The stableman's club-foot; Surgical lore; Charles operates; Yonville in the press; Unfavourable prognosis; The visit of the cure; Monsieur Canivet's opinion; The second operation; Repenting of repentance.

HE had been recently reading a very favourable account of a new mode of treatment for club-foot, and being a great man for progress, he thought it would be a fine thing for Yonville to show how up to date it was by going in for the operative treatment of strephopody.

'Where's the risk?' he said to Emma. 'Just consider,' and he ran off on his fingers the advantages of such an experiment: 'success, practically certain; improvement of the patient's health and appearance; immense increase of prestige for the operator. Now why shouldn't your husband do a turn for poor old Hippolyte at the 'Lion d'Or?' For one thing, he's bound to give an account of his cure to every traveller that goes to the place, and then (here Homais lowered his voice and looked about him) what's to prevent me from sending a little notice to the paper about it? Why, an article like that gets read all over the place... people get talking about it... it's like a snowball! You never know! You never know!'

As a matter of fact, Bovary might quite well succeed. Emma had no proof that he wasn't a skilful man, and then, how nice it would be for her to reflect that she had prevailed on him to undertake a thing that had been so advantageous from the professional and pecuniary point of view! Her great desire, in fact, was to have something more solid, more tangible than love to rely upon.

Charles, besieged by the importunities of the apothecary and Emma, suffered himself to be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's treatise, and every night he sat with his head between his hands, studying it diligently.

Whilst he was reading up all about talipes equinus, varus and valgus- that is to say, catastrephopody, endostrephopody and exostrephopody (or, to put it more clearly, the various deviations of the foot downwards, inwards and outwards)- with hypostrephopody and anastrephopody (otherwise torsion downwards and upwards), Monsieur Homais was adducing every argument he could think of to persuade the lad at the inn to submit to the operation.

'You'll hardly feel any pain at all. Just a slight pricking. No more than being bled a little. Not half as bad as having a corn removed.'

Hippolyte stood thinking hard, rolling his eyes about like a ninny. 'Anyhow,' the chemist went on, 'it doesn't affect me, it's for your sake- just a bit of simple ordinary humanity. What I want, my lad, is to see you cured of this unsightly claudication and that continual oscillation of the lumbar region, which, say what you will, must be no small handicap to you in the exercise of your work.'

Homais then went on to tell him how much better and sprightlier he would feel, and even hinted that he would be much more likely to do execution among the women, whereat the stable-lad hung his head and smiled a sheepish smile. Then he appealed to his vanity.

'Aren't you a man, hang it all? Why, suppose you had had to join the army: to go and serve with the colours! Ah, Hippolyte!'

And Homais went off, vowing that he couldn't understand anyone being so obstinate, so blind, as to refuse the benefits of science.

The poor wretch gave in, for everybody made a dead set at him. Binet, who never meddled with other people's business, Madame Lefrancois, Artemise, the neighbours and even Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, kept pegging away and crying shame upon him; but what finally decided him was that he would not have to pay anything. Bovary even promised that he would furnish the necessary appliance for the operation. Emma it was who made the suggestion, and Charles agreed, thinking deep down in his heart what an angel she was.

And so, with the chemist to advise him, and after three separate starts, he got a sort of box constructed by the joint efforts of the carpenter and the locksmith. It weighed about eight pounds, and iron, wood, sheet-iron, leather, screws and nails were plentifully represented in its composition.

However, in order to decide which tendon to cut, it was necessary to discover the particular form of club-foot with which the patient was afflicted.

He had a foot that was bent downwards almost in a straight line with the leg, together with some degree of introversion. Hence it was a case of talipes equinus with some of the characteristics of talipes varus or, alternatively, it might be regarded as a slight varus with some conspicuous manifestations of equinus. But with this talipes equinus, which was as broad as a horse's hoof, all horny and knotted, with great black toe-nails, that looked like iron, the ostler galloped about like a stag from morning till night. Any time you liked, you could see him out in the Square clumping round the market-carts and flinging his deformed foot in front of him. He seemed to be stronger on that leg than on the other. As the result of long service, it had acquired what almost seemed like the moral qualities of energy and endurance, and when he had a heavy job to perform, that was the leg he would rely on.

Well, then, seeing it was a case of talipes equinus, it was the tendon of Achilles that would need to be severed, while, later on, the anterior tibial muscle would have to be dealt with, in order to relieve the varus; for the doctor dared not risk two operations at once, and, as it was, he was quaking a little, for fear of cutting into some important region he was not thoroughly acquainted with.

Neither Ambroise Pare applying, for the first time since Celsus and after an interval of fifteen hundred years, an emergency ligature to an artery; nor Dupuytren about to open an abscess deeply embedded in the grey matter of the brain; nor Gensoul, the first time he removed the upper maxillary, had such a beating heart, such a trembling hand and such an anxious mind as Monsieur Bovary, when he approached Hippolyte, his instrument between his fingers. And, just as you see in hospitals, the side-table was covered with piles of lint, waxed thread, a heap of bandages- a very pyramid of bandages, all the bandages that were to be found in the chemist's shop. Monsieur Homais had been there all the morning making these preparations, which were equally intended to bedazzle the multitude and flatter his self-conceit. Charles made an incision. There was a sharp crackling noise. The, tendon was cut, the operation was finished. Hippolyte couldn't get over his surprise. He bent his head down over Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses.

'There, there; that'll do. You can express your gratitude to your benefactor later on,' said the chemist.

And he went down to report the result to the five or six people who were waiting below in the courtyard, eager to hear the news and expecting to see Hippolyte come out again walking quite normally. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the patent contrivance, went back to his house, where Emma, in a state of great excitement, was waiting for him on the doorstep. She flung her arms about his neck. They sat down to dinner. He ate heartily and said he would finish up with coffee, an indulgence he only permitted himself on Sundays, when they had company.

The evening went off delightfully. They talked and talked and dreamed all kinds of dreams together. They dwelt on the future and the prospects it offered, they discussed what improvements they would make in the house. He saw himself getting more widely known, living on a better scale, and for ever adored by his wife. And she was joyful at finding something new wherein to refresh her spirit, some healthier, better experience; joyful that, at last, she was able to feel some sort of affection for the poor fellow who cherished her so dearly. The thought of Rodolphe passed momentarily through her mind; but then she looked at Charles again, and noted with surprise that his teeth were really quite passable.

They had been in bed some little time when, despite the servant's expostulations, Monsieur Homais came bursting into the room with a sheet of something he had just written in his hand. It was the report he intended sending to the Rouen paper. He had brought it across for them to read.

''You' read it,' said Bovary, and Homais began as follows:

'Despite the prejudices which still hang like a network over a great part of the face of Europe, the light is beginning to permeate our country districts. For example, on Tuesday last, the little town of Yonville was the scene of what was not merely an experiment in surgery, but an act of generous philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners...'

'No, look here, that's too much, really!' said Charles, so overcome he could hardly speak.

'Good Lord no! Not a bit of it!... performed an operation for club-foot.... I didn't use the scientific term because, you know, in a paper... well, a good many people wouldn't understand, and, you see, the general public...'

'Quite so,' said Bovary. 'Go ahead!'

'Well, then,' said the chemist, 'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation for club-foot on one Hippolyte Tautain, for twenty-five years ostler at the 'Hotel du Lion d'Or', kept by Madame Veuve Lefrancois, in the Place d'Armes. This new departure in operative surgery and the widespread esteem in which the patient is held, combined to draw such large numbers to the spot that the front of the establishment in question was veritably besieged by the crowd. The operation was carried out with almost miraculous success, scarcely more than a few drops of blood appearing on the surface of the skin, as though to proclaim the fact that the recalcitrant tendon had just yielded to the surgeon's skill. A remarkable point about the case is (we affirm this 'de visu') that the patient gave no indication of suffering any pain. Everything points to a rapid convalescence, and it may well be that, at our next village fete, we shall see our doughty Hippolyte joining in the merry dance, footing it blithely amid a choir of Corydons, and giving, by his sprightly pirouettes and gambols, manifest proof of his complete recovery. Honour, then, to these great-hearted men of science! Honour to those unwearying investigators who burn the midnight oil, seeking to remove, or to mitigate, the sufferings of their fellow-men. Honoured, thrice honoured, be they! Is it not time for us to cry aloud, saying, "Lo! the blind shall see, the deaf shall hear, and the lame shall walk?" That which, in days of old, superstition promised its votaries, science now accomplishes for all mankind. We shall keep our readers informed of the successive stages in the progress of this remarkable cure.'

All this did not prevent the Widow Lefrancois from hurrying over five days later, scared out of her wits and shouting,

'Come, quick! He's dying!... Oh, I shall go crazy!'

Charles tore across to the 'Lion d'Or', and the chemist, who saw him rushing bare-headed across the Square, was out of his shop in an instant. He was breathing quickly, looking flushed and uneasy, and asked the various people who were going up the stairs,

'Why, what is amiss with our interesting strephopode?'

The strephopode was writhing in frightful convulsions and banging the mechanism, in which his foot was clamped, so violently against the wall, they thought he would knock a hole in it.

And so, taking great precautions not to disturb the position of the limb, they removed the box, and a ghastly sight met their eyes. The foot was so hideously swollen that it was nothing but a shapeless mass of pulp covered with patches of ecchymosis caused by the famous machine. Hippolyte had said some time back that it was hurting him, but they hadn't taken any notice. It was now evident, however, that he had had some cause for complaint, and they let him be free for a few hours. But no sooner had the oedema subsided a little, than the two professional gentlemen thought it well to replace the apparatus, strapping it tighter than ever to accelerate the cure. Finally, three days later, Hippolyte being unable to bear it any longer, they unscrewed it again, and were much amazed at what they saw. A livid swelling had spread all up the leg, on which, here and there, were pustules oozing with dark-coloured matter. Things were looking serious; Hippolyte was beginning to get rather low, and the Widow Lefrancois shifted him into the little parlour near the kitchen, so that he might at least have something to take his mind off it a little.

But the tax-collector, who had his dinner there every day, strongly objected to his being in the room, so at last they moved him into the billiard-saloon. And there he lay, moaning under the bedclothes, pale, unshaven and hollow-eyed. Every now and again, the sweat standing out on his forehead, he would turn on his dirty pillow, that was all infested with fleas. Madame Bovary came to see him. She brought him linen for his poultices; she strove to comfort and encourage him. Not that he lacked for company, especially on market-days, with the room full of yokels, knocking the billiard balls about, fencing and skylarking with the cues, smoking, drinking, singing and swearing.

'How goes it?' they would say, clapping him on the shoulder. 'Not doing yourself proud, by the look of it. But it's your own fault. You should do this and that and the other thing.'

And they told him about other people who had all been cured by different remedies from his, adding, by way of consolation,

'You think about it too much! You should get up. There you lie, coddling yourself like a king! But I tell you what, old cockalorum, you don't smell any too sweet!'

The gangrene was, in fact, creeping up farther and farther. It turned even Bovary sick. He kept coming, at all hours of the day. Hippolyte looked up at him with terror-stricken eyes, sobbing and stammering.

'When shall I be well again?... Oh, save me! How bad I feel! How dreadful bad I feel!'

And the doctor would depart, advising him to eat as little as possible.

'Don't listen to him, my lad,' said the Widow Lefrancois. 'Haven't they made a martyr of you enough as it is? You'll make yourself weaker than ever. Here, take and drink this!'

And she would give him some good, strong broth, a slice of mutton or a rasher of bacon, and, now and again, a little nip of brandy that he hadn't the courage to put to his lips.

The Abbe Bournisien, hearing he was getting worse, sent in word that he would like to see him. He began by sympathizing with him, and then said that really he ought to rejoice, seeing that it was God's will, and seize the opportunity of putting himself right with Heaven. 'For,' said the ecclesiastic, talking to him like a father, 'you have been rather careless about your religious duties; I haven't seen much of you in church. And how many years is it since you approached the Holy Table? I can understand that your occupations, the whirl and bustle of the world, may have caused you to neglect the salvation of your soul. But now is the time to bring your thoughts to bear upon it. Do not despair, however. I have known great sinners who, being about to appear before the throne of God (you've not come to that yet, I know), had implored His mercy, and certainly died in an edifying frame of mind. Let us hope that, even as they, you will set us a becoming example. Thus, by way of precaution, why not recite, morning and evening, a "Hail Mary" and an "Our Father"? Yes, do that, do it for me, to oblige me. What does it cost? Will you promise me?'

The poor soul promised. The 'cure' came again and again. He gossiped with the landlady, told little stories, diversified with jokes and puns that Hippolyte never took in. Then, as soon as opportunity offered, he reverted to religious matters, assuming an appropriately solemn expression of countenance.

His zeal seemed to meet with success, for the patient soon expressed a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon Secours, if he got well again; whereto Monsieur Bournisien replied that he saw nothing against it; just as well to have two strings to your bow. Anyhow, he didn't stand to lose anything.

The apothecary was very angry at what he called the priest's manoeuvres. He would have it that they retarded Hippolyte's recovery. 'Let him alone,' he kept saying to Madame Lefrancois, 'let him alone. You take all the nerve out of him with this mysticism of yours.'

But the good woman wouldn't hear another word from him. He was the cause of all this upset. She wasn't going to be told by him, indeed; and to show her independence she went and fixed a stoup of holy water, full to the brim, with a sprig of box in it, at the head of the sick man's bed.

But neither religion nor surgery seemed to do him any good, and the inexorable mortification went on mounting steadily upwards from the extremities to the abdomen. They tried every imaginable kind of draught; they kept putting on fresh poultices. But it was no good. Every day the muscles kept loosening and falling away. Finally, when Madame Lefrancois asked him whether, as a last resort, he couldn't get Dr. Canivet of Neufchatel to come over and look at him. Charles nodded his assent.

Monsieur Canivet, a man of about fifty, was a Doctor of Medicine and something of a celebrity. He had a great deal of self-confidence, and made no effort to restrain a scornful laugh when he laid bare the leg, a mass of gangrene right up to the knee. He declared straight away that it would have to come off, and then went round to the chemist's to say what he thought of the sort of asses who could have brought a man to such a pass. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his frock coat, he began to browbeat him in his pharmacy.

'All a lot of Paris bunkum. That's the sort of thing you get from these gentry in the metropolis. It's on a par with strabotomy, chloroform and lithotomy, a lot of monstrous rubbish that ought to be forbidden by law. But they want to show how smart they are, and chuck their remedies about all over the shop, never caring a damn about the harm they do. We are not like these clever men. There's none of your highfalutin learning, and ornamental theorizing about us. We are practical men, we make folks better when they're ill, and aren't such idiots as to go operating on people who are perfectly well in health. Straighten a club-foot! Why, you might as well try to iron the hump out of a hunchback!'

This was hard doctrine for Homais to swallow; but he concealed his feelings beneath a courtier's smile, for he had to keep in with Monsieur Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came all the way to Yonville. And so he never said a word in Bovary's defence- in fact, he never said anything at all. He let his principles go by the board, and sacrificed dignity to the more important interests of his business.

The amputation of a thigh by Doctor Canivet was an event of no small importance in the village. Everyone was up betimes that morning, and the High Street, though thronged with people, wore an air of mourning as if an execution were going to take place. At the grocer's nothing else was talked of but Hippolyte and his illness; no business was done in the shops, and Madame Tuvache, the 'maire's' lady, never left her window in her anxiety not to miss the surgeon's arrival.

He came in his gig, which he drove himself. The right spring had been so weakened by his weight, for he was a stout man, that the vehicle had a permanent list. On the cushion alongside him was a huge box covered with red sheepskin, with three brass fastenings that shone with impressive effect.

The doctor drove smartly into the yard of the 'Lion d'Or', and in a loud voice called for someone to come and take his horse out. Then he went into the stable himself to see that the animal had a proper feed of oats. For whenever he drove any distance to a patient, his first care was for his horse and trap; a trait that made people exclaim, 'Ah! Monsieur Canivet's a character, he is'. And they thought all the more of him for this be-damned-to-you sort of attitude. The whole world might have gone to ruin to the very last man, he would still have carried on as he had always done.

Homais presented himself. 'On you go! I want you,' said the Doctor. 'Everything ready?'

The apothecary turned red and confessed he hadn't got the nerve to be present at such an operation.

'When you've got to look on,' he said, 'you're apt to give your imagination too much rope. And then my nervous system is so...'

'Bosh!' interrupted Canivet. 'You look more like an apoplectic to me. And, good Lord! that's not to be wondered at. You chemist gentlemen are so continually cooped up in your cook-shops that it's bound to tell on you in the end. Now look at me. Up at four every morning, shave myself in cold water (I never feel the cold), never wear flannel, never catch a chill, sound as a bell in wind and limb. I never bother my head about diet- just eat what comes, as a wise man should. That's why I'm not easily upset like you. It's all one to me whether I carve up a fellow Christian or the first chicken that comes along. And now I suppose you'll go away and say, "Habit, just habit"!'

And then, without any regard for poor Hippolyte, who was sweating with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen engaged in a conversation in which the apothecary compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general commanding an army, a comparison highly gratifying to Canivet, who expatiated at great length on the requirements of his art. He regarded it as a sacred calling, though so many general practitioners brought it into disrepute. At last, coming back to the case, he examined the bandages Homais had brought, the same that had been put into commission for the club-foot, and called for someone to hold the patient's leg. They sent out to find Lestiboudois, and Monsieur Canivet, having rolled up his sleeves, proceeded into the billiard-saloon, while the chemist stayed behind with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons, with their ears glued to the door.

All this time Bovary kept indoors, not daring to stir from the house. He was sitting in the dining-room by the empty grate, his chin sunk on his breast, his hands clasped, staring fixedly before him. 'What a ghastly mess!' he thought. And yet he had taken every imaginable precaution. There was some sort of fate about it. But what of that? If Hippolyte were to die, everyone would say he had killed him. And then what was he to answer when he went his rounds and people asked him about it? Perhaps he had made a mistake somewhere. He thought and thought, but all in vain. Of course the best surgeons make mistakes. But that's just what people never will understand. They would laugh at him. Everyone would be talking. It would get to Forges, Neufchatel, Rouen- everywhere. Quite likely some of the other medical men round about would attack him. There would be a controversy in the papers, and he would have to reply. Hippolyte might bring an action against him. He saw dishonour, ruin, irretrievable disaster staring him in the face, and his imagination, beset with a multitude of conflicting ideas, tossed and tumbled amongst them like an empty cask rolling and wallowing in a heavy sea.

Emma sat opposite, looking at him. She too was feeling humiliated, but from a different cause. She was disgusted with herself for imagining for a single moment that such a man could ever do anything well, she, who scores and scores of times had been mortified by his dull stupidity. Charles started pacing up and down the room. His boots creaked at every step.

'Sit down,' she said, 'you put me on edge!'

And so he sat down.

How had she (and she was no fool), how on earth had she made such a mistake again? And, to go further back, what unutterable madness had possessed her to endure this daily renunciation? She recalled how she loved the good things of life, she thought of how her soul had been starved, of all the pettifogging, debasing round of married life and housekeeping, of her dreams, falling like stricken swallows in the mire, of all the things she had longed for, and all that she had gone without and might have had. 'Why?' she cried. 'Oh, why? Why?'

Amid the silence that weighed upon the town, a piercing shriek rent the air. Bovary went as pale as death. She knit her brows irritably and resumed her thoughts. It was for that, for a man like that, who had no brains and no feeling, who can go on sitting there as if nothing had happened, never so much as dreaming that the whole thing will make me look as big a fool in the eyes of the world as he himself does. She had tried, tried hard, to love him, and the thought that she had yielded to another man had brought tears of repentance to her eyes.

''Suppose after all, it was a valgus!'' exclaimed Charles, who was thinking hard.

This extraordinary and wholly unexpected exclamation fell upon her like the thud of a leaden bullet on a silver plate. She started and looked up inquiringly, as if trying to guess what on earth he could mean. They sat and looked at one another in silence, as if they were scared at each other's presence, so wide and deep was the gulf between their trains of thought. Charles looked at her with the sort of dazed expression of a drunken man, listening motionless the while to the final shrieks of the sufferer, that waxed and waned in a series of long-drawn moans, broken every now and again by sharp, short screams, like the far-off howling of some animal that was being done to death.

Emma bit her pale lips and, rolling a piece of the coral she had broken off between her fingers, she fixed her two glowing pupils on Charles, like a pair of darts ready to take flight. Everything about him grated on her now- his face, his clothes, the things he didn't say, his whole person, his very existence, in short. She repented of her past virtue as if it had been a crime, and what remained of it crumbled to pieces beneath the furious onslaught of her pride. She gloried in her role of triumphant adulteress. The thoughts of her lover came flooding in upon her like a whirling tide. She surrendered her whole soul, borne irresistibly away by this fresh torrent of passion; and Charles seemed as completely severed from her life, as wholly and irrevocably removed, as impossible and non-existent, as if he were on the point of death and had passed through the fatal crisis beneath her eyes.

There was a sound of footsteps on the pavement. Charles looked out, and through the darkened shutter he saw Doctor Canivet, outside the market-hall, in the blazing sunlight, mopping his brow with his bandanna. Homais was coming along behind, carrying a big red box, and they were both going in the direction of the pharmacy.

Then, in an access of tenderness, feeling utterly lonely and dejected, he turned to Emma and said,

'Kiss me, then, my pet.'

'Leave me alone,' she cried, crimson with rage.

'But what is the matter? What is it?' he repeated in amazement. 'Come, be calm. Be yourself! You know perfectly well that I love you! There now, come!'

'No more of it!' she cried in a terrible voice.

And, rushing out of the room, she banged the door so fiercely that the weather-glass fell with a crash upon the floor.

Charles sank back in his chair, utterly overcome, trying to think what could be the matter with her. It must, he thought, be some nervous trouble, and he burst into tears, feeling that some fatal and incomprehensible influence, he knew not what, was at work around him.

That night, when Rodolphe came to the garden, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps. They flung their arms about each other, and all their rancour melted away like snow, beneath the warmth of their embrace.

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