“What! help⁠—help!”

He could only keep repeating the word: “Poisoned! poisoned!” Félicité ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the marketplace; Madame Lefrançois heard it at the Lion d’Or; some got up to go and tell their neighbours, and all night the village was on the alert.

Distraught, faltering, reeling, Charles wandered about the room. He knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never believed that there could be so terrible a sight.

He went home to write to Monsieur Canivet and to Doctor Larivière. He lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough copies. Hippolyte went to Neufchâtel, and Justin so spurred Bovary’s horse that he left it foundered and three parts dead by the hill at Bois-Guillaume.

Charles tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not read it; the lines were dancing.

“Be calm,” said the druggist; “we have only to administer a powerful antidote. What is the poison?”