Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovarylive at home like a recluse. To-day, however, considering the tion—the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the qualityof the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of thecircumstances, it is necessary—”“Oh, you’re going down there!” she said contemptuously. different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And one must“Yes, I am going,” replied the druggist, astonished. “Am I be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct,not a member of the consulting commission?”criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois,ended by saying with a smile—one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants,“That’s another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture you understand, which are the wholesome and those that arematter to you? Do you understand anything about it?” deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it“Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist—that is to is well to pull them up here and re-sow them there, to propagatesome, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace withsay, a chemist. And the object of chemistry, MadameLefrancois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecularaction of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture on the alert to find out improvements.”science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be alwaysis comprised within its domain. And, in fact, the compositionof the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses and the chemist went on—The landlady never took her eyes off the “Cafe Francois”of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is all “Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that atthis, if it isn’t chemistry, pure and simple?”least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science.The landlady did not answer. Homais went on— Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of“Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to over seventy-two pages, entitled, ‘Cider, its Manufacture andhave tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary its Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Subject,’that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and rather to know the composition of the substances in ques-which116