At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between his fingers.  A shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak.  His hat fell off.

“I thought as much,” said Bovary, pressing his finger on the vein.

The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin’s hands; his knees shook, he turned pale.

“Emma!  Emma!” called Charles.

With one bound she came down the staircase.

“Some vinegar,” he cried.  “O dear! two at once!”

And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress.

“It is nothing,” said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking Justin in his arms.  He seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall.

Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat.  The strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers about the young fellow’s neck.  Then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly.  The ploughman revived, but Justin’s syncope still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in the pale sclerotics like blue flowers in milk.

“We must hide this from him,” said Charles.

Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table.  With the movement she made in bending down, her dress (it was a summer dress with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma stooping, staggered a little as she stretched out her arms.

The stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust.

Then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived.  The servant had been to fetch him in the tumult.  Seeing his pupil’s eyes staring he drew a long breath; then going around him he looked at him from head to foot.

“Fool!” he said, “really a little fool!  A fool in four letters!  A phlebotomy’s a big affair, isn’t it!  And a fellow who isn’t afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts.  Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about yourself!  Here’s a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile.”

Justin did not answer.  The chemist went on—­

“Who asked you to come?  You are always pestering the doctor and madame.  On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me.  There are now twenty people in the shop.  I left everything because of the interest I take in you.  Come, get along!  Sharp!  Wait for me, and keep an eye on the jars.”

When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a little while about fainting-fits.  Madame Bovary had never fainted.