“Heavens!” exclaimed M. de Terremondre, the book-lover, “this learned storehouse of our Fröben, our Elzevir, our Debure, confused with the chemist’s shop of Thomas Diafoirus! What an outrage!”
“Indeed,” replied Dr. Fornerol, “the good soul meant no harm in showing Paillot the seat of her trouble. But it won’t do to judge the peasants by her. In general, they show extreme repugnance to letting themselves be seen by the doctor. My country colleagues have often remarked this to me. Country-women, attacked by serious diseases, resist examination with an energy and obstinacy which townswomen, and particularly women of the world, do not show in the same circumstances. I saw a farmer’s wife at Lucigny die of an internal tumour, which she had never allowed to be suspected.”
M. de Terremondre, who, as president of several local academies, had literary prejudices, took these remarks as a pretext for accusing Zola of having shamefully maligned the peasants in La Terre. At this accusation, M. Bergeret emerged from his pensive sadness and said:
“Yet the peasants are drunkards and parricides, and voluntarily incestuous, as Zola has depicted them. Their repugnance to lend themselves to clinical inspection by no means proves their chastity. It only shows the power of prejudice in minds of limited intelligence. The simpler a prejudice is, the stronger is its power. The prejudice that it is wrong to be seen naked remains powerful with them. It has been weakened amongst artists and people of intelligence by the custom of baths, douches, and massage; it has been still further weakened by æsthetic feeling and by the taste for voluptuous sensations, and it easily yields to considerations of health and hygiene. This is all that can be deduced from the doctor’s observations.”
“I have noticed,” said M. de Terremondre, “that well-made women …”
“There are hardly any,” said the doctor.
“Doctor, you remind me of my chiropodist,” replied M. de Terremondre. “He said to me one day: ‘If you were a chiropodist, sir, you would take no stock in women.’”
Paillot, the bookseller, who for some moments had been glued to the wall listening intently, said:
“I don’t know what is going on in Queen Marguerite’s house; I hear cries and the noise of furniture being overturned.”
And he was again seized with his customary misgiving.