Madame Bovary

It was Homais who planted the idea. He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot and conceived the patriotic notion that Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have operations for strephopody. He laid out the advantages on his fingers: almost certain success, celebrity for the operator. 'Who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph to the paper? An article gets about; it ends by making a snowball!' Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was not clever — and what a satisfaction to have urged him to a step that would increase his reputation and fortune! She only wished to lean on something more solid than love. Charles, pressed by both the druggist and his wife, allowed himself to be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume and every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into it. Hippolyte himself required the whole village to persuade him: Binet, Madame Lefrançois, Artémise, the neighbours, even the mayor. What finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing — Bovary undertook to provide the machine. This generosity was Emma's idea. By carpenter and locksmith combined, a box was made weighing eight pounds, in which iron, wood, leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared. Hippolyte's foot was a peculiar case — almost a straight line with the leg, yet turned inward: an equinus with something of a varus. Despite this, the club-foot ran about like a deer from morn till night, stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy. On the day of the operation Charles arrived pale and trembling. Neither Ambroise Paré nor Dupuytren had hearts that trembled as Bovary's when he approached Hippolyte with his tenotome. He pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard; the tendon was cut; the operation was over. Hippolyte bent over Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses. That evening was charming, full of prattle and dreams together. They talked about their future fortune, improvements to the house; Emma refreshed herself with a new, healthier sentiment, feeling for the first time some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth. They were already in bed when Homais burst in with a sheet of paper just written: his triumphant paragraph for the Fanal de Rouen. He read it aloud in full — proclaiming Bovary 'one of our most distinguished practitioners' and predicting that Hippolyte would soon be seen 'figuring in the bacchic dance.' Charles wept with emotion. Five days later Mère Lefrançois arrived at their door screaming: 'Help! he is dying!' The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, the machine knocked against the wall. When removed, an awful sight presented itself: the outline of the foot disappeared in an enormous swelling, the skin covered with ecchymosis. They replaced the machine, strapping it tighter to hasten matters. Three days later, black liquid oozed from blisters here and there. Gangrene. Hippolyte lay moaning in the billiard-room under heavy coverings, pale, long-bearded, sunken-eyed. On market-days the peasants knocked billiard-balls around him and bawled consolation: 'You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!' Emma brought linen for his poultices. Charles came every hour, recommending diet. Mère Lefrançois gave him beef-tea, mutton, and brandy that he had not the strength to lift to his lips. Abbé Bournisien arrived to console him spiritually. Hippolyte manifested a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if cured. Homais was furious — 'You perturb his morals with your mysticism!' Out of sheer contradiction the landlady hung holy water and box-branches by the bedside. Religion proved no more able to succour him than surgery; the gangrene spread towards the stomach. At last Charles nodded when asked if he might send for Dr. Canivet of Neufchâtel, a celebrity. Canivet arrived in his gig leaning to one side under the weight of his corpulence, a large box covered in red leather with brass clasps beside him. He went first to see that his mare was eating her oats. He had uncovered the leg — mortified to the knee — and declared flatly it must be amputated, then marched to the chemist's to rail at Paris innovations: 'Straighten club-feet! As if one could make a hunchback straight!' Homais, needing to humour a colleague whose prescriptions sometimes reached Yonville, swallowed his dignity in silence. Bovary sat downstairs by the fireless chimney, chin on breast, hands clasped, eyes staring. 'What a mishap!' Perhaps he had made some slip — but the most famous surgeons also made mistakes. People would laugh, jeer; it would spread as far as Forges, Neufchâtel, Rouen, everywhere. His imagination tossed amongst hypotheses like an empty cask borne by the sea. Emma, opposite, watched him. She did not share his humiliation; she felt another — that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. How was it that she — she, who was so intelligent — could have allowed herself to be deceived again? Through what deplorable madness had she ruined her life by continual sacrifices? All that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that she might have had! And for what? In the midst of the silence a heart-rending cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her brows, then went on. For him, for this creature who understood nothing, who felt nothing! He was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would henceforth sully hers as well as his. 'But it was perhaps a valgus!' Bovary suddenly exclaimed, meditating aloud. At the unexpected shock of this phrase — like a leaden bullet on a silver plate — Emma shuddered. They looked at each other in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery; the memory of her lover came back with dazzling attractions, and Charles seemed to her absent forever, annihilated. Through the lowered blinds Charles saw Dr. Canivet wiping his brow, Homais behind him carrying the red box. 'Oh, kiss me, my own!' Charles turned to say. 'Leave me!' she cried, red with anger. 'Enough!' — and escaping from the room she slammed the door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor. Charles sank back in his arm-chair, vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him. When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps. They threw their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss.