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wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of

Yvetot had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he

had only just set up on the place, he had taken a lot of

trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish that

evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin with, at its

base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a

temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all

round, and in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars;

then on the second stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake,

surrounded by many fortifications in candied angelica,

almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on

the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of

jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in

a chocolate swing whose two uprights ended in real roses

for balls at the top.

Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired

of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a

game with corks in the granary, and then returned to

table. Some towards the finish went to sleep and snored.

But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began

songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed

feats with their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their

shoulders, made broad jokes, kissed the women. At night

when they left, the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with

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oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked,

reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore;

and all night in the light of the moon along country roads

there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the

ditches, jumping over yard after yard of stones, clambering

up the hills, with women leaning out from the tilt to catch

hold of the reins.

Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night

drinking in the kitchen. The children had fallen asleep

under the seats.

The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual

marriage pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their

cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles for his

wedding present), began to squirt water from his mouth

through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in

time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished

position of his son-in-law would not allow of such

liberties. The cousin all the same did not give in to these

reasons readily. In his heart he accused old Rouault of

being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a

corner, who having, through mere chance, been several

times running served with the worst helps of meat, also

were of opinion they had been badly used, and were

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whispering about their host, and with covered hints

hoping he would ruin himself.

Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all

day. She had been consulted neither as to the dress of her

daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she

went to bed early. Her husband, instead of following her,

sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till

daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to

the company. This added greatly to the consideration in

which he was held.

Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine

at the wedding. He answered feebly to the puns, doubles

entendres*, compliments, and chaff that it was felt a duty

to let off at him as soon as the soup appeared.

*Double meanings.

The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another

man. It was he who might rather have been taken for the

virgin of the evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign

that revealed anything. The shrewdest did not know what

to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near

them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But

Charles concealed nothing. He called her ‘my wife’,

tutoyed* her, asked for her of everyone, looked for her

everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards,

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where he could be seen from far between the trees,

putting his arm around her waist, and walking half-

bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice

with his head.

*Used the familiar form of address.

Two days after the wedding the married pair left.

Charles, on account of his patients, could not be away

longer. Old Rouault had them driven back in his cart, and

himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here he

embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and

went his way. When he had gone about a hundred paces

he stopped, and as he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels

turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh. Then he

remembered his wedding, the old times, the first

pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the

day when he had taken her from her father to his home,

and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the

snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the country was

all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging

from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her

Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes flapped across his

mouth, and when he turned his head he saw near him, on

his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently under the

gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them

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from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was!

Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he

looked back and saw nothing on the road. He felt dreary

as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with

the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the

feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards

the church. As he was afraid, however, that this sight

would make him yet more sad, he went right away home.

Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about

six o’clock.

The neighbors came to the windows to see their

doctor’s new wife.

The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her,

apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that

madame, in the meantime, should look over her house.

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CHAPTER FIVE

The brick front was just in a line with the street, or

rather the road. Behind the door hung a cloak with a small

collar, a bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor,

in a corner, were a pair of leggings, still covered with dry

mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was both

dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at

the top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered

everywhere over the badly stretched canvas; white calico

curtains with a red border hung crossways at the length of

the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with

a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two

plate candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of

the passage was Charles’s consulting room, a little room

about six paces wide, with a table, three chairs, and an

office chair. Volumes of the ‘Dictionary of Medical

Science,’ uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the

successive sales through which they had gone, occupied

almost along the six shelves of a deal bookcase.

The smell of melted butter penetrated through the

walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one

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could hear the people coughing in the consulting room

and recounting their histories.

Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came

a large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a

wood-house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish, of

empty casks, agricultural implements past service, and a

mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to guess.

The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud

walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that

separated it from the field. In the middle was a slate

sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with

eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful

kitchen garden bed. Right at the bottom, under the spruce

bushes, was a cure in plaster reading his breviary.

Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished,

but in the second, which was their bedroom, was a

mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery. A shell

box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary

near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with

white satin ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride’s

bouquet; it was the other one’s. She looked at it. Charles

noticed it; he took it and carried it up to the attic, while

Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting her

things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers

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packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what

would be done with them if she were to die.

During the first days she occupied herself in thinking

about changes in the house. She took the shades off the

candlesticks, had new wallpaper put up, the staircase

repainted, and seats made in the garden round the sundial;

she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet

fountain and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she

liked to drive out, picked up a second-hand dogcart,

which, with new lamps and splashboard in striped leather,

looked almost like a tilbury.

He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A

meal together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a

gesture of her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw

hat hanging from the window-fastener, and many another

thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure,

now made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed,

in the morning, by her side, on the pillow, he watched the

sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek, half

hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen thus closely,

her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on

waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times.

Black in the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had,

as it were, depths of different colours, that, darker in the

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centre, grew paler towards the surface of the eye. His own

eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in

miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief

round his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She

came to the window to see him off, and stayed leaning on

the sill between two pots of geranium, clad in her dressing

gown hanging loosely about her. Charles, in the street

buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while

she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth

some scrap of flower or leaf that she blew out at him.

Then this, eddying, floating, described semicircles in the

air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the

ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare

standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback

threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the

window, and he set off. And then along the highroad,

spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes

that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where

the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back

and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys

of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went

on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner

taste again the truffles which they are digesting.

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Until now what good had he had of his life? His time

at school, when he remained shut up within the high

walls, alone, in the midst of companions richer than he or

cleverer at their work, who laughed at his accent, who

jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the

school with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he

studied medicine, and never had his purse full enough to

treat some little work-girl who would have become his

mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with

the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But

now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he

adored. For him the universe did not extend beyond the

circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself

with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he

turned back quickly, ran up the stairs with a beating heart.

Emma, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe,

kissed her back; she gave a cry.

He could not keep from constantly touching her comb,

her ring, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding

kisses with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses

in a row all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers

up to her shoulder, and she put him away half-smiling,

half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.

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Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the

happiness that should have followed this love not having

come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And

Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by

the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her

so beautiful in books.

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CHAPTER SIX

She had read ‘Paul and Virginia,’ and she had dreamed

of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog

Fiddle, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear

little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller

than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing

you a bird’s nest.

When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to

town to place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn

in the St. Gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they

used painted plates that set forth the story of Mademoiselle

de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped here and

there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the

tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.