s; and the druggist himself aided in the
preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she pulled together the
strings of her jacket--

"You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn't been
told the night before--"

"Wine glasses!" whispered Homais.

"If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed trotters."

"Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!"

He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some details as
to the catastrophe.

"We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then intolerable
pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma."

"But how did she poison herself?"

"I don't know, doctor, and I don't even know where she can have procured
the arsenious acid."

Justin, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to tremble.

"What's the matter?" said the chemist.

At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the ground with
a crash.

"Imbecile!" cried Homais, "awkward lout! block-head! confounded ass!"

But suddenly controlling himself--

"I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately
introduced a tube--"

"You would have done better," said the physician, "to introduce your
fingers into her throat."

His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a severe
lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and so
verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day very modest. He smiled
without ceasing in an approving manner.

Homais dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought of
Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic
reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him.
He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the
manchineel, vipers.

"I have even read that various persons have found themselves
under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by
black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement fumigation.
At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn up by one of our
pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de
Gassicourt!"

Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines that
are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make his coffee
at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised it, and mixed it
himself.

"Saccharum, doctor?" said he, offering the sugar.

Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the
physician's op