Page 275 - madame-bovary

‘Take care; you’ll wake her!’ said Bovary in a low voice.
‘And not only,’ the druggist went on, ‘are human beings
subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are
not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced
by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline
race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose
authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old com-
rades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses
a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a
snuff-box to him. He often even makes the experiment be-
fore his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume Wood.
Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could
produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is ex-
tremely curious, is it not?’
‘Yes,’ said Charles, who was not listening to him.
‘This shows us,’ went on the other, smiling with be-
nign self-sufficiency, ‘the innumerable irregularities of the
nervous system. With regard to madame, she has always
seemed to me, I confess, very susceptible. And so I should
by no means recommend to you, my dear friend, any of
those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of attack-
ing the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless
physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcifi-
cation. Then, don’t you think that perhaps her imagination
should be worked upon?’
‘In what way? How?’ said Bovary.
‘Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. ‘That is the
question,’ as I lately read in a newspaper.’
But Emma, awaking, cried out—

Madame Bovary