Madame Bovary
Page 239"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.
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
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
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.