“You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a little bloodletting, less than the extraction of certain corns.”
Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.
“However,” continued the chemist, “it doesn’t concern me. It’s for your sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of your hideous caudication, together with that waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling.”
Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily. Then he attacked him through his vanity:
“Aren’t you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!”
And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science.
The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never interfered with other people’s business, Madame Lefrançois, Artémise, the neighbours, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache—everyone persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for the operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma’s, and Charles consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel.
So by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that