Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

• Publisher: Youcanprint
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9788892698352
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Classici

For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the English translation of Francis Steegmuller), and its creation of a world whose minor figures are as vital as its doomed heroine. In reading Madame Bovary, one experiences a work that remains genuinely revolutionary almost a century and a half after its creation.

Part I

 

Chapter One

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a“new fellow,” not wearing the school uniform, and aschool servantcarrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep wokeup, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.

The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning tothe class-master, he said to him in a low voice—

“Monsieur Roger, here is a pupilwhom I recommend to yourcare; he’ll be in the second. If his work and conduct aresatisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomeshis age.”

The “new fellow,” standing in the corner behind thedoor so that he could hardly be seen, was acountry lad of aboutfifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on hisforehead like a village chorister’s; he looked reliable, butvery ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his shortschool jacket of green cloth with blackbuttons must have been tightabout the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs redwrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in blue stockings,looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces, Hewore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.

We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, asattentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs orlean on his elbow; and when at two o’clock the bell rang, themaster was obliged to tell him to fall into line withthe rest ofus.

When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing ourcaps on the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used fromthe door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against thewall and made a lot of dust: it was “the thing.”

But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare toattempt it, the “new fellow,” was still holding his capon his knees even after prayers were over. It was one of thosehead-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of thebearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap;one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depthsof expression, like an imbecile’s face. Oval, stiffened withwhalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in successionlozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; afterthat a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered withcomplicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thincord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The capwas new; its peak shone.

“Rise,” said the master.

He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. Hestooped to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with hiselbow; he picked it up once more.

“Get rid of your helmet,” saidthe master, who was abit of a wag.

There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughlyput the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether tokeep his cap in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on hishead. He sat down again and placed it on his knee.

“Rise,” repeated the master, “and tell me yourname.”

The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligiblename.

“Again!”

The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by thetittering of the class.

“Louder!”cried the master; “louder!”

The “new fellow” then took a supreme resolution,opened an inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of hisvoice as if calling someone in the word“Charbovari.”

A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrillvoices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated “Charbovari!Charbovari”), then died away into single notes, growingquieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenlyrecommencing along the line of a form whence rose here and there,like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.

However, amid a rain of impositions, order was graduallyre-established in the class; and the master having succeeded incatching the name of “Charles Bovary,” having had itdictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, atonce ordered the poordevil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of themaster’s desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.

“What are you looking for?” asked the master.

“My c-a-p,” timidly said the “newfellow,” casting troubled looksround him.

“Five hundred lines for all the class!” shouted in afurious voice stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst.“Silence!” continued the master indignantly, wiping hisbrow with his handkerchief, which he had just taken from his cap.“As to you, ‘new boy,’ you will conjugate‘ridiculus sum’ ** twenty times.”

Then, in a gentler tone, “Come, you’ll find your capagain; it hasn’t been stolen.”

*A quotation from the Aeneid signifying athreat. **I am ridiculous.

Quiet was restored. Heads bentover desks, and the “newfellow” remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude,although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tipof a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his face with one handand continued motionless, his eyes lowered.

In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from hisdesk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper.We saw him working conscientiously, looking up every word in thedictionary, and taking the greatest pains. Thanks, nodoubt, to thewillingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below.But though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish incomposition. It was the cure of his village who had taught him hisfirst Latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent himto school as late as possible.

His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retiredassistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certainconscription scandals, and forced at this time to leave theservice, had taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of adowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of ahosier’s daughter who had fallen in love with his good looks.A fine man, a great talker, making his spurs ring as he walked,wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache, his fingers alwaysgarnished with rings and dressed in loud colours, he had the dashof a military man with the easy go of a commercial traveller.

Once married, he lived for three or four years on hiswife’s fortune, dining well, risinglate, smoking longporcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theatre, andhaunting cafes. The father-in-law died, leaving little; he wasindignant at this, “went in for the business,” lostsome money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought hewould make money.

But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rodehis horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider inbottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in hisfarmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs,he was not long in finding out that he would do better to give upall speculation.

For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the borderof the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm,half private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets,cursing his luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at theage of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live atpeace.

His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him withathousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Livelyonce, expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become(after the fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar)ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so muchwithout complaint at first, until she had seem him going after allthe village drabs, and until a score of bad houses sent him back toher at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. Afterthat she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that shemaintained till her death. She was constantly going about lookingafter business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president,remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at homeironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts,while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted insleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeablethings to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into thecinders.

When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When hecame home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His motherstuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and,playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quitenaked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas,he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought tomould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like aSpartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bedwithout any fire, taughthim to drink off large draughts of rum andto jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the ladanswered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept himnear her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales,entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaietyand charming nonsense. In her life’s isolation she centeredon the child’s head all her shattered, broken littlevanities. She dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall,handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She taughthim to read, and even, on an old piano, she had taught him two orthree little songs. But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring littlefor letters, said, “It was not worth while. Would they everhave the means to send him toa public school, to buy him apractice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a manalways gets on in the world.” Madame Bovary bit her lips, andthe child knocked about the village.

He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth theravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along thehedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking duringharvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the churchporch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle tolet himtoll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long ropeand feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grewlike an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour.

When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; hebeganlessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so shortand irregular that they could not be of much use. They were givenat spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between abaptism and a burial; or else the cure, if he hadnot to go out,sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They went up to his room andsettled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. Itwas close, the child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning todoze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouthwide open. On other occasions, when Monsieur le Cure, on his wayback after administering the viaticum to some sick person in theneighbourhood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, hecalled him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and tookadvantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at thefoot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintancepassed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even saidthe “young man” had a very good memory.

*A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at thesound of a bell. Here, the eveningprayer.

Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strongsteps. Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave inwithout a struggle, and theywaited one year longer, so that the ladshould take his first communion.

Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finallysent to school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the endof October, at the time of the St. Romain fair.

It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anythingabout him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played inplaytime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, sleptwell in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory. He had inloco parentis* a wholesale ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who tookhim out once a month on Sundays after his shop was shut, sent himfor a walk on the quay to look at the boats, and then brought himback to college at seven o’clock before supper. EveryThursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with red inkand three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or readan old volume of “Anarchasis” that was knocking aboutthe study. When he went for walks he talked to the servant, who,like himself,came from the country.

*In place of a parent.

By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of theclass; once even he got a certificate in natural history. But atthe end of his third year his parents withdrew him from the schoolto make him studymedicine, convinced that he could even take hisdegree by himself.

His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of adyer’s she knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She madearrangements for his board, got him furniture, table and twochairs,sent home for an old cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides asmall cast-iron stove with the supply of wood that was to warm thepoor child.

Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousandinjunctions to be good now that he was going to be left tohimself.

The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him;lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology,lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, andtherapeutics, without counting hygiene and materia medica—allnames of whose etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him asso many doors to sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.

He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well tolisten—he did not follow. Still he worked; he had boundnote-books, he attended all the courses, never missed a singlelecture. He did his little daily task like a mill-horse, who goesround and round with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work he isdoing.

To spare him expense his mother sent him every week bythecarrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunchedwhen he came back from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feetagainst the wall. After this he had to run off to lectures, to theoperation-room, to the hospital, and return to his homeat the otherend of the town. In the evening, after the poor dinner of hislandlord, he went back to his room and set to work again in his wetclothes, which smoked as he sat in front of the hot stove.

On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streetsare empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors,he opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of thisquarter of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him,between the bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue.Working men, kneeling on the banks, washed their bare arms in thewater. On poles projecting from the attics, skeins of cotton weredrying in the air. Opposite, beyond the roots spread the pureheaven with the red sun setting. How pleasant it must be at home!How fresh under the beech-tree! And he expanded his nostrils tobreathe in the sweet odours of the country which did not reachhim.

He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddenedlook that made it nearly interesting.Naturally, throughindifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once hemissed a lecture; the next day all the lectures; and, enjoying hisidleness, little by little, he gave up work altogether. He got intothe habit of going to the public-house, and had a passion fordominoes. To shut himself up every evening in the dirty publicroom, to push about on marble tables the small sheep bones withblack dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which raisedhim in his own esteem. It was beginning to see life, the sweetnessof stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his hand on thedoor-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things hiddenwithin him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them tohis boon companions, becameenthusiastic about Beranger, learnt howto make punch, and, finally, how to make love.

Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in hisexamination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the samenight to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at thebeginning of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all.She excused him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice ofthe examiners, encouragedhim a little, and took upon herself to setmatters straight. It wasonly five years later that Monsieur Bovaryknew the truth; it was old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, hecould not believe that a man born of him could be a fool.

So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passedpretty well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a granddinner.

Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was onlyone old doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on thelook-out for hisdeath, and the old fellow had barely been packedoff when Charles was installed, opposite his place, as hissuccessor.

But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have hadhim taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practiceit; he must have a wife. She found him one—the widow of abailiff at Dieppe—who was forty-five and had an income oftwelve hundred francs. Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, herface with as many pimples as the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc hadno lack of suitors. To attain her ends Madame Bovary had to oustthem all, and she even succeeded in very cleverly baffling theintrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the priests.

Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life,thinking he would be more free to do as he liked with himself andhis money. But his wife was master; he had to say this and not saythat in company, to fast every Friday, dress as she liked, harassat her bidding those patients who did not pay. She opened hisletter, watched his comings and goings, and listened at thepartition-wall when women came to consult him in his surgery.

She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions withoutend. She constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver.The noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitudebecame odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to seeher die. When Charles returned in the evening, she stretched forthtwo long thin arms from beneath the sheets, put them round hisneck, and having made him sit down on the edge of the bed, began totalk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting her, he lovedanother. She had been warned she would be unhappy; and she ended byasking him for a dose of medicine and a little more love.

Chapter Two

One night towards eleven o’clock they were awakened by thenoise of a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant openedthe garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in thestreet below. He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasiecame downstairs shivering and undid the bars and bolts one afterthe other. The man left his horse, and, following the servant,suddenly came in behind her. He pulled out from his wool cap withgrey top-knots a letter wrapped up in a rag and presenteditgingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on the pillow toread it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light. Madame inmodesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.

This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, beggedMonsieur Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux toset a broken leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a goodeighteen miles across country by way of Longueville andSaint-Victor. It was a dark night; Madame Bovary junior was afraidof accidents for her husband. So it was decided the stable-boyshould go on first; Charles would start three hours later when themoon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and show him the wayto the farm, and open the gates for him.

Towards four o’clock in the morning,Charles, well wrappedup in his cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from thewarmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot ofhis horse. When it stopped of its own accord in front of thoseholes surrounded with thorns that are dugon the margin of furrows,Charles awoke with a start, suddenly remembered the broken leg, andtried to call to mind all the fractures he knew. The rain hadstopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of the leaflesstrees birds roosted motionless, theirlittle feathers bristling inthe cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as eyecould see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervalsseemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that onthe horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.

Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary,and, sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, hisrecent sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of adouble self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed asbut now, and crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warmsmell of poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh odour ofdew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of thebed and saw his wife sleeping. As hepassed Vassonville he came upona boy sitting on the grass at the edge of a ditch.

“Are you the doctor?” asked the child.

And on Charles’s answer he took his wooden shoes in hishands and ran on in front of him.

The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from hisguide’s talk that Monsieur Rouault must be one of thewell-to-do farmers.

He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from aTwelfth-night feast at a neighbour’s. His wife had been deadfor two years. There was with him only hisdaughter, who helped himto keep house.

The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching theBertaux.

The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge,disappeared; then he came back to the end of a courtyard to openthe gate. The horse slipped onthe wet grass; Charles had to stoopto pass under the branches. The watchdogs in their kennels barked,dragging at their chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse tookfright and stumbled.

It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over thetopof the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietlyfeeding from new racks. Right along the outbuildings extended alarge dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowlsand turkeys, five or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards,were foraging on the top of it. The sheepfold was long, the barnhigh, with walls smooth as your hand. Under the cart-shed were twolarge carts and four ploughs, with their whips, shafts andharnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool were getting soiledby the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The courtyard slopedupwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and thechattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.

A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came tothe threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she ledto the kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant’sbreakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Somedamp clothes were drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel,tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of colossal size, shonelike polished steel, while along the walls hung many pots and pansin which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling with the firstrays of the sun coming in through the window, was mirroredfitfully.

Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He found himin his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown hiscotton nightcap right away from him. He was a fat little man offifty, with white skin and blue eyes, the forepartof his head bald,and he wore earrings. By his side on a chair stood a large decanterof brandy, whence he poured himself a little from time to time tokeep up his spirits; but as soon as he caught sight of the doctorhis elation subsided, and instead of swearing, as he had been doingfor the last twelve hours, began to groan freely.

The fracture was a simple one, without any kind ofcomplication.

Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling tomind the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients, hecomforted the sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, thosecaresses of the surgeon that are like the oil they put onbistouries. In order to make some splints a bundle of laths wasbrought up from the cart-house. Charles selected one,cut it intotwo pieces and planed it with a fragment of windowpane, while theservant tore up sheets to make bandages, and Mademoiselle Emmatried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before she found herwork-case, her father grew impatient; she didnot answer, but as shesewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth tosuck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails.They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivoryof Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful,perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles;besides, it was toolong, with no soft inflections in the outlines.Her real beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed blackbecause of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with acandid boldness.

The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouaulthimself to “pick a bit” before he left.

Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives andforks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at thefoot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figuresrepresenting Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheetsthat escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. On thefloor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. Thesewere the overflow from the neighbouring granary, to which threestone steps led. By way of decoration for the apartment, hanging toa nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint scaled off fromthe effects of thesaltpetre, was a crayon head of Minerva in goldframe, underneath which was written in Gothic letters “Todear Papa.”

First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of thegreat cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night.

Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especiallynow that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the roomwas chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of herfull lips, that she had a habit of biting when silent.

Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair,whose two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth werethey, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curvedslightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip ofthe ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavymovement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for thefirst time in his life. The upper part of her cheek wasrose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttonsof her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.

When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned tothe room before leaving, he found her standing, her foreheadagainst the window, looking into the garden, where the bean propshad been knocked down by the wind. She turnedround. “Are youlooking for anything?” she asked.

“My whip, if you please,” he answered.

He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under thechairs. It had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall.Mademoiselle Emma saw it, and bent overthe flour sacks.

Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretchedout his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against theback of the young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up,scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulderas she handed him hiswhip.

Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he hadpromised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice aweek, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if byaccident.

Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressedfavourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault wasseen trying to walk alone in his “den,” MonsieurBovarybegan to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. Old Rouaultsaid that he could not have been cured better by the first doctorof Yvetot, or even of Rouen.

As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was apleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, nodoubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, orperhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this,however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exceptionto the meagre occupations of his life? On these days he rose early,set off at a gallop, urging on his horse, then got down to wipehisboots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. Heliked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn againsthis shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him.He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old Rouault,whopressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the smallwooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of thekitchen—her high heels made her a little taller; and when shewalked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quicklystruck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots.

She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. Whenhis horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They hadsaid “Good-bye”; there was no more talking. The openair wrappedher round, playing with the soft down on the back of herneck, or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-strings, thatfluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw the bark of the treesin the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildingswasmelting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch hersunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of the colour ofpigeons’ breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted upwith shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under thetender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by oneon the stretched silk.

During the first period of Charles’s visits to theBertaux, Madame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after theinvalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kepton asystem of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. Butwhen she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, andshe learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the UrsulineConvent, had received what is called “a goodeducation”; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how toembroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.

“So it is for this,” she said to herself,“that his face beams when he goes to see her, and that heputs on his new waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it with the rain.Ah! that woman! That woman!”

And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herselfby allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casualobservations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by openapostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. “Why did hego back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was cured and thatthese folks hadn’t paid yet? Ah! it was because a young ladywas there, some one who know how to talk, to embroider, to bewitty. That was what he cared about; he wanted town misses.”And she went on—

“The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Theirgrandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almosthad up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is notworth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church onSundays in a silkgown like a countess. Besides, the poor old chap,if it hadn’t been for the colza last year, would have hadmuch ado to pay up his arrears.”

For very weariness Charles left off goingto the Bertaux. Heloisemade him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go thereno more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst oflove. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protestedagainst the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kindof naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sortof right to love her. And then the widow was thin; she had longteeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of whichhung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathedin her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, anddisplayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed overgrey stockings.

Charles’s mother came to see them from time to time, butaftera few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge onher, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with theirreflections and observations. It was wrong of him to eat somuch.

Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone whocame?What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it cameabout that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widowDubuc’s property, one fine day went off, taking with him allthe money in his office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed,besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her housein the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that hadbeen so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a littlefurniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. Thematter hadto be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found to beeaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placedwith the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did notexceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In hisexasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on theflags, accused his wife of having caused misfortune to the son byharnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn’t worthher hide. They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There werescenes.Heloise in tears, throwing her arms about her husband,implored him to defend her from his parents.

Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left thehouse.

But “the blow had struck home.” A week after, as shewas hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with aspitting of blood, and the next day, while Charles had his backturned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, “OGod!” gave a sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise!When all was over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found noone downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; sawher dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaningagainst the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in asorrowful reverie. She had loved himafter all!