"Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very

hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us

the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay

pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases

of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a

few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a

serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of

scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our

peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur

Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your

science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse

to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the

doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad,

and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I

have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade

at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or

otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a

matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of

Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on

the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous

vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle

in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say,

nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and

which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together

all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say,

and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when

there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender

insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered

on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to

say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled

themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like

breezes from Russia."

"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued

Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.

"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on

the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I

go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."




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