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and ate well in the refectory. He had in loco parentis* a

wholesale ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took

him out once a month on Sundays after his shop was shut,

sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the boats, and

then brought him back to college at seven o’clock before

supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to

his mother with red ink and three wafers; then he went

over his history note-books, or read an old volume of

‘Anarchasis’ that was knocking about the 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 the class; once even he got a certificate in natural

history. But at the end of his third year his parents

withdrew him from the school to make him study

medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by

himself.

His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor

of a dyer’s she knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She

made arrangements for his board, got him furniture, table

and two chairs, sent home for an old cherry-tree bedstead,

and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with the supply

of wood that was to warm the poor child.

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Then at the end of a week she departed, after a

thousand injunctions to be good now that he was going to

be left to himself.

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, and therapeutics, without counting

hygiene and materia medica—all names of whose

etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so

many doors to sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.

He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to

listen— he did not follow. Still he worked; he had bound

note-books, he attended all the courses, never missed a

single lecture. He did his little daily task like a mill-horse,

who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not

knowing what work he is doing.

To spare him expense his mother sent him every week

by the carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, with

which he lunched when he came back from the hospital,

while he sat kicking his feet against the wall. After this he

had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the

hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the

town. In the evening, after the poor dinner of his

landlord, he went back to his room and set to work again

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in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in front of the

hot stove.

On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the

close streets are empty, when the servants are playing

shuttle-cock at the doors, he opened his window and

leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter 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 the

water. On poles projecting from the attics, skeins of

cotton were drying in the air. Opposite, beyond the roots

spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How

pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-

tree! And he expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet

odours of the country which did not reach him.

He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a

saddened look that made it nearly interesting. Naturally,

through indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he

had made. Once he missed a lecture; the next day all the

lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little, he gave

up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the

public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut

himself up every evening in the dirty public room, to push

about on marble tables the small sheep bones with black

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dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which

raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see life,

the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he

put his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual.

Then many things hidden within him came out; he learnt

couplets by heart and sang them to his boon companions,

became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to make

punch, and, finally, how to make love.

Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed

completely in his examination for an ordinary degree. He

was expected home the same night to celebrate his success.

He started on foot, stopped at the beginning of the village,

sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused him,

threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the

examiners, encouraged him a little, and took upon herself

to set matters straight. It was only five years later that

Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was old then, and he

accepted it. Moreover, he could 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 passed pretty well. What a happy day for his

mother! They gave a grand dinner.

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Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where

there was only one old doctor. For a long time Madame

Bovary had been on the look-out for his death, and the

old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was

installed, opposite his place, as his successor.

But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to

have had him taught medicine, and discovered Tostes,

where he could practice it; he must have a wife. She

found him one—the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe—who

was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred

francs. Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face

with as many pimples as the spring has buds, Madame

Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her ends Madame

Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in

very cleverly baffling the intrigues 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 and his money. But his wife was master; he had to

say this and not say that in company, to fast every Friday,

dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients who

did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings

and goings, and listened at the partition-wall when

women came to consult him in his surgery.

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She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions

without end. She constantly complained of her nerves, her

chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when

people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they

came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles

returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin

arms from beneath the sheets, put them round his neck,

and having made him sit down on the edge of the bed,

began to talk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting

her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be

unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of

medicine and a little more love.

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CHAPTER TWO

One night towards eleven o’clock they were awakened

by the noise of a horse pulling up outside their door. The

servant opened the garret-window and parleyed for some

time with a man in the street below. He came for the

doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs

shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other.

The man left his horse, and, following the servant,

suddenly came in behind her. He pulled out from his

wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in a rag

and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his

elbow on the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the

bed, held the light. Madame in modesty had turned to the

wall and showed only her back.

This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged

Monsieur Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the

Bertaux to set a broken leg. Now from Tostes to the

Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across country by way

of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;

Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her

husband. So it was decided the stable-boy should go on

first; Charles would start three hours later when the moon

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rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and show him the

way to the farm, and open the gates for him.

Towards four o’clock in the morning, Charles, well

wrapped up in his cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still

sleepy from the warmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled

by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped of its own

accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that

are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a

start, suddenly remembered the broken leg, and tried to

call to mind all the fractures he knew. The rain had

stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of the

leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers

bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country

stretched as far as eye could see, and the tufts of trees

round the farms at long intervals seemed like dark violet

stains on the cast grey surface, that on the 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, his recent sensations blending with

memories, he became conscious of a double self, at once

student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and

crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of

poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of

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dew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods

of the bed and saw his wife sleeping. As he passed

Vassonville he came upon a 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

his hands and ran on in front of him.

The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from

his guide’s talk that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the

well-to-do farmers.

He had broken his leg the evening before on his way

home from a Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour’s. His

wife had been dead for two years. There was with him

only his daughter, who helped him to keep house.

The ruts were becoming deeper; they were

approaching the Bertaux.

The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge,

disappeared; then he came back to the end of a courtyard

to open the gate. The horse slipped on the wet grass;

Charles had to stoop to pass under the branches. The

watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their

chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took fright

and stumbled.

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It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over

the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses

quietly feeding from new racks. Right along the

outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from which

manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five

or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were

foraging on the top of it. The sheepfold was long, the barn

high, with walls smooth as your hand. Under the cart-shed

were two large carts and four ploughs, with their whips,

shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool

were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the

granaries. The courtyard sloped upwards, planted with

trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of a

flock of geese was heard near the pond.

A young woman in a blue merino dress with three

flounces came to the threshold of the door to receive

Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the kitchen, where a

large fire was blazing. The servant’s breakfast was boiling

beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were

drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and

the nozzle of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like

polished steel, while along the walls hung many pots and

pans in which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling with

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the first rays of the sun coming in through the window,

was mirrored fitfully.

Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He

found him in his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes,

having thrown his cotton nightcap right away from him.

He was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin and blue

eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore earrings.

By his side on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy,

whence he poured himself a little from time to time to

keep up his spirits; but as soon as he caught sight of the

doctor his elation subsided, and instead of swearing, as he

had been doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan

freely.

The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of

complication.

Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then

calling to mind the devices of his masters at the bedsides of

patients, he comforted the sufferer with all sorts of kindly

remarks, those Caresses of the surgeon that are like the oil

they put on bistouries. In order to make some splints a

bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house.

Charles selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it

with a fragment of windowpane, while the servant tore up

sheets to make bandages, and Mademoiselle Emma tried to

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sew some pads. As she was a long time before she found

her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not