Page 414 - madame-bovary

seized with convulsions and cried out—
‘Ah! my God! It is horrible!’
He threw himself on his knees by her bed.
‘Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven’s
sake!’
And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such
as she had never seen.
‘Well, there—there!’ she said in a faint voice. He flew to
the writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: ‘Ac-
cuse no one.’ He stopped, passed his hands across his eyes,
and read it over again.
‘What! help—help!’
He could only keep repeating the word: ‘Poisoned! poi-
soned!’ Felicite ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the
market-place; Madame Lefrancois 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 Doc-
tor Lariviere. He lost his head, and made more than fifteen
rough copies. Hippolyte went to Neufchatel, 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

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