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.




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