On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the

diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at

last started.

Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would

return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her

heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at

once the chastisement and atonement of adultery.

She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard,

hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment inquiring about

the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the

"Hirondelle" as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix.

Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened

them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Felicite,

who was on the lookout in front of the farrier's shop. Hivert pulled

in his horses and, the servant, climbing up to the window, said

mysteriously-"Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais. It's for something

important."

The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small

pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the time for jam-making,

and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in

front of the chemist's shop one might admire a far larger heap, and that

surpassed the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have

over ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy.

She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the "Fanal de

Rouen" lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She pushed open

the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full

of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on

the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small

and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with forks in their

hands. Justin was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was

screaming-"Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum."

"What is it? What is the matter?"

"What is it?" replied the druggist. "We are making preserves; they are

simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too

much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from indolence, from

laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key

of the Capharnaum."

It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of

the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there

alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon

it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there

afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses,

infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his

celebrity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it so,

that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers,

was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge

where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the

exercise of his predilections, so that Justin's thoughtlessness seemed

to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants,

he repeated-"Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and caustic

alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I

shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate

operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions,

and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for

pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as

if a magistrate--"




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