so much so that the mechanical apparatus in which his leg was cooped up kept thumping against the wall with enough force to stave it in.

  With a great deal of care, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, they then withdrew the box, and saw a horrible sight. The foot’s contours were swallowed up in such a swollen mass, that the entire skin seemed about to rupture, and was covered in bruises caused by the much-vaunted machine. Hippolyte had already complained of it hurting; no one had heeded him; they had to admit that he had not been completely mistaken; and they left him liberated for a few hours. But scarce had the edema faded a little, than the two savants deemed it proper to restore the limb to the apparatus, clamping it on tighter, to speed things up. Finally, three days later, Hippolyte being unable to bear it any longer, they again withdrew the mechanism, while being very much amazed by the observable result. A livid tumefaction was spread over the leg, with phlyctenae here and there, from which oozed a black fluid. Things had taken a serious turn. Hippolyte was starting to get worried, and Mère Lefrançois installed him in the parlor, next to the kitchen, so that he would have some diversion at least.

  But the tax-gatherer, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of such company. So they carried Hippolyte into the billiard-room.

  There he was, moaning under his thick blankets, pale, unshaven, hollow-eyed, and turning his sweaty head now and again on the soiled pillow where the flies kept settling. Madame Bovary came to see him. She brought him linen for his poultices, and comforted him, encouraged him. Yet he did not lack for company, above all on market days, when the peasants surrounding him knocked their billiard balls, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, brawled.

  “How goes it?” they would say, thumping him on the shoulder. “Ah, you’re not in great spirits, it appears! But it’s your own fault. You have to be doing this, doing that …”

  And they told him stories of folk who had all been cured by other remedies than his; then, by way of consolation, they would add:

  “It’s on account of you nursing y’self overmuch! Up with you now! Coddling yourself like a king, you are! Ah, never mind, y’old dog, you don’t smell too nice!”

  The gangrene, indeed, was creeping up and up. Bovary was sick from it himself. He came hourly, at all times. Hippolyte gazed at him, eyes brimming with terror, and sobbingly stammered out:

  “When’ll I be cured?… Oh, save me!… I’m that low, I’m that low!”

  And the doctor went away, invariably recommending a starvation diet.

  “Don’t you listen to him, my lad,” chided Mère Lefrançois; “haven’t they made enough of a martyr of you already? You’ll grow weaker still. Here, drink up!”

  And she would offer him some nice broth, a slice of mutton, a morsel of bacon, and at times a small glass of brandy, that he did not have the courage to bring to his lips.

  Abbé Bournisien, hearing he was worsening, desired to see him. He began by pitying him his misfortune, at the same time declaring that he should rejoice in it, since it was the Lord’s will, and that he should quickly profit from the occasion to be reconciled with Heaven.

  “For,” said the clergyman in a paternal tone, “you’ve been a little neglectful of your duties; we rarely see you at the divine service; how many years is it since you approached the communion table? I understand that your work, that the whirlwind of the world may well have diverted you from attending to your salvation. But now, the hour has come for reflection. Do not despair, however; I have known men of heavy guilt who, when their appearance before God was all but nigh (you’re not yet there, I’m well aware), had beseeched His forgiveness, and who died in the best frame of mind, to be sure. Let us hope that, just like them, you will show us a fine example! Thus, by way of precaution, what is to stop you from reciting morning and evening a Hail Mary, full of grace and an Our Father, which art in Heaven? Yes, do it! For my sake, to please me. What would that cost?… Do you promise me?”

  The poor devil promised. The cleric came back over the following days. He chatted with the landlady and even regaled them with anecdotes mixed in with pleasantries, and puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as circumstances permitted, he reverted to religious matters, adopting a suitable face.

  His zeal appeared to succeed; for soon the strephopode expressed a desire to go on pilgrimage to Bon-Secours, were he to recover; to which Monsieur Bournisien replied that he saw nothing against it; two precautions were better than one. Nothing ventured.

  The apothecary was indignant at what he called the priest’s maneuvers; it was prejudicial, he claimed, to Hippolyte’s convalescence, and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrançois:

  “Leave him be! Leave him be! You’re undermining his morale with your mysticism!”

  But the good woman would not hear of it. He was the cause of it all. To spite him, she even hooked a brimming holy-water pot onto the patient’s bed head, with a sliver of boxwood.

  Yet religion appeared to bring him no more succor than surgery, and the insuperable rot went on spreading up from the extremities to the stomach. In vain they had varied the potions and changed the poultices; each day the muscles were becoming increasingly detached, and at last Charles responded with a nod of the head when Mère Lefrançois asked him if she could not, in desperation, call Monsieur Canivet, of Neufchâtel, who was renowned.

  Doctor in medicine, fifty years old, enjoying a good standing and sure of himself, Charles’s colleague did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he exposed that leg gangrened up to the knee. Then, having frankly declared that it would have to be amputated, he went off to the pharmacist’s to rail against the dunderheads who could have reduced a wretched man to such a condition. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the coat button, he cried out in the pharmacy:

  “There we have it—Paris’s inventions! Such are the ideas of these gentlemen from the Capital. It’s like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the government should forbid. But they must always be showing off, and they’ll stuff you with remedies without a thought for the consequences. We, though, we are not as clever as that; we are not savants, dandies, lady killers; we are practitioners, healers, and we wouldn’t conceive of operating on someone who was doing perfectly well! Correct the clubfooted? Can we correct the clubfooted? It’s like wishing, let’s say, to straighten out a hunchback!”

  Homais suffered, listening to this speech, and he concealed his unease beneath a courtier’s smile, needing to treat Monsieur Canivet with care, his prescriptions sometimes reaching as far as Yonville; neither did he take Bovary’s part, nor make so much as a single observation, and, abandoning his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the weightier interests of his business.

  It was a considerable event in the village, this amputation at the thigh by Doctor Canivet! That day, all the inhabitants turned out at the earliest hour, and the main street, although full of people, had a lugubrious air about it as if what was to take place was a public execution. Hippolyte’s sickness was discussed at the grocer’s; the shops were selling nothing, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor’s wife, did not budge from her window, so eager was she to see the surgeon come.

  He arrived in his gig, driving it himself. But, the right-hand spring having long sunk under the weight of his stoutness, the vehicle was a little tilted as it went along, and you could make out beside him on the other cushion a great box, covered in red sheep’s leather, whose three brass clasps shone magisterially
.

  After bowling in under the porch of the Lion d’Or like a whirlwind, the doctor, shouting at the top of his voice, ordered his horse to be unhitched, then proceeded into the stable to check if it was properly eating its oats; for, on arrival at his patients’ homes, his first thoughts were for his mare and his gig. They would even say, in reference to this, “Ah, Monsieur Canivet, now he’s a queer fellow!” And they rated him the higher for this unwavering self-possession. The universe might have expired to the last man, yet he would not have altered the least of his habits.

  Homais appeared.

  “I’m counting on you,” the doctor said. “Are we ready? Forward march!”

  But the apothecary, blushing, confessed that he was too sensitive to assist at such an operation.

  “When one is simply a spectator,” he said, “the imagination, you know, impresses one with some sinister thought! And then my nervous system is so …”

  “Bah, nonsense!” interrupted Canivet. “Quite the reverse: you seem to me the apoplectic type. Which doesn’t surprise me, moreover; for you pharmacy fellows are constantly stuck in your kitchens, which must be damaging to your constitution in the end. Look at me, rather: every day, I get up at four o’clock, I shave in cold water (I’m never cold), and I don’t wear flannel, I never catch cold, I’ve a famous chest on me! I eat sometimes this way, sometimes that, staying philosophical, taking potluck. That’s why I’m not a delicate thing like you, and it’s all the same to me whether I cut up a Christian or the first fowl to hand. After that, y’know, habit … habit …!”

  Then, without any regard for Hippolyte, who was sweating with anguish between the sheets, these gentlemen entered upon a conversation in which the apothecary likened the surgeon’s sangfroid to a general’s; and this comparison pleased Canivet, who replied with a torrent of words on the exigencies of his art. He considered it a priestly office, even though medical officers dishonored the calling. At length, returning to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same that had appeared at the time of the operation, and asked for someone to hold the member for him. They sent for Lestiboudois, and Monsieur Canivet, having rolled up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the apothecary stayed with Artémise and the landlady, both of them paler than their aprons, and with ears strained to the door.

  Bovary, during all this time, did not dare move from his house. He stayed below, in the parlor, seated by the unlit hearth, chin on chest, hands clasped, gaze fixed. What misfortune, he thought, what disappointment! Yet he had taken all necessary precautions. Fate had intervened. No matter! If Hippolyte happened to die later, he would be the murderer. And then, what reason was he going to give on his rounds, when asked? Still, had he perhaps not made a mistake with something? He hunted about, found nothing. But the most famous surgeons certainly made mistakes. That was what no one would ever believe. Quite the opposite: they were going to be laughing, gossiping! It would spread all the way to Forges, all the way to Neufchâtel, all the way to Rouen! Everywhere! Who knows if his colleagues might not attack him in writing? There would be an ensuing controversy, he would have to respond in the newspapers. Hippolyte could even prosecute him. He saw himself disgraced, ruined, undone! And his imagination, assailed by numberless suppositions, tossed about amidst them like an empty tub carried off by the sea and rolling in the swell.

  Emma, sitting opposite, considered him; she did not share his humiliation, but suffered another: it was to have imagined that such a man could be worth something, as if she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity twenty times already.

  Charles walked up and down in the room. His boots creaked on the parquet.

  “Sit down,” she said, “you’re setting my teeth on edge!”

  He sat down again.

  She had managed to misjudge things once more, but how? (And she being so intelligent!) And what lamentable madness had driven her to ruin her life thus with constant sacrifice? She called to mind all her instinct for luxury, all her soul’s privations, the sordidness of married life, of keeping house, her dreams tumbling into the mud like wounded swallows, everything she had desired, everything she had denied herself, everything she could have had. And why? Why?

  In the middle of the silence that filled the village, a rending scream struck through the air. Bovary went pale as if about to faint. She rubbed her eyebrows with a nervous gesture, then carried on. Yet it was for his sake, for this creature, for this man who understood nothing, who felt nothing!—for there he was, completely calm, and without even suspecting that the mockery of his name would, from this time forth, soil her as much as him. She had striven to love him, and had weepingly repented having yielded to another.

  “But perhaps it was a valgus!” exclaimed Bovary suddenly, who was deep in thought.

  At the unforeseen shock of this sentence falling on her thoughts like a lead ball into a silver dish, Emma gave a start and raised her head to guess what he might mean; and they faced one another in silence, almost amazed to see themselves, so removed were they by their differing realization each from the other. Charles considered her with the confused gaze of a drunkard, while listening, motionless, to the amputee’s last screams succeeding one another in long drawn-out inflections, cut off by shrill bursts, like the distant shrieks of some beast being slaughtered. Emma chewed her wan lips, and, rolling between her fingers one of the bits of coral she had snapped off, fixed on Charles the burning points of her eyes, like two flaming arrows ready to be released. Everything about him irritated her now, his face, his clothes, what he did not say, his whole person, in short his existence. She repented of her past virtuousness as of a felony, and what was left broke up under the furious blows of her pride. She took delight in all the wicked ironies of the triumphant adulteress. The memory of her lover came back to her with giddying charm: she cast her soul upon it, swept toward this image by a fresh enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her so detached from life, so permanently absent, so ridiculous and crushed, that it was as though he was about to expire and would suffer the pangs of death under her very eyes.

  There was the click of a footstep on the pavement. Charles looked out; and, through the lowered blind, he caught sight of Doctor Canivet, by the side of the market house, in full sun, wiping his brow with a silk handkerchief. Homais, behind him, carried a great red box in his hands, and the two of them were making their way toward the pharmacy.

  Then, in a sudden fit of fondness and discouragement, Charles turned to his wife and said to her:

  “Kiss me then, my sweet!”

  “Leave me alone!” she snapped, red in the face with anger.

  “What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you?” he repeated, astonished. “Calm yourself! Take hold of yourself!… Surely you know I love you. Come to me!”

  “Enough!” she cried, with a terrible look.

  And making her escape from the room, Emma closed the door so hard, that the barometer bounced off the wall and smashed on the floor.

  Charles sank down into his chair, thrown into confusion, hunting about for what might be wrong with her, imagining a nervous complaint, weeping, and dimly sensing some baleful and incomprehensible thing circling around him.

  When Rodolphe, that evening, came into the garden, he found his mistress waiting for him at the bottom of the flight of steps, on the first stair. They clasped each other tight, and all their rancor melted away like snow under the heat of that kiss.

  XII

  They began to love one another again. Emma would even write to him all of a sudden, in the middle of the day; then, from the window, signal to Justin, who, untying his thick apron, would fly off to La Huchette. Rodolphe would arrive; it was just to say that she was heartily bored, that her husband was odious and her life dreadful!

  “What can I do about it?” he exclaimed one day, quite out of patience.

  “Ah, if you were willing …”

  She was sitting on the ground, between his knees, her drawn-back hair loose
ned, a lost look in her eyes.

  “What then?” said Rodolphe.

  She gave a sigh.

  “We might go and live together … somewhere else …”

  “You’re mad, really you are,” he laughed. “I don’t believe it!”

  She came back to the subject; he appeared not to understand and diverted the conversation. What he did not understand, was all this turmoil over something as straightforward as love. Her affection had a motive, a reason, and a kind of auxiliary force.

  This fondness was, in fact, gaining more and more ground under the repulsion she felt for her husband. The more she surrendered herself to one, the more she utterly detested the other; never had Charles seemed more disagreeable to her, his fingers so stubby, his mind so dull, his manners so commonplace, as after her assignations with Rodolphe, when they would sit together. Then, ever acting the wife and the woman of virtue, she blazed within at the thought of that head of black hair with its curl falling over the tanned forehead, of that robust and yet so elegant figure, of that man in short who showed so much experience in his judgment, so much wildness in his desire! That she filed her nails with a sculptor’s care was for his sake, just as there was never sufficient cream on her skin, nor patchouli on her silk handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, necklaces. When he was due to arrive, she filled the two large blue-glass vases with roses, and arranged the room and her person like a courtesan awaiting a prince. The maidservant had to be endlessly washing the linen; and Félicité did not stir all day from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her company, watched her working.