"Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the
"Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting,
and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic.
But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he
exclaimed-"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable
industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work.
Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are floundering about in
mere barbarism."
The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it
were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.
"This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection."
And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first
time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque cornea," "sclerotic,"
"facies," then asked him in a paternal tone-"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself."
He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind
man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last
Monsieur Homais opened his purse-"Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my advice:
you'll be the better for it."
Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the druggist
said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic pomade of his own
composition, and he gave his address--"Monsieur Homais, near the market,
pretty well known."
"Now," said Hivert, "for all this trouble you'll give us your
performance."
The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back,
whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed
his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a
famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder
a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine
thus to throw it away.
The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant out
through the window, crying-"No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the
diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries."
The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes
gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue
overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied, discouraged, almost
asleep.