"The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the cause

ceases--"

"The effect must cease," said Homais, "that is evident."

"Oh, save her!" cried Bovary.

And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing the

hypothesis, "It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm," Canivet was about to

administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the

windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to

their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It

was Doctor Lariviere.

The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary

raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled off his

skull-cap long before the doctor had come in.

He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that

generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving

their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and

wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he was angry; and his

students so revered him that they tried, as soon as they were themselves

in practice, to imitate him as much as possible. So that in all the

towns about they were found wearing his long wadded merino overcoat

and black frock-coat, whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny

hands--very beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be

more ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles,

and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous,

fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he

would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect

had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating

than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every

lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along,

full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness

of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and

irreproachable life.

He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the cadaverous

face of Emma stretched out on her back with her mouth open. Then, while

apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his fingers up and down

beneath his nostrils, and repeated-"Good! good!"

But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary watched him; they

looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he was to the sight

of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill.

He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed him.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024