Page 324 - madame-bovary

one might admire a far larger heap, and that surpassed the
others with the superiority that a laboratory must have over
ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy.
She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the
‘Fanal de Rouen’ lay on the ground, outspread between two
pestles. She pushed open the lobby door, and in the middle
of the kitchen, amid brown jars full of picked currants, of
powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on the table,
and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small
and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with
forks in their hands. Justin was standing up with bowed
head, and the chemist was screaming—
‘Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum.’
‘What is it? What is the matter?’
‘What is it?’ replied the druggist. ‘We are making pre-
serves; they are simmering; but they were about to boil
over, because there is too much juice, and I ordered another
pan. Then he, from indolence, from laziness, went and took,
hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key of the Caphar-
naum.’
It was thus the druggist called a small room under the
leads, full of the utensils and the goods of his trade. He of-
ten spent long hours there alone, labelling, decanting, and
doing up again; and he looked upon it not as a simple store,
but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there afterwards issued,
elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses, infusions,
lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his celeb-
rity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it
so, that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open