Datasets:

pszemraj

/

booksum-1024-output

like 0

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_27_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 27

chapter 27

{"name": "Chapter 27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter27", "summary": "Book Fourth Chapter 27: A Crisis Three weeks after Arthur's party, just before harvest, as the apples are falling in the orchards, the crisis that has been building erupts. Adam's hopes have been buoyed again, and he is working double, for the squire and Jonathan Burge. Hetty seems more serious and mature to Adam these days. She is still getting her sewing lessons, and on the night she is coming home through the wood, Adam is taking a short cut through there after having done repairs on the Chase Farm. He hears that Arthur is leaving in two days to join his regiment. Just as the sun is setting he sees two figures in the wood, and he freezes. They are kissing and saying goodbye. Gyp barks, and the figures break apart. One figure rushes out the gate to the fields, while the other comes towards Adam in the wood. It is Arthur, slightly drunk, swaggering and trying to bluff with Adam about the incident. He thinks Adam is the best person to have caught him and Hetty together, for he can be trusted not to tell anyone. He mentions casually that he just gave Hetty a kiss after walking with her, and he tries to pass by Adam, as if no harm had been done. It was just a bit of flirting, he says. Adam tells him to wait, and accuses him of being two-faced, for Hetty could have loved him if Arthur, whom he thought his friend, hadn't ruined it. Arthur is shocked that Adam loves Hetty, and begins to see the whole affair as much more serious than he imagined. Adam's blood is up, and he taunts Arthur until he fights. The two begin a furious fist fight until Adam knocks Arthur down, and he does not get up. Adam is terrified of his own strength, afraid that he has killed Arthur.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 27 After much buildup and suspense, the secret bursts out, and it is fatal for Arthur that it is Adam who sees him with Hetty, though at first he thinks Adam will understand and cover for him. This misunderstanding shows the difference between Adam and Arthur both in character and in class expectations. Arthur's class of gentlemen takes it as nothing unusual to have affairs with servant girls. If worst comes to worst with such a fling, a rich man can always pay his way out of the trouble, for he would never be expected by his peers to marry or be made uncomfortable by any complications. Arthur expects Adam to have such a cavalier attitude as well. He passes the incident off as not serious. His casual manner incenses Adam in two ways; first, because Hetty is the woman he loves; second, even if she weren't, Arthur puts a blot on Hetty's reputation and life, and that is not a mere trifle for the servant girl. Adam's working class on the whole expects courting to end in marriage, so if one does not have that intention, then one is acting dishonorably. Adam's illusions crash because he has believed in the superiority of rank and has believed in Arthur personally. Arthur's bubble is burst too: he is suddenly shocked by feeling the first hatred he has ever encountered in his life, and from one of the people whose opinion mattered to him. He realizes from the way Adam talks, however, that he believes it is a flirtation and nothing more. He sticks to this lie, then, as his only way out of the mess. Fiction in 1859 did not discuss explicit sexual encounters, but these hints by the characters and narrator are enough to confirm in a round-about way that Hetty and Arthur are definitely having a sexual affair, though Adam has bought Arthur's lie that it is only a flirtation. Even a servant found kissing a gentleman could be turned away from employment, and certainly would have a difficult time marrying, for the worst would be assumed. In a small town like Hayslope, one mistake like this can ruin a person's life. Adam knows Hetty will be destroyed if it is found out, but he himself is too good a man to think that the affair is that far along, that either Hetty or Arthur could have stooped so low. He is a bit naive about the weaknesses of others, and Arthur takes advantage of this. Adam's strength is also his weakness. He holds himself back by sheer will power in the beginning, knowing he is a strong man and that violence is wrong. It has been mentioned that he stopped fighting when he injured a man a few years ago, and he cautions himself not to do it now. If Arthur had humbled himself or spoken truthfully, there might have been some other way to work out their differences, but since Arthur takes a casual and cocky attitude, Adam's anger is thoroughly aroused at the \"scoundrel\" . When Arthur does not get up, Adam realizes his mistake. He solved nothing, and he might have killed a man. This chapter functions as the moment of the fall does in Paradise Lost. Before this scene, the idyllic world of the valley was established in the rising action. All the characters had hopes and plans for a bright future. After this climax, that innocent green world is shattered, and all the tragic consequences of the actions are played out. The lives of the main characters change forever. As Adam observed of his father's tragic end: \"There's no slipping up hill again, and no standing still when once you've begun to slip down\" . The reader expects to watch the tumbling down now."}

IT was beyond the middle of August--nearly three weeks after the birthday feast. The reaping of the wheat had begun in our north midland county of Loamshire, but the harvest was likely still to be retarded by the heavy rains, which were causing inundations and much damage throughout the country. From this last trouble the Broxton and Hayslope farmers, on their pleasant uplands and in their brook-watered valleys, had not suffered, and as I cannot pretend that they were such exceptional farmers as to love the general good better than their own, you will infer that they were not in very low spirits about the rapid rise in the price of bread, so long as there was hope of gathering in their own corn undamaged; and occasional days of sunshine and drying winds flattered this hope. The eighteenth of August was one of these days when the sunshine looked brighter in all eyes for the gloom that went before. Grand masses of cloud were hurried across the blue, and the great round hills behind the Chase seemed alive with their flying shadows; the sun was hidden for a moment, and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy; the leaves, still green, were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind; around the farmhouses there was a sound of clapping doors; the apples fell in the orchards; and the stray horses on the green sides of the lanes and on the common had their manes blown about their faces. And yet the wind seemed only part of the general gladness because the sun was shining. A merry day for the children, who ran and shouted to see if they could top the wind with their voices; and the grown-up people too were in good spirits, inclined to believe in yet finer days, when the wind had fallen. If only the corn were not ripe enough to be blown out of the husk and scattered as untimely seed! And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall upon a man. For if it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more. It was a busy day with Adam, who of late had done almost double work, for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan was slow to find that person. But he had done the extra work cheerfully, for his hopes were buoyant again about Hetty. Every time she had seen him since the birthday, she had seemed to make an effort to behave all the more kindly to him, that she might make him understand she had forgiven his silence and coldness during the dance. He had never mentioned the locket to her again; too happy that she smiled at him--still happier because he observed in her a more subdued air, something that he interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. "Ah!" he thought, again and again, "she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at, after all." To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the Hall Farm, Hetty had joined the party of upper servants from the Chase and had gone home with them--almost as if she were inclined to encourage Mr. Craig. "She's takin' too much likin' to them folks i' the house keeper's room," Mrs. Poyser remarked. "For my part, I was never overfond o' gentlefolks's servants--they're mostly like the fine ladies' fat dogs, nayther good for barking nor butcher's meat, but on'y for show." And another evening she was gone to Treddleston to buy some things; though, to his great surprise, as he was returning home, he saw her at a distance getting over a stile quite out of the Treddleston road. But, when he hastened to her, she was very kind, and asked him to go in again when he had taken her to the yard gate. She had gone a little farther into the fields after coming from Treddleston because she didn't want to go in, she said: it was so nice to be out of doors, and her aunt always made such a fuss about it if she wanted to go out. "Oh, do come in with me!" she said, as he was going to shake hands with her at the gate, and he could not resist that. So he went in, and Mrs. Poyser was contented with only a slight remark on Hetty's being later than was expected; while Hetty, who had looked out of spirits when he met her, smiled and talked and waited on them all with unusual promptitude. That was the last time he had seen her; but he meant to make leisure for going to the Farm to-morrow. To-day, he knew, was her day for going to the Chase to sew with the lady's maid, so he would get as much work done as possible this evening, that the next might be clear. One piece of work that Adam was superintending was some slight repairs at the Chase Farm, which had been hitherto occupied by Satchell, as bailiff, but which it was now rumoured that the old squire was going to let to a smart man in top-boots, who had been seen to ride over it one day. Nothing but the desire to get a tenant could account for the squire's undertaking repairs, though the Saturday-evening party at Mr. Casson's agreed over their pipes that no man in his senses would take the Chase Farm unless there was a bit more ploughland laid to it. However that might be, the repairs were ordered to be executed with all dispatch, and Adam, acting for Mr. Burge, was carrying out the order with his usual energy. But to-day, having been occupied elsewhere, he had not been able to arrive at the Chase Farm till late in the afternoon, and he then discovered that some old roofing, which he had calculated on preserving, had given way. There was clearly no good to be done with this part of the building without pulling it all down, and Adam immediately saw in his mind a plan for building it up again, so as to make the most convenient of cow-sheds and calf-pens, with a hovel for implements; and all without any great expense for materials. So, when the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him on persuading the squire to consent. To "make a good job" of anything, however small, was always a pleasure to Adam, and he sat on a block, with his book resting on a planing-table, whistling low every now and then and turning his head on one side with a just perceptible smile of gratification--of pride, too, for if Adam loved a bit of good work, he loved also to think, "I did it!" And I believe the only people who are free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own. It was nearly seven before he had finished and put on his jacket again; and on giving a last look round, he observed that Seth, who had been working here to-day, had left his basket of tools behind him. "Why, th' lad's forgot his tools," thought Adam, "and he's got to work up at the shop to-morrow. There never was such a chap for wool-gathering; he'd leave his head behind him, if it was loose. However, it's lucky I've seen 'em; I'll carry 'em home." The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase, at about ten minutes' walking distance from the Abbey. Adam had come thither on his pony, intending to ride to the stables and put up his nag on his way home. At the stables he encountered Mr. Craig, who had come to look at the captain's new horse, on which he was to ride away the day after to-morrow; and Mr. Craig detained him to tell how all the servants were to collect at the gate of the courtyard to wish the young squire luck as he rode out; so that by the time Adam had got into the Chase, and was striding along with the basket of tools over his shoulder, the sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level crimson rays among the great trunks of the old oaks, and touching every bare patch of ground with a transient glory that made it look like a jewel dropt upon the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been sitting in the house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Adam had been quite enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home, and he bethought himself that he might do so by striking across the Chase and going through the Grove, where he had never been for years. He hurried on across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between the fern, with Gyp at his heels, not lingering to watch the magnificent changes of the light--hardly once thinking of it--yet feeling its presence in a certain calm happy awe which mingled itself with his busy working-day thoughts. How could he help feeling it? The very deer felt it, and were more timid. Presently Adam's thoughts recurred to what Mr. Craig had said about Arthur Donnithorne, and pictured his going away, and the changes that might take place before he came back; then they travelled back affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt on Arthur's good qualities, which Adam had a pride in, as we all have in the virtues of the superior who honours us. A nature like Adam's, with a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of its happiness on what it can believe and feel about others! And he had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him. These pleasant thoughts about Arthur brought a milder expression than usual into his keen rough face: perhaps they were the reason why, when he opened the old green gate leading into the Grove, he paused to pat Gyp and say a kind word to him. After that pause, he strode on again along the broad winding path through the Grove. What grand beeches! Adam delighted in a fine tree of all things; as the fisherman's sight is keenest on the sea, so Adam's perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He kept them in his memory, as a painter does, with all the flecks and knots in their bark, all the curves and angles of their boughs, and had often calculated the height and contents of a trunk to a nicety, as he stood looking at it. No wonder that, not-withstanding his desire to get on, he could not help pausing to look at a curious large beech which he had seen standing before him at a turning in the road, and convince himself that it was not two trees wedded together, but only one. For the rest of his life he remembered that moment when he was calmly examining the beech, as a man remembers his last glimpse of the home where his youth was passed, before the road turned, and he saw it no more. The beech stood at the last turning before the Grove ended in an archway of boughs that let in the eastern light; and as Adam stepped away from the tree to continue his walk, his eyes fell on two figures about twenty yards before him. He remained as motionless as a statue, and turned almost as pale. The two figures were standing opposite to each other, with clasped hands about to part; and while they were bending to kiss, Gyp, who had been running among the brushwood, came out, caught sight of them, and gave a sharp bark. They separated with a start--one hurried through the gate out of the Grove, and the other, turning round, walked slowly, with a sort of saunter, towards Adam who still stood transfixed and pale, clutching tighter the stick with which he held the basket of tools over his shoulder, and looking at the approaching figure with eyes in which amazement was fast turning to fierceness. Arthur Donnithorne looked flushed and excited; he had tried to make unpleasant feelings more bearable by drinking a little more wine than usual at dinner to-day, and was still enough under its flattering influence to think more lightly of this unwished-for rencontre with Adam than he would otherwise have done. After all, Adam was the best person who could have happened to see him and Hetty together--he was a sensible fellow, and would not babble about it to other people. Arthur felt confident that he could laugh the thing off and explain it away. And so he sauntered forward with elaborate carelessness--his flushed face, his evening dress of fine cloth and fine linen, his hands half-thrust into his waistcoat pockets, all shone upon by the strange evening light which the light clouds had caught up even to the zenith, and were now shedding down between the topmost branches above him. Adam was still motionless, looking at him as he came up. He understood it all now--the locket and everything else that had been doubtful to him: a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that changed the meaning of the past. If he had moved a muscle, he must inevitably have sprung upon Arthur like a tiger; and in the conflicting emotions that filled those long moments, he had told himself that he would not give loose to passion, he would only speak the right thing. He stood as if petrified by an unseen force, but the force was his own strong will. "Well, Adam," said Arthur, "you've been looking at the fine old beeches, eh? They're not to be come near by the hatchet, though; this is a sacred grove. I overtook pretty little Hetty Sorrel as I was coming to my den--the Hermitage, there. She ought not to come home this way so late. So I took care of her to the gate, and asked for a kiss for my pains. But I must get back now, for this road is confoundedly damp. Good-night, Adam. I shall see you to-morrow--to say good-bye, you know." Arthur was too much preoccupied with the part he was playing himself to be thoroughly aware of the expression in Adam's face. He did not look directly at Adam, but glanced carelessly round at the trees and then lifted up one foot to look at the sole of his boot. He cared to say no more--he had thrown quite dust enough into honest Adam's eyes--and as he spoke the last words, he walked on. "Stop a bit, sir," said Adam, in a hard peremptory voice, without turning round. "I've got a word to say to you." Arthur paused in surprise. Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words, and Arthur had the susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. He was still more surprised when he saw that Adam had not moved, but stood with his back to him, as if summoning him to return. What did he mean? He was going to make a serious business of this affair. Arthur felt his temper rising. A patronising disposition always has its meaner side, and in the confusion of his irritation and alarm there entered the feeling that a man to whom he had shown so much favour as to Adam was not in a position to criticize his conduct. And yet he was dominated, as one who feels himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he cares for. In spite of pride and temper, there was as much deprecation as anger in his voice when he said, "What do you mean, Adam?" "I mean, sir"--answered Adam, in the same harsh voice, still without turning round--"I mean, sir, that you don't deceive me by your light words. This is not the first time you've met Hetty Sorrel in this grove, and this is not the first time you've kissed her." Arthur felt a startled uncertainty how far Adam was speaking from knowledge, and how far from mere inference. And this uncertainty, which prevented him from contriving a prudent answer, heightened his irritation. He said, in a high sharp tone, "Well, sir, what then?" "Why, then, instead of acting like th' upright, honourable man we've all believed you to be, you've been acting the part of a selfish light-minded scoundrel. You know as well as I do what it's to lead to when a gentleman like you kisses and makes love to a young woman like Hetty, and gives her presents as she's frightened for other folks to see. And I say it again, you're acting the part of a selfish light-minded scoundrel though it cuts me to th' heart to say so, and I'd rather ha' lost my right hand." "Let me tell you, Adam," said Arthur, bridling his growing anger and trying to recur to his careless tone, "you're not only devilishly impertinent, but you're talking nonsense. Every pretty girl is not such a fool as you, to suppose that when a gentleman admires her beauty and pays her a little attention, he must mean something particular. Every man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be flirted with. The wider the distance between them, the less harm there is, for then she's not likely to deceive herself." "I don't know what you mean by flirting," said Adam, "but if you mean behaving to a woman as if you loved her, and yet not loving her all the while, I say that's not th' action of an honest man, and what isn't honest does come t' harm. I'm not a fool, and you're not a fool, and you know better than what you're saying. You know it couldn't be made public as you've behaved to Hetty as y' have done without her losing her character and bringing shame and trouble on her and her relations. What if you meant nothing by your kissing and your presents? Other folks won't believe as you've meant nothing; and don't tell me about her not deceiving herself. I tell you as you've filled her mind so with the thought of you as it'll mayhap poison her life, and she'll never love another man as 'ud make her a good husband." Arthur had felt a sudden relief while Adam was speaking; he perceived that Adam had no positive knowledge of the past, and that there was no irrevocable damage done by this evening's unfortunate rencontre. Adam could still be deceived. The candid Arthur had brought himself into a position in which successful lying was his only hope. The hope allayed his anger a little. "Well, Adam," he said, in a tone of friendly concession, "you're perhaps right. Perhaps I've gone a little too far in taking notice of the pretty little thing and stealing a kiss now and then. You're such a grave, steady fellow, you don't understand the temptation to such trifling. I'm sure I wouldn't bring any trouble or annoyance on her and the good Poysers on any account if I could help it. But I think you look a little too seriously at it. You know I'm going away immediately, so I shan't make any more mistakes of the kind. But let us say good-night"--Arthur here turned round to walk on--"and talk no more about the matter. The whole thing will soon be forgotten." "No, by God!" Adam burst out with rage that could be controlled no longer, throwing down the basket of tools and striding forward till he was right in front of Arthur. All his jealousy and sense of personal injury, which he had been hitherto trying to keep under, had leaped up and mastered him. What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of inflicting it did not mean to hurt us? In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on. Adam at this moment could only feel that he had been robbed of Hetty--robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had trusted--and he stood close in front of Arthur, with fierce eyes glaring at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones in which he had hitherto been constraining himself to express no more than a just indignation giving way to a deep agitated voice that seemed to shake him as he spoke. "No, it'll not be soon forgot, as you've come in between her and me, when she might ha' loved me--it'll not soon be forgot as you've robbed me o' my happiness, while I thought you was my best friend, and a noble-minded man, as I was proud to work for. And you've been kissing her, and meaning nothing, have you? And I never kissed her i' my life--but I'd ha' worked hard for years for the right to kiss her. And you make light of it. You think little o' doing what may damage other folks, so as you get your bit o' trifling, as means nothing. I throw back your favours, for you're not the man I took you for. I'll never count you my friend any more. I'd rather you'd act as my enemy, and fight me where I stand--it's all th' amends you can make me." Poor Adam, possessed by rage that could find no other vent, began to throw off his coat and his cap, too blind with passion to notice the change that had taken place in Arthur while he was speaking. Arthur's lips were now as pale as Adam's; his heart was beating violently. The discovery that Adam loved Hetty was a shock which made him for the moment see himself in the light of Adam's indignation, and regard Adam's suffering as not merely a consequence, but an element of his error. The words of hatred and contempt--the first he had ever heard in his life--seemed like scorching missiles that were making ineffaceable scars on him. All screening self-excuse, which rarely falls quite away while others respect us, forsook him for an instant, and he stood face to face with the first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He was only twenty-one, and three months ago--nay, much later--he had thought proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly. His first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have been to utter words of propitiation; but Adam had no sooner thrown off his coat and cap than he became aware that Arthur was standing pale and motionless, with his hands still thrust in his waistcoat pockets. "What!" he said, "won't you fight me like a man? You know I won't strike you while you stand so." "Go away, Adam," said Arthur, "I don't want to fight you." "No," said Adam, bitterly; "you don't want to fight me--you think I'm a common man, as you can injure without answering for it." "I never meant to injure you," said Arthur, with returning anger. "I didn't know you loved her." "But you've made her love you," said Adam. "You're a double-faced man--I'll never believe a word you say again." "Go away, I tell you," said Arthur, angrily, "or we shall both repent." "No," said Adam, with a convulsed voice, "I swear I won't go away without fighting you. Do you want provoking any more? I tell you you're a coward and a scoundrel, and I despise you." The colour had all rushed back to Arthur's face; in a moment his right hand was clenched, and dealt a blow like lightning, which sent Adam staggering backward. His blood was as thoroughly up as Adam's now, and the two men, forgetting the emotions that had gone before, fought with the instinctive fierceness of panthers in the deepening twilight darkened by the trees. The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for the workman in everything but strength, and Arthur's skill enabled him to protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men the battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Arthur must sink under a well-planted blow of Adam's as a steel rod is broken by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Arthur fell, his head lying concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Adam could only discern his darkly clad body. He stood still in the dim light waiting for Arthur to rise. The blow had been given now, towards which he had been straining all the force of nerve and muscle--and what was the good of it? What had he done by fighting? Only satisfied his own passion, only wreaked his own vengeance. He had not rescued Hetty, nor changed the past--there it was, just as it had been, and he sickened at the vanity of his own rage. But why did not Arthur rise? He was perfectly motionless, and the time seemed long to Adam. Good God! had the blow been too much for him? Adam shuddered at the thought of his own strength, as with the oncoming of this dread he knelt down by Arthur's side and lifted his head from among the fern. There was no sign of life: the eyes and teeth were set. The horror that rushed over Adam completely mastered him, and forced upon him its own belief. He could feel nothing but that death was in Arthur's face, and that he was helpless before it. He made not a single movement, but knelt like an image of despair gazing at an image of death.

Chapter 27

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter27

Book Fourth Chapter 27: A Crisis Three weeks after Arthur's party, just before harvest, as the apples are falling in the orchards, the crisis that has been building erupts. Adam's hopes have been buoyed again, and he is working double, for the squire and Jonathan Burge. Hetty seems more serious and mature to Adam these days. She is still getting her sewing lessons, and on the night she is coming home through the wood, Adam is taking a short cut through there after having done repairs on the Chase Farm. He hears that Arthur is leaving in two days to join his regiment. Just as the sun is setting he sees two figures in the wood, and he freezes. They are kissing and saying goodbye. Gyp barks, and the figures break apart. One figure rushes out the gate to the fields, while the other comes towards Adam in the wood. It is Arthur, slightly drunk, swaggering and trying to bluff with Adam about the incident. He thinks Adam is the best person to have caught him and Hetty together, for he can be trusted not to tell anyone. He mentions casually that he just gave Hetty a kiss after walking with her, and he tries to pass by Adam, as if no harm had been done. It was just a bit of flirting, he says. Adam tells him to wait, and accuses him of being two-faced, for Hetty could have loved him if Arthur, whom he thought his friend, hadn't ruined it. Arthur is shocked that Adam loves Hetty, and begins to see the whole affair as much more serious than he imagined. Adam's blood is up, and he taunts Arthur until he fights. The two begin a furious fist fight until Adam knocks Arthur down, and he does not get up. Adam is terrified of his own strength, afraid that he has killed Arthur.

Commentary on Chapter 27 After much buildup and suspense, the secret bursts out, and it is fatal for Arthur that it is Adam who sees him with Hetty, though at first he thinks Adam will understand and cover for him. This misunderstanding shows the difference between Adam and Arthur both in character and in class expectations. Arthur's class of gentlemen takes it as nothing unusual to have affairs with servant girls. If worst comes to worst with such a fling, a rich man can always pay his way out of the trouble, for he would never be expected by his peers to marry or be made uncomfortable by any complications. Arthur expects Adam to have such a cavalier attitude as well. He passes the incident off as not serious. His casual manner incenses Adam in two ways; first, because Hetty is the woman he loves; second, even if she weren't, Arthur puts a blot on Hetty's reputation and life, and that is not a mere trifle for the servant girl. Adam's working class on the whole expects courting to end in marriage, so if one does not have that intention, then one is acting dishonorably. Adam's illusions crash because he has believed in the superiority of rank and has believed in Arthur personally. Arthur's bubble is burst too: he is suddenly shocked by feeling the first hatred he has ever encountered in his life, and from one of the people whose opinion mattered to him. He realizes from the way Adam talks, however, that he believes it is a flirtation and nothing more. He sticks to this lie, then, as his only way out of the mess. Fiction in 1859 did not discuss explicit sexual encounters, but these hints by the characters and narrator are enough to confirm in a round-about way that Hetty and Arthur are definitely having a sexual affair, though Adam has bought Arthur's lie that it is only a flirtation. Even a servant found kissing a gentleman could be turned away from employment, and certainly would have a difficult time marrying, for the worst would be assumed. In a small town like Hayslope, one mistake like this can ruin a person's life. Adam knows Hetty will be destroyed if it is found out, but he himself is too good a man to think that the affair is that far along, that either Hetty or Arthur could have stooped so low. He is a bit naive about the weaknesses of others, and Arthur takes advantage of this. Adam's strength is also his weakness. He holds himself back by sheer will power in the beginning, knowing he is a strong man and that violence is wrong. It has been mentioned that he stopped fighting when he injured a man a few years ago, and he cautions himself not to do it now. If Arthur had humbled himself or spoken truthfully, there might have been some other way to work out their differences, but since Arthur takes a casual and cocky attitude, Adam's anger is thoroughly aroused at the "scoundrel" . When Arthur does not get up, Adam realizes his mistake. He solved nothing, and he might have killed a man. This chapter functions as the moment of the fall does in Paradise Lost. Before this scene, the idyllic world of the valley was established in the rising action. All the characters had hopes and plans for a bright future. After this climax, that innocent green world is shattered, and all the tragic consequences of the actions are played out. The lives of the main characters change forever. As Adam observed of his father's tragic end: "There's no slipping up hill again, and no standing still when once you've begun to slip down" . The reader expects to watch the tumbling down now.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_28_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 28

chapter 28

{"name": "Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter28", "summary": "A Dilemma Arthur regains consciousness and asks for water. Adam is sorry about the fight and tries to help Arthur get home, but he is weak, and asks for Adam's help in walking to the Hermitage, the house in the woods. Adam has never known that this place was furnished; Arthur has been using it for a personal retreat. He asks Adam to go to his servant Pym and get some brandy. While Adam is gone, Arthur removes a woman's handkerchief. Adam returns with the brandy. Arthur is too confused to say anything, but he wishes he could confess and make it all right with Adam. Adam apologizes for hurting him and being hasty. He knows Arthur was ignorant of his love for Hetty, and he says the only joy he can have now is to think the best of Arthur. Arthur tries to make some apology saying he was wrong, and he is going away so there will be no more mistake. Adam insists that Arthur write Hetty a letter admitting he was wrong and that it is over, so that Hetty will not be waiting for him and her life ruined with false hope. Arthur is irritated by Adam telling him what to do, but Adam insists, saying that he has to know where he stands with Hetty, and \"in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up\" . Arthur promises to write the letter, and Adam will pick it up and deliver it to Hetty.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 28 Adam takes action, as is his nature. He does not want the thing to drag on, and he still hopes Hetty could love him if she knows Arthur is not serious. He makes Arthur see that rank has no privilege here. They are two men courting the same woman, and if Arthur doesn't want her, he has to play fair, and give him and Hetty a chance. Adam may be rash, and he is not playing his hand with full knowledge, but he is thinking of Hetty's life as well as his own. He says he is the only one who can care for Hetty. He equates Hetty's honor with his own. This is assuming a lot on his part to take responsibility for her. Adam is rash to think that he can solve the situation, but his attempt is a natural one and more noble than Arthur's cowardice. Eliot does not say directly that it is too late for Adam and Hetty, but the handkerchief lying carelessly in the Hermitage is proof that it has been the trysting place, and that Arthur and Hetty have no doubt had many meetings there. The chance that Adam could step in at this point if Arthur simply writes a letter is again naive, but it is the only thing he can think of. Arthur's giving in to the request indicates that he is trying to get out of a tight spot, for if he had done nothing very wrong, he would probably refuse."}

IT was only a few minutes measured by the clock--though Adam always thought it had been a long while--before he perceived a gleam of consciousness in Arthur's face and a slight shiver through his frame. The intense joy that flooded his soul brought back some of the old affection with it. "Do you feel any pain, sir?" he said, tenderly, loosening Arthur's cravat. Arthur turned his eyes on Adam with a vague stare which gave way to a slightly startled motion as if from the shock of returning memory. But he only shivered again and said nothing. "Do you feel any hurt, sir?" Adam said again, with a trembling in his voice. Arthur put his hand up to his waistcoat buttons, and when Adam had unbuttoned it, he took a longer breath. "Lay my head down," he said, faintly, "and get me some water if you can." Adam laid the head down gently on the fern again, and emptying the tools out of the flag-basket, hurried through the trees to the edge of the Grove bordering on the Chase, where a brook ran below the bank. When he returned with his basket leaking, but still half-full, Arthur looked at him with a more thoroughly reawakened consciousness. "Can you drink a drop out o' your hand, sir?" said Adam, kneeling down again to lift up Arthur's head. "No," said Arthur, "dip my cravat in and souse it on my head." The water seemed to do him some good, for he presently raised himself a little higher, resting on Adam's arm. "Do you feel any hurt inside sir?" Adam asked again "No--no hurt," said Arthur, still faintly, "but rather done up." After a while he said, "I suppose I fainted away when you knocked me down." "Yes, sir, thank God," said Adam. "I thought it was worse." "What! You thought you'd done for me, eh? Come help me on my legs." "I feel terribly shaky and dizzy," Arthur said, as he stood leaning on Adam's arm; "that blow of yours must have come against me like a battering-ram. I don't believe I can walk alone." "Lean on me, sir; I'll get you along," said Adam. "Or, will you sit down a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be better in a minute or two." "No," said Arthur. "I'll go to the Hermitage--I think I've got some brandy there. There's a short road to it a little farther on, near the gate. If you'll just help me on." They walked slowly, with frequent pauses, but without speaking again. In both of them, the concentration in the present which had attended the first moments of Arthur's revival had now given way to a vivid recollection of the previous scene. It was nearly dark in the narrow path among the trees, but within the circle of fir-trees round the Hermitage there was room for the growing moonlight to enter in at the windows. Their steps were noiseless on the thick carpet of fir-needles, and the outward stillness seemed to heighten their inward consciousness, as Arthur took the key out of his pocket and placed it in Adam's hand, for him to open the door. Adam had not known before that Arthur had furnished the old Hermitage and made it a retreat for himself, and it was a surprise to him when he opened the door to see a snug room with all the signs of frequent habitation. Arthur loosed Adam's arm and threw himself on the ottoman. "You'll see my hunting-bottle somewhere," he said. "A leather case with a bottle and glass in." Adam was not long in finding the case. "There's very little brandy in it, sir," he said, turning it downwards over the glass, as he held it before the window; "hardly this little glassful." "Well, give me that," said Arthur, with the peevishness of physical depression. When he had taken some sips, Adam said, "Hadn't I better run to th' house, sir, and get some more brandy? I can be there and back pretty soon. It'll be a stiff walk home for you, if you don't have something to revive you." "Yes--go. But don't say I'm ill. Ask for my man Pym, and tell him to get it from Mills, and not to say I'm at the Hermitage. Get some water too." Adam was relieved to have an active task--both of them were relieved to be apart from each other for a short time. But Adam's swift pace could not still the eager pain of thinking--of living again with concentrated suffering through the last wretched hour, and looking out from it over all the new sad future. Arthur lay still for some minutes after Adam was gone, but presently he rose feebly from the ottoman and peered about slowly in the broken moonlight, seeking something. It was a short bit of wax candle that stood amongst a confusion of writing and drawing materials. There was more searching for the means of lighting the candle, and when that was done, he went cautiously round the room, as if wishing to assure himself of the presence or absence of something. At last he had found a slight thing, which he put first in his pocket, and then, on a second thought, took out again and thrust deep down into a waste-paper basket. It was a woman's little, pink, silk neckerchief. He set the candle on the table, and threw himself down on the ottoman again, exhausted with the effort. When Adam came back with his supplies, his entrance awoke Arthur from a doze. "That's right," Arthur said; "I'm tremendously in want of some brandy-vigour." "I'm glad to see you've got a light, sir," said Adam. "I've been thinking I'd better have asked for a lanthorn." "No, no; the candle will last long enough--I shall soon be up to walking home now." "I can't go before I've seen you safe home, sir," said Adam, hesitatingly. "No: it will be better for you to stay--sit down." Adam sat down, and they remained opposite to each other in uneasy silence, while Arthur slowly drank brandy-and-water, with visibly renovating effect. He began to lie in a more voluntary position, and looked as if he were less overpowered by bodily sensations. Adam was keenly alive to these indications, and as his anxiety about Arthur's condition began to be allayed, he felt more of that impatience which every one knows who has had his just indignation suspended by the physical state of the culprit. Yet there was one thing on his mind to be done before he could recur to remonstrance: it was to confess what had been unjust in his own words. Perhaps he longed all the more to make this confession, that his indignation might be free again; and as he saw the signs of returning ease in Arthur, the words again and again came to his lips and went back, checked by the thought that it would be better to leave everything till to-morrow. As long as they were silent they did not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Adam that if they began to speak as though they remembered the past--if they looked at each other with full recognition--they must take fire again. So they sat in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the silence all the while becoming more irksome to Adam. Arthur had just poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an irresistible temptation to Adam to speak what was on his mind. "You begin to feel more yourself again, sir," he said, as the candle went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint moonlight. "Yes: I don't feel good for much--very lazy, and not inclined to move; but I'll go home when I've taken this dose." There was a slight pause before Adam said, "My temper got the better of me, and I said things as wasn't true. I'd no right to speak as if you'd known you was doing me an injury: you'd no grounds for knowing it; I've always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could." He paused again before he went on. "And perhaps I judged you too harsh--I'm apt to be harsh--and you may have acted out o' thoughtlessness more than I should ha' believed was possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We're not all put together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it's all the joy I could have now, to think the best of you." Arthur wanted to go home without saying any more--he was too painfully embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Adam reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer. Arthur was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of tactics. His deed was reacting upon him--was already governing him tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive Adam to the utmost: to make Adam think better of him than he deserved. And when he heard the words of honest retractation--when he heard the sad appeal with which Adam ended--he was obliged to rejoice in the remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful. "Say no more about our anger, Adam," he said, at last, very languidly, for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; "I forgive your momentary injustice--it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because we've fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for I believe I've been most in the wrong of the two. Come, let us shake hands." Arthur held out his hand, but Adam sat still. "I don't like to say 'No' to that, sir," he said, "but I can't shake hands till it's clear what we mean by't. I was wrong when I spoke as if you'd done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn't wrong in what I said before, about your behaviour t' Hetty, and I can't shake hands with you as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you've cleared that up better." Arthur swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand. He was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he could, "I don't know what you mean by clearing up, Adam. I've told you already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if you are right in supposing there is any danger in it--I'm going away on Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given you, I'm heartily sorry for it. I can say no more." Adam said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the conflict within him. It was of no use now--his resolution not to speak till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes before he turned round and stepped nearer to Arthur, standing and looking down on him as he lay. "It'll be better for me to speak plain," he said, with evident effort, "though it's hard work. You see, sir, this isn't a trifle to me, whatever it may be to you. I'm none o' them men as can go making love first to one woman and then t' another, and don't think it much odds which of 'em I take. What I feel for Hetty's a different sort o' love, such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and God as has given it to 'em. She's more nor everything else to me, all but my conscience and my good name. And if it's true what you've been saying all along--and if it's only been trifling and flirting as you call it, as 'll be put an end to by your going away--why, then, I'd wait, and hope her heart 'ud turn to me after all. I'm loath to think you'd speak false to me, and I'll believe your word, however things may look." "You would be wronging Hetty more than me not to believe it," said Arthur, almost violently, starting up from the ottoman and moving away. But he threw himself into a chair again directly, saying, more feebly, "You seem to forget that, in suspecting me, you are casting imputations upon her." "Nay, sir," Adam said, in a calmer voice, as if he were half-relieved--for he was too straightforward to make a distinction between a direct falsehood and an indirect one--"Nay, sir, things don't lie level between Hetty and you. You're acting with your eyes open, whatever you may do; but how do you know what's been in her mind? She's all but a child--as any man with a conscience in him ought to feel bound to take care on. And whatever you may think, I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you, for there's a many things clear to me now as I didn't understand before. But you seem to make light o' what she may feel--you don't think o' that." "Good God, Adam, let me alone!" Arthur burst out impetuously; "I feel it enough without your worrying me." He was aware of his indiscretion as soon as the words had escaped him. "Well, then, if you feel it," Adam rejoined, eagerly; "if you feel as you may ha' put false notions into her mind, and made her believe as you loved her, when all the while you meant nothing, I've this demand to make of you--I'm not speaking for myself, but for her. I ask you t' undeceive her before you go away. Y'aren't going away for ever, and if you leave her behind with a notion in her head o' your feeling about her the same as she feels about you, she'll be hankering after you, and the mischief may get worse. It may be a smart to her now, but it'll save her pain i' th' end. I ask you to write a letter--you may trust to my seeing as she gets it. Tell her the truth, and take blame to yourself for behaving as you'd no right to do to a young woman as isn't your equal. I speak plain, sir, but I can't speak any other way. There's nobody can take care o' Hetty in this thing but me." "I can do what I think needful in the matter," said Arthur, more and more irritated by mingled distress and perplexity, "without giving promises to you. I shall take what measures I think proper." "No," said Adam, in an abrupt decided tone, "that won't do. I must know what ground I'm treading on. I must be safe as you've put an end to what ought never to ha' been begun. I don't forget what's owing to you as a gentleman, but in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up." There was no answer for some moments. Then Arthur said, "I'll see you to-morrow. I can bear no more now; I'm ill." He rose as he spoke, and reached his cap, as if intending to go. "You won't see her again!" Adam exclaimed, with a flash of recurring anger and suspicion, moving towards the door and placing his back against it. "Either tell me she can never be my wife--tell me you've been lying--or else promise me what I've said." Adam, uttering this alternative, stood like a terrible fate before Arthur, who had moved forward a step or two, and now stopped, faint, shaken, sick in mind and body. It seemed long to both of them--that inward struggle of Arthur's--before he said, feebly, "I promise; let me go." Adam moved away from the door and opened it, but when Arthur reached the step, he stopped again and leaned against the door-post. "You're not well enough to walk alone, sir," said Adam. "Take my arm again." Arthur made no answer, and presently walked on, Adam following. But, after a few steps, he stood still again, and said, coldly, "I believe I must trouble you. It's getting late now, and there may be an alarm set up about me at home." Adam gave his arm, and they walked on without uttering a word, till they came where the basket and the tools lay. "I must pick up the tools, sir," Adam said. "They're my brother's. I doubt they'll be rusted. If you'll please to wait a minute." Arthur stood still without speaking, and no other word passed between them till they were at the side entrance, where he hoped to get in without being seen by any one. He said then, "Thank you; I needn't trouble you any further." "What time will it be conven'ent for me to see you to-morrow, sir?" said Adam. "You may send me word that you're here at five o'clock," said Arthur; "not before." "Good-night, sir," said Adam. But he heard no reply; Arthur had turned into the house.

Chapter 28

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter28

A Dilemma Arthur regains consciousness and asks for water. Adam is sorry about the fight and tries to help Arthur get home, but he is weak, and asks for Adam's help in walking to the Hermitage, the house in the woods. Adam has never known that this place was furnished; Arthur has been using it for a personal retreat. He asks Adam to go to his servant Pym and get some brandy. While Adam is gone, Arthur removes a woman's handkerchief. Adam returns with the brandy. Arthur is too confused to say anything, but he wishes he could confess and make it all right with Adam. Adam apologizes for hurting him and being hasty. He knows Arthur was ignorant of his love for Hetty, and he says the only joy he can have now is to think the best of Arthur. Arthur tries to make some apology saying he was wrong, and he is going away so there will be no more mistake. Adam insists that Arthur write Hetty a letter admitting he was wrong and that it is over, so that Hetty will not be waiting for him and her life ruined with false hope. Arthur is irritated by Adam telling him what to do, but Adam insists, saying that he has to know where he stands with Hetty, and "in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up" . Arthur promises to write the letter, and Adam will pick it up and deliver it to Hetty.

Commentary on Chapter 28 Adam takes action, as is his nature. He does not want the thing to drag on, and he still hopes Hetty could love him if she knows Arthur is not serious. He makes Arthur see that rank has no privilege here. They are two men courting the same woman, and if Arthur doesn't want her, he has to play fair, and give him and Hetty a chance. Adam may be rash, and he is not playing his hand with full knowledge, but he is thinking of Hetty's life as well as his own. He says he is the only one who can care for Hetty. He equates Hetty's honor with his own. This is assuming a lot on his part to take responsibility for her. Adam is rash to think that he can solve the situation, but his attempt is a natural one and more noble than Arthur's cowardice. Eliot does not say directly that it is too late for Adam and Hetty, but the handkerchief lying carelessly in the Hermitage is proof that it has been the trysting place, and that Arthur and Hetty have no doubt had many meetings there. The chance that Adam could step in at this point if Arthur simply writes a letter is again naive, but it is the only thing he can think of. Arthur's giving in to the request indicates that he is trying to get out of a tight spot, for if he had done nothing very wrong, he would probably refuse.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/29.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_29_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 29

chapter 29

{"name": "Chapter 29", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter29", "summary": "The Next Morning This chapter centers on the thoughts of Arthur on his last day before leaving. He gets up early and goes for a ride on his horse. He is upset about the loss of Adam's good opinion. He thinks that if he had done any other injury, he would have made it up to Adam with some gift, for he has a kind heart and likes to make people happy. His realization that he cannot make this up to Adam is the first understanding of \"the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing\" . He remembers that he did not tell Hetty on their last meeting that it was over between them. Adam had been right about Hetty's delusions, for she asked Arthur to take her with him and marry her. He had been too cowardly to tell her the truth. The narrator notes that Arthur has slowly changed over the last few months from a fresh and honest person to a deceiver. But because he needs his own self-respect, he cannot admit his wrong. He believes the letter is the only answer, for it will satisfy Adam and cure Hetty of her dreams. For one moment, Arthur thinks about the other terrible possible outcomes of his deeds, but he puts them out of his mind. He writes the letter and leaves it with his man Pym, saying he is too busy to see Adam. Adam takes the letter and thinks it better they don't see each other, for they are no longer friends.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 29 Eliot uses a favorite technique here of going deeply into a character's thoughts, and then commenting on them like a psychologist. She uses the mental processes of all the characters to show typical human maneuvers for both good and bad. In this way, she can contrast the selfish person with the unselfish person. In her philosophy, the unselfish person not only adds to the good of the world but is also the only successful person in the long run. Selfish people only get short-term gains. Both Arthur and Hetty are irresponsible and like to live in their illusions within the moment. A few weeks of passion will ruin their lives forever. For a brief moment Arthur worries that Hetty could harm herself, perhaps kill herself over the disappointment. Then another nameless fear surfaces, and the reader knows what is left unsaid--she could get pregnant. The other important thing Eliot reveals in her analysis is how a good person can go wrong. Arthur is a loving person by nature, but also weak and self-indulgent. By making wrong choices and then covering up and lying, Arthur is slowly making himself more coarse. Each time he lies, he makes excuses. The result is that he becomes dull and loses his discrimination. Like Hetty, he is unresponsive to the clues from outside because he is so self-involved in his own drama. One can see how he will eventually become hard, like his grandfather, the very fate he wanted to avoid."}

ARTHUR did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For sleep comes to the perplexed--if the perplexed are only weary enough. But at seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight. "And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my grandfather when he's down that I'm better this morning and am gone for a ride." He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Arthur felt that he should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him after the scenes of yesterday. For, with Arthur's sensitiveness to opinion, the loss of Adam's respect was a shock to his self-contentment which suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all eyes--as a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused with a sense of danger. Arthur's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse, not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same Arthur ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits. If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the time was come for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment, Arthur had felt pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that Adam's happiness was involved in his relation to Hetty. If there had been a possibility of making Adam tenfold amends--if deeds of gift, or any other deeds, could have restored Adam's contentment and regard for him as a benefactor, Arthur would not only have executed them without hesitation, but would have felt bound all the more closely to Adam, and would never have been weary of making retribution. But Adam could receive no amends; his suffering could not be cancelled; his respect and affection could not be recovered by any prompt deeds of atonement. He stood like an immovable obstacle against which no pressure could avail; an embodiment of what Arthur most shrank from believing in--the irrevocableness of his own wrongdoing. The words of scorn, the refusal to shake hands, the mastery asserted over him in their last conversation in the Hermitage--above all, the sense of having been knocked down, to which a man does not very well reconcile himself, even under the most heroic circumstances--pressed on him with a galling pain which was stronger than compunction. Arthur would so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences--out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And so it was with Arthur: Adam's judgment of him, Adam's grating words, disturbed his self-soothing arguments. Not that Arthur had been at ease before Adam's discovery. Struggles and resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He was distressed for Hetty's sake, and distressed for his own, that he must leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking resolutions, looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily end in separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not to suffer at this parting; and on Hetty's account he was filled with uneasiness. He had found out the dream in which she was living--that she was to be a lady in silks and satins--and when he had first talked to her about his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go with him and be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had given the most exasperating sting to Adam's reproaches. He had said no word with the purpose of deceiving her--her vision was all spun by her own childish fancy--but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was spun half out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this last evening he had not dared to hint the truth to Hetty; he had been obliged to soothe her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw her into violent distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future. That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he could evade by hopeful self-persuasion. The whole thing had been secret; the Poysers had not the shadow of a suspicion. No one, except Adam, knew anything of what had passed--no one else was likely to know; for Arthur had impressed on Hetty that it would be fatal to betray, by word or look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and Adam, who knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray it. It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings of evil that might never come. The temporary sadness for Hetty was the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. But--but Hetty might have had the trouble in some other way if not in this. And perhaps hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make up to her for all the tears she would shed about him. She would owe the advantage of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred now. So good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful arrangement of things! Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Arthur who, two months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought that his own self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same, I assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then reconcile him to the change, for this reason--that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_, and so does an individual character--until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution. No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Arthur because of that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too painful to him--he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he had not been very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the necessity he was under of deceiving Adam--it was a course so opposed to the honesty of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to do. Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in consequence: miserable about Hetty; miserable about this letter that he had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her. And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry Hetty away, and all other considerations might go to.... In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the crowd of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which would fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up his mind in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg's back, in the fresh air of that fine morning, he should be more master of the situation. The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose, and patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than usual. He loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets. But Meg was quite as well acquainted with her master's mental state as many others of her sex with the mental condition of the nice young gentlemen towards whom their hearts are in a state of fluttering expectation. Arthur cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the foot of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road. Then he threw the bridle on Meg's neck and prepared to make up his mind. Hetty knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Arthur went away--there was no possibility of their contriving another without exciting suspicion--and she was like a frightened child, unable to think of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting, and then put her face up to have the tears kissed away. He could do nothing but comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be a dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what Adam said--that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which might be worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of satisfying Adam, who must be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If he could have seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a thorny hedge of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be fatal. And yet, if he COULD see her again, what good would it do? Only cause him to suffer more from the sight of her distress and the remembrance of it. Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives to self-control. A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination--the dread lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon that dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse. Arthur told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved; he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom, Providence would not treat him harshly. At all events, he couldn't help what would come now: all he could do was to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between Adam and Hetty. Her heart might really turn to Adam, as he said, after a while; and in that case there would have been no great harm done, since it was still Adam's ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure, Adam was deceived--deceived in a way that Arthur would have resented as a deep wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection that marred the consoling prospect. Arthur's cheeks even burned in mingled shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in such a dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure Hetty: his first duty was to guard her. He would never have told or acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had excuses, he had. (Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!) Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised a solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Arthur's eyes as he thought of Hetty reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him to write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this last thought helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never deliberately have taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left himself at ease. Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving up Hetty to Adam went to convince him that he was making a sacrifice. When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set off home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first thing, and the rest of the day would be filled up with other business: he should have no time to look behind him. Happily, Irwine and Gawaine were coming to dinner, and by twelve o'clock the next day he should have left the Chase miles behind him. There was some security in this constant occupation against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to rush to Hetty and thrust into her hand some mad proposition that would undo everything. Faster and faster went the sensitive Meg, at every slight sign from her rider, till the canter had passed into a swift gallop. "I thought they said th' young mester war took ill last night," said sour old John, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants' hall. "He's been ridin' fit to split the mare i' two this forenoon." "That's happen one o' the symptims, John," said the facetious coachman. "Then I wish he war let blood for 't, that's all," said John, grimly. Adam had been early at the Chase to know how Arthur was, and had been relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning that he was gone out for a ride. At five o'clock he was punctually there again, and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came down with a letter in his hand and gave it to Adam, saying that the captain was too busy to see him, and had written everything he had to say. The letter was directed to Adam, but he went out of doors again before opening it. It contained a sealed enclosure directed to Hetty. On the inside of the cover Adam read: "In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it to you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Hetty or to return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not taking a measure which may pain her more than mere silence. "There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall meet with better feelings some months hence. "A.D." "Perhaps he's i' th' right on 't not to see me," thought Adam. "It's no use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake hands and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't feel the same towards him. God help me! I don't know whether I feel the same towards anybody: I seem as if I'd been measuring my work from a false line, and had got it all to measure over again." But the question about delivering the letter to Hetty soon absorbed Adam's thoughts. Arthur had procured some relief to himself by throwing the decision on Adam with a warning; and Adam, who was not given to hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way--to ascertain as well as he could what was Hetty's state of mind before he decided on delivering the letter.

Chapter 29

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter29

The Next Morning This chapter centers on the thoughts of Arthur on his last day before leaving. He gets up early and goes for a ride on his horse. He is upset about the loss of Adam's good opinion. He thinks that if he had done any other injury, he would have made it up to Adam with some gift, for he has a kind heart and likes to make people happy. His realization that he cannot make this up to Adam is the first understanding of "the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing" . He remembers that he did not tell Hetty on their last meeting that it was over between them. Adam had been right about Hetty's delusions, for she asked Arthur to take her with him and marry her. He had been too cowardly to tell her the truth. The narrator notes that Arthur has slowly changed over the last few months from a fresh and honest person to a deceiver. But because he needs his own self-respect, he cannot admit his wrong. He believes the letter is the only answer, for it will satisfy Adam and cure Hetty of her dreams. For one moment, Arthur thinks about the other terrible possible outcomes of his deeds, but he puts them out of his mind. He writes the letter and leaves it with his man Pym, saying he is too busy to see Adam. Adam takes the letter and thinks it better they don't see each other, for they are no longer friends.

Commentary on Chapter 29 Eliot uses a favorite technique here of going deeply into a character's thoughts, and then commenting on them like a psychologist. She uses the mental processes of all the characters to show typical human maneuvers for both good and bad. In this way, she can contrast the selfish person with the unselfish person. In her philosophy, the unselfish person not only adds to the good of the world but is also the only successful person in the long run. Selfish people only get short-term gains. Both Arthur and Hetty are irresponsible and like to live in their illusions within the moment. A few weeks of passion will ruin their lives forever. For a brief moment Arthur worries that Hetty could harm herself, perhaps kill herself over the disappointment. Then another nameless fear surfaces, and the reader knows what is left unsaid--she could get pregnant. The other important thing Eliot reveals in her analysis is how a good person can go wrong. Arthur is a loving person by nature, but also weak and self-indulgent. By making wrong choices and then covering up and lying, Arthur is slowly making himself more coarse. Each time he lies, he makes excuses. The result is that he becomes dull and loses his discrimination. Like Hetty, he is unresponsive to the clues from outside because he is so self-involved in his own drama. One can see how he will eventually become hard, like his grandfather, the very fate he wanted to avoid.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/30.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_30_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 30

chapter 30

{"name": "Chapter 30", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter30", "summary": "The Delivery of the Letter Adam joins the Poysers on their walk home after church because he wants to talk to Hetty. She is afraid he means to tell on her, but Hetty is confident she can manipulate Adam to her own purposes. Hetty believes that Arthur will miss her and will come home at Christmas, as he said he might do. Adam is direct and says that he is trying to help Hetty because she does not know the ways of the world. Arthur does not love her and will not marry her. Hetty is shocked and does not believe Adam. She knows more than Adam does about how serious their relationship is. She realizes Adam does not know the worst. He keeps repeating that Arthur does not mean to marry her, and finally he produces the letter. He says that he will be like a brother to her in this crisis, and tries to get her to see how dangerous the situation is for her. Hetty believes the letter will be a love letter and puts it in her pocket. They spend the evening with her aunt and uncle and Adam is very kind, trying to cover for her and be entertaining, so her pale look will not be noticed. Adam's tenderness is aroused, and at home, he is kind to Seth, asking him about Dinah. Seth says there is no hope she will change her mind, but gives him a letter from Dinah to read that has consolation and wisdom in it for Adam's situation. Dinah speaks of sorrow being a part of love and that love bears it and does not throw it off. Adam thinks Dinah has the power to make everything seem right. He tells Seth a woman sometimes takes time to love by degrees, hoping this is true of Hetty.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 30 Hetty, like Arthur, has a smaller moral view than Adam does and she, like Arthur, thinks she can manage Adam. They both count on his love and loyalty, but they do not realize that Adam is a man of principle above all else. Because he believes Hetty innocent, he tries to put aside his own feeling of jealousy and thinks of her, trying to be like a brother to save her. He cannot hope for any return to his love until he can get her safely past this danger. He does not ask for any immediate thanks because he sees her simply as a person in trouble. As he says of Dinah, he hopes Hetty may yet learn to love a man who is good to her and sticks by her. The only person who can speak words of comfort to Adam at this time is Dinah, through the letter, for her perspective is large enough to comprehend what he is going through. Adam tells Arthur his love own for Hetty is different; for him she is not a plaything, and he cannot explain it, for the love was given to him by God . Divine love, Dinah explains in her letter, is able to take up sorrow and purify it through sympathy. True love does not consist in pleasure alone. Arthur and Hetty believe in their own desire being satisfied. Adam, like Dinah, experiences a love that reaches out to share sorrow and disappointment but stands firm. Adam knows, \"I'm not th'only man that's got to do without much happiness in' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart\" . He does not believe the universe exists for his personal pleasure. Dinah and Adam are purified and made humble by love, because they know love means sacrifice. Hetty and Arthur are egoists; their attraction can hardly be called love. Adam is angry at Arthur for spoiling Hetty's chances for true love in her life: \"I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you\" ."}

THE next Sunday Adam joined the Poysers on their way out of church, hoping for an invitation to go home with them. He had the letter in his pocket, and was anxious to have an opportunity of talking to Hetty alone. He could not see her face at church, for she had changed her seat, and when he came up to her to shake hands, her manner was doubtful and constrained. He expected this, for it was the first time she had met him since she had been aware that he had seen her with Arthur in the Grove. "Come, you'll go on with us, Adam," Mr. Poyser said when they reached the turning; and as soon as they were in the fields Adam ventured to offer his arm to Hetty. The children soon gave them an opportunity of lingering behind a little, and then Adam said: "Will you contrive for me to walk out in the garden a bit with you this evening, if it keeps fine, Hetty? I've something partic'lar to talk to you about." Hetty said, "Very well." She was really as anxious as Adam was that she should have some private talk with him. She wondered what he thought of her and Arthur. He must have seen them kissing, she knew, but she had no conception of the scene that had taken place between Arthur and Adam. Her first feeling had been that Adam would be very angry with her, and perhaps would tell her aunt and uncle, but it never entered her mind that he would dare to say anything to Captain Donnithorne. It was a relief to her that he behaved so kindly to her to-day, and wanted to speak to her alone, for she had trembled when she found he was going home with them lest he should mean "to tell." But, now he wanted to talk to her by herself, she should learn what he thought and what he meant to do. She felt a certain confidence that she could persuade him not to do anything she did not want him to do; she could perhaps even make him believe that she didn't care for Arthur; and as long as Adam thought there was any hope of her having him, he would do just what she liked, she knew. Besides, she MUST go on seeming to encourage Adam, lest her uncle and aunt should be angry and suspect her of having some secret lover. Hetty's little brain was busy with this combination as she hung on Adam's arm and said "yes" or "no" to some slight observations of his about the many hawthorn-berries there would be for the birds this next winter, and the low-hanging clouds that would hardly hold up till morning. And when they rejoined her aunt and uncle, she could pursue her thoughts without interruption, for Mr. Poyser held that though a young man might like to have the woman he was courting on his arm, he would nevertheless be glad of a little reasonable talk about business the while; and, for his own part, he was curious to hear the most recent news about the Chase Farm. So, through the rest of the walk, he claimed Adam's conversation for himself, and Hetty laid her small plots and imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked along by the hedgerows on honest Adam's arm, quite as well as if she had been an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir. For if a country beauty in clumsy shoes be only shallow-hearted enough, it is astonishing how closely her mental processes may resemble those of a lady in society and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect to the problem of committing indiscretions without compromising herself. Perhaps the resemblance was not much the less because Hetty felt very unhappy all the while. The parting with Arthur was a double pain to her--mingling with the tumult of passion and vanity there was a dim undefined fear that the future might shape itself in some way quite unlike her dream. She clung to the comforting hopeful words Arthur had uttered in their last meeting--"I shall come again at Christmas, and then we will see what can be done." She clung to the belief that he was so fond of her, he would never be happy without her; and she still hugged her secret--that a great gentleman loved her--with gratified pride, as a superiority over all the girls she knew. But the uncertainty of the future, the possibilities to which she could give no shape, began to press upon her like the invisible weight of air; she was alone on her little island of dreams, and all around her was the dark unknown water where Arthur was gone. She could gather no elation of spirits now by looking forward, but only by looking backward to build confidence on past words and caresses. But occasionally, since Thursday evening, her dim anxieties had been almost lost behind the more definite fear that Adam might betray what he knew to her uncle and aunt, and his sudden proposition to talk with her alone had set her thoughts to work in a new way. She was eager not to lose this evening's opportunity; and after tea, when the boys were going into the garden and Totty begged to go with them, Hetty said, with an alacrity that surprised Mrs. Poyser, "I'll go with her, Aunt." It did not seem at all surprising that Adam said he would go too, and soon he and Hetty were left alone together on the walk by the filbert-trees, while the boys were busy elsewhere gathering the large unripe nuts to play at "cob-nut" with, and Totty was watching them with a puppylike air of contemplation. It was but a short time--hardly two months--since Adam had had his mind filled with delicious hopes as he stood by Hetty's side in this garden. The remembrance of that scene had often been with him since Thursday evening: the sunlight through the apple-tree boughs, the red bunches, Hetty's sweet blush. It came importunately now, on this sad evening, with the low-hanging clouds, but he tried to suppress it, lest some emotion should impel him to say more than was needful for Hetty's sake. "After what I saw on Thursday night, Hetty," he began, "you won't think me making too free in what I'm going to say. If you was being courted by any man as 'ud make you his wife, and I'd known you was fond of him and meant to have him, I should have no right to speak a word to you about it; but when I see you're being made love to by a gentleman as can never marry you, and doesna think o' marrying you, I feel bound t' interfere for you. I can't speak about it to them as are i' the place o' your parents, for that might bring worse trouble than's needful." Adam's words relieved one of Hetty's fears, but they also carried a meaning which sickened her with a strengthened foreboding. She was pale and trembling, and yet she would have angrily contradicted Adam, if she had dared to betray her feelings. But she was silent. "You're so young, you know, Hetty," he went on, almost tenderly, "and y' haven't seen much o' what goes on in the world. It's right for me to do what I can to save you from getting into trouble for want o' your knowing where you're being led to. If anybody besides me knew what I know about your meeting a gentleman and having fine presents from him, they'd speak light on you, and you'd lose your character. And besides that, you'll have to suffer in your feelings, wi' giving your love to a man as can never marry you, so as he might take care of you all your life." Adam paused and looked at Hetty, who was plucking the leaves from the filbert-trees and tearing them up in her hand. Her little plans and preconcerted speeches had all forsaken her, like an ill-learnt lesson, under the terrible agitation produced by Adam's words. There was a cruel force in their calm certainty which threatened to grapple and crush her flimsy hopes and fancies. She wanted to resist them--she wanted to throw them off with angry contradiction--but the determination to conceal what she felt still governed her. It was nothing more than a blind prompting now, for she was unable to calculate the effect of her words. "You've no right to say as I love him," she said, faintly, but impetuously, plucking another rough leaf and tearing it up. She was very beautiful in her paleness and agitation, with her dark childish eyes dilated and her breath shorter than usual. Adam's heart yearned over her as he looked at her. Ah, if he could but comfort her, and soothe her, and save her from this pain; if he had but some sort of strength that would enable him to rescue her poor troubled mind, as he would have rescued her body in the face of all danger! "I doubt it must be so, Hetty," he said, tenderly; "for I canna believe you'd let any man kiss you by yourselves, and give you a gold box with his hair, and go a-walking i' the Grove to meet him, if you didna love him. I'm not blaming you, for I know it 'ud begin by little and little, till at last you'd not be able to throw it off. It's him I blame for stealing your love i' that way, when he knew he could never make you the right amends. He's been trifling with you, and making a plaything of you, and caring nothing about you as a man ought to care." "Yes, he does care for me; I know better nor you," Hetty burst out. Everything was forgotten but the pain and anger she felt at Adam's words. "Nay, Hetty," said Adam, "if he'd cared for you rightly, he'd never ha' behaved so. He told me himself he meant nothing by his kissing and presents, and he wanted to make me believe as you thought light of 'em too. But I know better nor that. I can't help thinking as you've been trusting to his loving you well enough to marry you, for all he's a gentleman. And that's why I must speak to you about it, Hetty, for fear you should be deceiving yourself. It's never entered his head the thought o' marrying you." "How do you know? How durst you say so?" said Hetty, pausing in her walk and trembling. The terrible decision of Adam's tone shook her with fear. She had no presence of mind left for the reflection that Arthur would have his reasons for not telling the truth to Adam. Her words and look were enough to determine Adam: he must give her the letter. "Perhaps you can't believe me, Hetty, because you think too well of him--because you think he loves you better than he does. But I've got a letter i' my pocket, as he wrote himself for me to give you. I've not read the letter, but he says he's told you the truth in it. But before I give you the letter, consider, Hetty, and don't let it take too much hold on you. It wouldna ha' been good for you if he'd wanted to do such a mad thing as marry you: it 'ud ha' led to no happiness i' th' end." Hetty said nothing; she felt a revival of hope at the mention of a letter which Adam had not read. There would be something quite different in it from what he thought. Adam took out the letter, but he held it in his hand still, while he said, in a tone of tender entreaty, "Don't you bear me ill will, Hetty, because I'm the means o' bringing you this pain. God knows I'd ha' borne a good deal worse for the sake o' sparing it you. And think--there's nobody but me knows about this, and I'll take care of you as if I was your brother. You're the same as ever to me, for I don't believe you've done any wrong knowingly." Hetty had laid her hand on the letter, but Adam did not loose it till he had done speaking. She took no notice of what he said--she had not listened; but when he loosed the letter, she put it into her pocket, without opening it, and then began to walk more quickly, as if she wanted to go in. "You're in the right not to read it just yet," said Adam. "Read it when you're by yourself. But stay out a little bit longer, and let us call the children: you look so white and ill, your aunt may take notice of it." Hetty heard the warning. It recalled to her the necessity of rallying her native powers of concealment, which had half given way under the shock of Adam's words. And she had the letter in her pocket: she was sure there was comfort in that letter in spite of Adam. She ran to find Totty, and soon reappeared with recovered colour, leading Totty, who was making a sour face because she had been obliged to throw away an unripe apple that she had set her small teeth in. "Hegh, Totty," said Adam, "come and ride on my shoulder--ever so high--you'll touch the tops o' the trees." What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of being seized strongly and swung upward? I don't believe Ganymede cried when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove's shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her secure height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother's eyes, as she stood at the house door and saw Adam coming with his small burden. "Bless your sweet face, my pet," she said, the mother's strong love filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put out her arms. She had no eyes for Hetty at that moment, and only said, without looking at her, "You go and draw some ale, Hetty; the gells are both at the cheese." After the ale had been drawn and her uncle's pipe lighted, there was Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown because she would cry instead of going to sleep. Then there was supper to be got ready, and Hetty must be continually in the way to give help. Adam stayed till he knew Mrs. Poyser expected him to go, engaging her and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of leaving Hetty more at ease. He lingered, because he wanted to see her safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much self-command she showed. He knew she had not had time to read the letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the letter would contradict everything he had said. It was hard work for him to leave her--hard to think that he should not know for days how she was bearing her trouble. But he must go at last, and all he could do was to press her hand gently as he said "Good-bye," and hope she would take that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it was there the same as ever. How busy his thoughts were, as he walked home, in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her weakness to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Arthur, with less and less inclination to admit that his conduct might be extenuated too! His exasperation at Hetty's suffering--and also at the sense that she was possibly thrust for ever out of his own reach--deafened him to any plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought this misery. Adam was a clear-sighted, fair-minded man--a fine fellow, indeed, morally as well as physically. But if Aristides the Just was ever in love and jealous, he was at that moment not perfectly magnanimous. And I cannot pretend that Adam, in these painful days, felt nothing but righteous indignation and loving pity. He was bitterly jealous, and in proportion as his love made him indulgent in his judgment of Hetty, the bitterness found a vent in his feeling towards Arthur. "Her head was allays likely to be turned," he thought, "when a gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white hands, and that way o' talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making up to her in a bold way, as a man couldn't do that was only her equal; and it's much if she'll ever like a common man now." He could not help drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them--at the hard palms and the broken finger-nails. "I'm a roughish fellow, altogether; I don't know, now I come to think on't, what there is much for a woman to like about me; and yet I might ha' got another wife easy enough, if I hadn't set my heart on her. But it's little matter what other women think about me, if she can't love me. She might ha' loved me, perhaps, as likely as any other man--there's nobody hereabouts as I'm afraid of, if he hadn't come between us; but now I shall belike be hateful to her because I'm so different to him. And yet there's no telling--she may turn round the other way, when she finds he's made light of her all the while. She may come to feel the vally of a man as 'ud be thankful to be bound to her all his life. But I must put up with it whichever way it is--I've only to be thankful it's been no worse. I am not th' only man that's got to do without much happiness i' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a bad heart. It's God's will, and that's enough for us: we shouldn't know better how things ought to be than He does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i' puzzling. But it 'ud ha' gone near to spoil my work for me, if I'd seen her brought to sorrow and shame, and through the man as I've always been proud to think on. Since I've been spared that, I've no right to grumble. When a man's got his limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two." As Adam was getting over a stile at this point in his reflections, he perceived a man walking along the field before him. He knew it was Seth, returning from an evening preaching, and made haste to overtake him. "I thought thee'dst be at home before me," he said, as Seth turned round to wait for him, "for I'm later than usual to-night." "Well, I'm later too, for I got into talk, after meeting, with John Barnes, who has lately professed himself in a state of perfection, and I'd a question to ask him about his experience. It's one o' them subjects that lead you further than y' expect--they don't lie along the straight road." They walked along together in silence two or three minutes. Adam was not inclined to enter into the subtleties of religious experience, but he was inclined to interchange a word or two of brotherly affection and confidence with Seth. That was a rare impulse in him, much as the brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters, or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles. Adam was by nature reserved in all matters of feeling, and Seth felt a certain timidity towards his more practical brother. "Seth, lad," Adam said, putting his arm on his brother's shoulder, "hast heard anything from Dinah Morris since she went away?" "Yes," said Seth. "She told me I might write her word after a while, how we went on, and how mother bore up under her trouble. So I wrote to her a fortnight ago, and told her about thee having a new employment, and how Mother was more contented; and last Wednesday, when I called at the post at Treddles'on, I found a letter from her. I think thee'dst perhaps like to read it, but I didna say anything about it because thee'st seemed so full of other things. It's quite easy t' read--she writes wonderful for a woman." Seth had drawn the letter from his pocket and held it out to Adam, who said, as he took it, "Aye, lad, I've got a tough load to carry just now--thee mustna take it ill if I'm a bit silenter and crustier nor usual. Trouble doesna make me care the less for thee. I know we shall stick together to the last." "I take nought ill o' thee, Adam. I know well enough what it means if thee't a bit short wi' me now and then." "There's Mother opening the door to look out for us," said Adam, as they mounted the slope. "She's been sitting i' the dark as usual. Well, Gyp, well, art glad to see me?" Lisbeth went in again quickly and lighted a candle, for she had heard the welcome rustling of footsteps on the grass, before Gyp's joyful bark. "Eh, my lads! Th' hours war ne'er so long sin' I war born as they'n been this blessed Sunday night. What can ye both ha' been doin' till this time?" "Thee shouldstna sit i' the dark, Mother," said Adam; "that makes the time seem longer." "Eh, what am I to do wi' burnin' candle of a Sunday, when there's on'y me an' it's sin to do a bit o' knittin'? The daylight's long enough for me to stare i' the booke as I canna read. It 'ud be a fine way o' shortenin' the time, to make it waste the good candle. But which on you's for ha'in' supper? Ye mun ayther be clemmed or full, I should think, seein' what time o' night it is." "I'm hungry, Mother," said Seth, seating himself at the little table, which had been spread ever since it was light. "I've had my supper," said Adam. "Here, Gyp," he added, taking some cold potato from the table and rubbing the rough grey head that looked up towards him. "Thee needstna be gi'in' th' dog," said Lisbeth; "I'n fed him well a'ready. I'm not like to forget him, I reckon, when he's all o' thee I can get sight on." "Come, then, Gyp," said Adam, "we'll go to bed. Good-night, Mother; I'm very tired." "What ails him, dost know?" Lisbeth said to Seth, when Adam was gone upstairs. "He's like as if he was struck for death this day or two--he's so cast down. I found him i' the shop this forenoon, arter thee wast gone, a-sittin' an' doin' nothin'--not so much as a booke afore him." "He's a deal o' work upon him just now, Mother," said Seth, "and I think he's a bit troubled in his mind. Don't you take notice of it, because it hurts him when you do. Be as kind to him as you can, Mother, and don't say anything to vex him." "Eh, what dost talk o' my vexin' him? An' what am I like to be but kind? I'll ma' him a kettle-cake for breakfast i' the mornin'." Adam, meanwhile, was reading Dinah's letter by the light of his dip candle. DEAR BROTHER SETH--Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it at the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay by money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying up of the manna. I speak of this, because I would not have you think me slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the worldly good that has befallen your brother Adam. The honour and love you bear him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts, and he uses them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his younger brother. "My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be near her in the day of trouble. Speak to her of me, and tell her I often bear her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the dim light as I did with her, and we held one another's hands, and I spoke the words of comfort that were given to me. Ah, that is a blessed time, isn't it, Seth, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a little wearied with its work and its labour. Then the inward light shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore. For then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin I have beheld and been ready to weep over--yea, all the anguish of the children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness--I can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross. For I feel it, I feel it--infinite love is suffering too--yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off. It is not the spirit only that tells me this--I see it in the whole work and word of the Gospel. Is there not pleading in heaven? Is not the Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended? And is He not one with the Infinite Love itself--as our love is one with our sorrow? "These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen with new clearness the meaning of those words, 'If any man love me, let him take up my cross.' I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus. But surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was the sin and sorrow of this world--that was what lay heavy on his heart--and that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one with his sorrow. "In my outward lot, which you ask about, I have all things and abound. I have had constant work in the mill, though some of the other hands have been turned off for a time, and my body is greatly strengthened, so that I feel little weariness after long walking and speaking. What you say about staying in your own country with your mother and brother shows me that you have a true guidance; your lot is appointed there by a clear showing, and to seek a greater blessing elsewhere would be like laying a false offering on the altar and expecting the fire from heaven to kindle it. My work and my joy are here among the hills, and I sometimes think I cling too much to my life among the people here, and should be rebellious if I was called away. "I was thankful for your tidings about the dear friends at the Hall Farm, for though I sent them a letter, by my aunt's desire, after I came back from my sojourn among them, I have had no word from them. My aunt has not the pen of a ready writer, and the work of the house is sufficient for the day, for she is weak in body. My heart cleaves to her and her children as the nearest of all to me in the flesh--yea, and to all in that house. I am carried away to them continually in my sleep, and often in the midst of work, and even of speech, the thought of them is borne in on me as if they were in need and trouble, which yet is dark to me. There may be some leading here; but I wait to be taught. You say they are all well. "We shall see each other again in the body, I trust, though, it may be, not for a long while; for the brethren and sisters at Leeds are desirous to have me for a short space among them, when I have a door opened me again to leave Snowfield. "Farewell, dear brother--and yet not farewell. For those children of God whom it has been granted to see each other face to face, and to hold communion together, and to feel the same spirit working in both can never more be sundered though the hills may lie between. For their souls are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one another about in their thoughts continually as it were a new strength.--Your faithful Sister and fellow-worker in Christ, "DINAH MORRIS." "I have not skill to write the words so small as you do and my pen moves slow. And so I am straitened, and say but little of what is in my mind. Greet your mother for me with a kiss. She asked me to kiss her twice when we parted." Adam had refolded the letter, and was sitting meditatively with his head resting on his arm at the head of the bed, when Seth came upstairs. "Hast read the letter?" said Seth. "Yes," said Adam. "I don't know what I should ha' thought of her and her letter if I'd never seen her: I daresay I should ha' thought a preaching woman hateful. But she's one as makes everything seem right she says and does, and I seemed to see her and hear her speaking when I read the letter. It's wonderful how I remember her looks and her voice. She'd make thee rare and happy, Seth; she's just the woman for thee." "It's no use thinking o' that," said Seth, despondingly. "She spoke so firm, and she's not the woman to say one thing and mean another." "Nay, but her feelings may grow different. A woman may get to love by degrees--the best fire dosna flare up the soonest. I'd have thee go and see her by and by: I'd make it convenient for thee to be away three or four days, and it 'ud be no walk for thee--only between twenty and thirty mile." "I should like to see her again, whether or no, if she wouldna be displeased with me for going," said Seth. "She'll be none displeased," said Adam emphatically, getting up and throwing off his coat. "It might be a great happiness to us all if she'd have thee, for mother took to her so wonderful and seemed so contented to be with her." "Aye," said Seth, rather timidly, "and Dinah's fond o' Hetty too; she thinks a deal about her." Adam made no reply to that, and no other word but "good-night" passed between them.

Chapter 30

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter30

The Delivery of the Letter Adam joins the Poysers on their walk home after church because he wants to talk to Hetty. She is afraid he means to tell on her, but Hetty is confident she can manipulate Adam to her own purposes. Hetty believes that Arthur will miss her and will come home at Christmas, as he said he might do. Adam is direct and says that he is trying to help Hetty because she does not know the ways of the world. Arthur does not love her and will not marry her. Hetty is shocked and does not believe Adam. She knows more than Adam does about how serious their relationship is. She realizes Adam does not know the worst. He keeps repeating that Arthur does not mean to marry her, and finally he produces the letter. He says that he will be like a brother to her in this crisis, and tries to get her to see how dangerous the situation is for her. Hetty believes the letter will be a love letter and puts it in her pocket. They spend the evening with her aunt and uncle and Adam is very kind, trying to cover for her and be entertaining, so her pale look will not be noticed. Adam's tenderness is aroused, and at home, he is kind to Seth, asking him about Dinah. Seth says there is no hope she will change her mind, but gives him a letter from Dinah to read that has consolation and wisdom in it for Adam's situation. Dinah speaks of sorrow being a part of love and that love bears it and does not throw it off. Adam thinks Dinah has the power to make everything seem right. He tells Seth a woman sometimes takes time to love by degrees, hoping this is true of Hetty.

Commentary on Chapter 30 Hetty, like Arthur, has a smaller moral view than Adam does and she, like Arthur, thinks she can manage Adam. They both count on his love and loyalty, but they do not realize that Adam is a man of principle above all else. Because he believes Hetty innocent, he tries to put aside his own feeling of jealousy and thinks of her, trying to be like a brother to save her. He cannot hope for any return to his love until he can get her safely past this danger. He does not ask for any immediate thanks because he sees her simply as a person in trouble. As he says of Dinah, he hopes Hetty may yet learn to love a man who is good to her and sticks by her. The only person who can speak words of comfort to Adam at this time is Dinah, through the letter, for her perspective is large enough to comprehend what he is going through. Adam tells Arthur his love own for Hetty is different; for him she is not a plaything, and he cannot explain it, for the love was given to him by God . Divine love, Dinah explains in her letter, is able to take up sorrow and purify it through sympathy. True love does not consist in pleasure alone. Arthur and Hetty believe in their own desire being satisfied. Adam, like Dinah, experiences a love that reaches out to share sorrow and disappointment but stands firm. Adam knows, "I'm not th'only man that's got to do without much happiness in' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a sad heart" . He does not believe the universe exists for his personal pleasure. Dinah and Adam are purified and made humble by love, because they know love means sacrifice. Hetty and Arthur are egoists; their attraction can hardly be called love. Adam is angry at Arthur for spoiling Hetty's chances for true love in her life: "I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you" .

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_31_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 31

chapter 31

{"name": "Chapter 31", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter31", "summary": "In Hetty's Bed-Chamber Hetty waits until bedtime to read Arthur's letter. He says that it is hard on him, but he must say goodbye to her. They cannot be married because they live in different worlds, so they must part for good. If however, any trouble comes, he will do everything to help her. She can write to the address he encloses. Hetty is taken by surprise, and is devastated. She cries herself to sleep, and the next day she only thinks how she can get away from Hall Farm. She asks her uncle if she can go for a lady's maid. He says no; he wants to see her well married. Mrs. Poyser thinks the idea of being a lady's maid came from learning lace-mending and decides to put a stop to it. Hetty begins to think about marrying Adam as an alternative plan; what difference doe it make as long as she can get away?", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 31 Hetty's bubble is burst, and she begins to hate Arthur for it. She wants change if she cannot have what she wants. Hetty is not able to evaluate what Arthur has said in the letter about class differences, nor does she wonder if he loves her or worry that she will miss him. She had imagined a different life, and now it is taken away. She doesn't seem to care who she marries as long as she can have what she wants. She decides Adam will do as well as any. The narrator and the reader are the only ones who know at this point how \"trivial\" Hetty's soul is . She is clever enough to hide herself from her family and from Adam, who believes her to be as good as she looks. Arthur's letter, however, contains some foreshadowing. He alludes to the fact of future trouble and says that he will help her, if it should come. He gives her an address. This is, at least, responsible on Arthur's part. His letter sounds affectionate and caring, even if he is backing out of the relationship at a late point, and only because he was forced into it. He does seem to care what happens to Hetty, though not enough, and always belatedly. He does not have the foresight of Adam or Mr. Irwine, though he is far from cruel. Eliot's point with Arthur seems to be to illustrate how anyone can commit evil, even if basically good. Readers generally identify with good characters. Eliot can make readers uncomfortable by having to identify with the ordinary characters who slip because they are lazy. Who has not looked for an easy way out, or merely got by because everyone else did? She calls her characters and readers to account, for the laws of cause and effect do not excuse anyone."}

IT was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in Mrs. Poyser's early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the door behind her. Now she would read her letter. It must--it must have comfort in it. How was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what he did say. She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent of roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put it to her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two swept away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her hands to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not easy for her to read a gentleman's handwriting, though Arthur had taken pains to write plainly. "DEAREST HETTY--I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you, and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss them away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with her at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part from her--harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind, though they spring from the truest kindness. "Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now, since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station; and if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I have done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of life. You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always live, and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so little in which we should be alike. "And since I cannot marry you, we must part--we must try not to feel like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not believe that I shall not always care for you--always be grateful to you--always remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do not now foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power. "I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as long as I live, your affectionate friend, "ARTHUR DONNITHORNE." Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass--a white marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than a child's pain in it. Hetty did not see the face--she saw nothing--she only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook and rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible sensation--this cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that produced it, and Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her clothes-press, wrapped it round her, and sat as if she were thinking of nothing but getting warm. Presently she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read it through again. The tears came this time--great rushing tears that blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Arthur was cruel--cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make up the notion of that misery. As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a companion that she might complain to--that would pity her. She leaned forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker, and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs. The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and then, wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed without undressing and went to sleep. There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that was coming. She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the table: there lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay the ear-rings and the locket--the signs of all her short happiness--the signs of the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the little trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the earnest of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments when they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such strangely pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a bewildering delicious surprise--they were so much sweeter than she had thought anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and looked at her in this way, who was present with her now--whose arm she felt round her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her--was the cruel, cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which she snatched and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it once more. The half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of the last night's violent crying made it necessary to her to look again and see if her wretched thoughts were actually true--if the letter was really so cruel. She had to hold it close to the window, else she could not have read it by the faint light. Yes! It was worse--it was more cruel. She crushed it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter--hated him for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love--all the girlish passion and vanity that made up her love. She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present. Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her. For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She should always be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life--the new frock ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton's at Broxton wake, the beaux that she would say "No" to for a long while, and the prospect of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown and a great many clothes all at once. These things were all flat and dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing. She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down in delicate rings--and they were just as beautiful as they were that night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered sadly over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of her foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah's affectionate entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression had been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round. She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the old faces again. But Hetty's was not a nature to face difficulties--to dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her uncle's leave. When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty's blooming health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap, an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took up the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it out of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the great drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes. She wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody should find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was disappointed about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt and uncle would be upon her gave her the self-command which often accompanies a great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery towards the possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little Hetty's conscience. So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work. In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the opportunity of her aunt's absence to say, "Uncle, I wish you'd let me go for a lady's maid." Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work industriously. "Why, what's put that into your head, my wench?" he said at last, after he had given one conservative puff. "I should like it--I should like it better than farm-work." "Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It wouldn't be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i' life. I'd like you to stay wi' us till you've got a good husband: you're my own niece, and I wouldn't have you go to service, though it was a gentleman's house, as long as I've got a home for you." Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe. "I like the needlework," said Hetty, "and I should get good wages." "Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi' you?" said Mr. Poyser, not noticing Hetty's further argument. "You mustna mind that, my wench--she does it for your good. She wishes you well; an' there isn't many aunts as are no kin to you 'ud ha' done by you as she has." "No, it isn't my aunt," said Hetty, "but I should like the work better." "It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit--an' I gev my consent to that fast enough, sin' Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you. For if anything was t' happen, it's well to know how to turn your hand to different sorts o' things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my wench; my family's ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take wage?" "Na-a-y," said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down on the floor. "But the wench takes arter her mother. I'd hard work t' hould HER in, an' she married i' spite o' me--a feller wi' on'y two head o' stock when there should ha' been ten on's farm--she might well die o' th' inflammation afore she war thirty." It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son's question had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to Hetty than to his son's children. Her mother's fortune had been spent by that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel's blood in her veins. "Poor thing, poor thing!" said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have provoked this retrospective harshness. "She'd but bad luck. But Hetty's got as good a chance o' getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i' this country." After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty, in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial, half out of the day's repressed sadness. "Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, "don't let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?" he continued to his wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab's antennae. "Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much older, wi' that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o' nights. What's the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?" "Why, she's been wanting to go for a lady's maid," said Mr. Poyser. "I tell her we can do better for her nor that." "I thought she'd got some maggot in her head, she's gone about wi' her mouth buttoned up so all day. It's all wi' going so among them servants at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it 'ud be a finer life than being wi' them as are akin to her and ha' brought her up sin' she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there's nothing belongs to being a lady's maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I'll be bound. It's what rag she can get to stick on her as she's thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn't like to be the mawkin i' the field, for then she'd be made o' rags inside and out. I'll never gi' my consent to her going for a lady's maid, while she's got good friends to take care on her till she's married to somebody better nor one o' them valets, as is neither a common man nor a gentleman, an' must live on the fat o' the land, an's like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for him." "Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we must have a better husband for her nor that, and there's better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and get to bed. I'll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady's maid. Let's hear no more on't." When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, "I canna make it out as she should want to go away, for I thought she'd got a mind t' Adam Bede. She's looked like it o' late." "Eh, there's no knowing what she's got a liking to, for things take no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell, Molly--as is aggravatin' enough, for the matter o' that--but I believe she'd care more about leaving us and the children, for all she's been here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she's got this notion o' being a lady's maid wi' going among them servants--we might ha' known what it 'ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work. But I'll put a stop to it pretty quick." "Thee'dst be sorry to part wi' her, if it wasn't for her good," said Mr. Poyser. "She's useful to thee i' the work." "Sorry? Yes, I'm fonder on her nor she deserves--a little hard-hearted hussy, wanting to leave us i' that way. I can't ha' had her about me these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything wi'out caring about her. An' here I'm having linen spun, an' thinking all the while it'll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she's married, an' she'll live i' the parish wi' us, and never go out of our sights--like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it." "Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle," said Mr. Poyser, soothingly. "She's fond on us, I'll be bound; but she's young, an' gets things in her head as she can't rightly give account on. Them young fillies 'ull run away often wi'-ou knowing why." Her uncle's answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery. Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam's happiness in the matter had never yet visited her. "Strange!" perhaps you will say, "this rush of impulse to-wards a course that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind, and in only the second night of her sadness!" Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in the quiet bay! "Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings." But that will not save the vessel--the pretty thing that might have been a lasting joy.

Chapter 31

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter31

In Hetty's Bed-Chamber Hetty waits until bedtime to read Arthur's letter. He says that it is hard on him, but he must say goodbye to her. They cannot be married because they live in different worlds, so they must part for good. If however, any trouble comes, he will do everything to help her. She can write to the address he encloses. Hetty is taken by surprise, and is devastated. She cries herself to sleep, and the next day she only thinks how she can get away from Hall Farm. She asks her uncle if she can go for a lady's maid. He says no; he wants to see her well married. Mrs. Poyser thinks the idea of being a lady's maid came from learning lace-mending and decides to put a stop to it. Hetty begins to think about marrying Adam as an alternative plan; what difference doe it make as long as she can get away?

Commentary on Chapter 31 Hetty's bubble is burst, and she begins to hate Arthur for it. She wants change if she cannot have what she wants. Hetty is not able to evaluate what Arthur has said in the letter about class differences, nor does she wonder if he loves her or worry that she will miss him. She had imagined a different life, and now it is taken away. She doesn't seem to care who she marries as long as she can have what she wants. She decides Adam will do as well as any. The narrator and the reader are the only ones who know at this point how "trivial" Hetty's soul is . She is clever enough to hide herself from her family and from Adam, who believes her to be as good as she looks. Arthur's letter, however, contains some foreshadowing. He alludes to the fact of future trouble and says that he will help her, if it should come. He gives her an address. This is, at least, responsible on Arthur's part. His letter sounds affectionate and caring, even if he is backing out of the relationship at a late point, and only because he was forced into it. He does seem to care what happens to Hetty, though not enough, and always belatedly. He does not have the foresight of Adam or Mr. Irwine, though he is far from cruel. Eliot's point with Arthur seems to be to illustrate how anyone can commit evil, even if basically good. Readers generally identify with good characters. Eliot can make readers uncomfortable by having to identify with the ordinary characters who slip because they are lazy. Who has not looked for an easy way out, or merely got by because everyone else did? She calls her characters and readers to account, for the laws of cause and effect do not excuse anyone.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_32_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 32

chapter 32

{"name": "Chapter 32", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter32", "summary": "Mrs. Poyser 'Has Her Say Out' The next day Squire Donnithorne visits the Poysers to make a deal with them. He has a possible tenant for the Chase Farm but the man wants more plough land. If the Poysers would give up some plough land, they could have more dairy land and then Mrs. Poyser could make more money with her dairy. The Poysers see through this plan to cheat them of their land. Next, the squire threatens them that if they want their lease renewed, they should comply with his wishes. This is too much for Mrs. Poyser who tells off the squire on behalf of all the tenants for his cheap and miserly ways, for not keeping up the property, and for taking all the profits for himself. He rides off, and Mr. Poyser, though pleased at his wife's action, is worried that they will be evicted.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 32 This is a comic scene where Mrs. Poyser's wit is on display. She mentions that it is worth any price to have had her say, for \"There's no pleasure in living if you're to be corked up for iver\" . When the squire threatens to evict them, she answers that it won't be so easy to find another tenant to take their place because \"a maggot must be born in the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon\" . The Poysers worry that they will be evicted on Michaelmas, twelvemonth. This means they have a year from Michael's Mass on Sept. 29, the date when farming contracts were made. Mrs. Poyser says ironically that there is no telling what could have happened by then. This is another bit of foreshadowing."}

THE next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the Donnithorne Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very day--no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to be the future steward, but by Mr. Casson himself, the personal witness to the stranger's visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had thought of denying Mr. Casson's testimony to the fact that he had seen the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating circumstances. "I see him myself," he said; "I see him coming along by the Crab-tree Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I'd just been t' hev a pint--it was half after ten i' the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg'lar as the clock--and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, 'You'll get a bit o' barley to-day, Knowles,' I says, 'if you look about you'; and then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles'on road, and just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i' top-boots coming along on a bald-faced hoss--I wish I may never stir if I didn't. And I stood still till he come up, and I says, 'Good morning, sir,' I says, for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he was a this-country man; so I says, 'Good morning, sir: it 'll 'old hup for the barley this morning, I think. There'll be a bit got hin, if we've good luck.' And he says, 'Eh, ye may be raight, there's noo tallin',' he says, and I knowed by that"--here Mr. Casson gave a wink--"as he didn't come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he'd think me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks the right language." "The right language!" said Bartle Massey, contemptuously. "You're about as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on a key-bugle." "Well, I don't know," answered Mr. Casson, with an angry smile. "I should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to know what's the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster." "Aye, aye, man," said Bartle, with a tone of sarcastic consolation, "you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth's goat says ba-a-a, it's all right--it 'ud be unnatural for it to make any other noise." The rest of the party being Loamshire men, Mr. Casson had the laugh strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question, which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and that fresh hearer was Martin Poyser, who, as his wife said, "never went boozin' with that set at Casson's, a-sittin' soakin' in drink, and looking as wise as a lot o' cod-fish wi' red faces." It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that Mrs. Poyser's thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting, in that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony, followed by John the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of prevision, which really had something more in it than her own remarkable penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to herself, "I shouldna wonder if he's come about that man as is a-going to take the Chase Farm, wanting Poyser to do something for him without pay. But Poyser's a fool if he does." Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire's visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Poyser had during the last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more than met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the next time he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches had always remained imaginary. "Good-day, Mrs. Poyser," said the old squire, peering at her with his short-sighted eyes--a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Poyser observed, "allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he was going to dab his finger-nail on you." However, she said, "Your servant, sir," and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism, without severe provocation. "Is your husband at home, Mrs. Poyser?" "Yes, sir; he's only i' the rick-yard. I'll send for him in a minute, if you'll please to get down and step in." "Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter; but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have your opinion too." "Hetty, run and tell your uncle to come in," said Mrs. Poyser, as they entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Hetty's curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round furtively. "What a fine old kitchen this is!" said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled, polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. "And you keep it so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Poyser. I like these premises, do you know, beyond any on the estate." "Well, sir, since you're fond of 'em, I should be glad if you'd let a bit o' repairs be done to 'em, for the boarding's i' that state as we're like to be eaten up wi' rats and mice; and the cellar, you may stan' up to your knees i' water in't, if you like to go down; but perhaps you'd rather believe my words. Won't you please to sit down, sir?" "Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter," said the squire, looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which he and Mrs. Poyser might happen to disagree. "I think I see the door open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your cream and butter. I don't expect that Mrs. Satchell's cream and butter will bear comparison with yours." "I can't say, sir, I'm sure. It's seldom I see other folks's butter, though there's some on it as one's no need to see--the smell's enough." "Ah, now this I like," said Mr. Donnithorne, looking round at the damp temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. "I'm sure I should like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I'll sit down in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Poyser, how do you do? In the midst of business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful dairy--the best manager in the parish, is she not?" Mr. Poyser had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of "pitching." As he stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab. "Will you please to take this chair, sir?" he said, lifting his father's arm-chair forward a little: "you'll find it easy." "No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs," said the old gentleman, seating himself on a small chair near the door. "Do you know, Mrs. Poyser--sit down, pray, both of you--I've been far from contented, for some time, with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a good method, as you have." "Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that," said Mrs. Poyser in a hard voice, rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window, as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Poyser might sit down if he liked, she thought; she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Poyser, who looked and felt the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair. "And now, Poyser, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my own hands--nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Poyser, and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage." "Oh," said Mr. Poyser, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrangement. "If I'm called upon to speak, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness, "you know better than me; but I don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us--we've cumber enough wi' our own farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on i' that character." "You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure you--such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little plan I'm going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much to your own advantage as his." "Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as take advantage that get advantage i' this world, I think. Folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em." "The fact is, Poyser," said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Poyser's theory of worldly prosperity, "there is too much dairy land, and too little plough land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle's purpose--indeed, he will only take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it appears, is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures, you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your wife's management; and I should request you, Mrs. Poyser, to supply my house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other hand, Poyser, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges, which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you. There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land." Mr. Poyser was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head on one side, and his mouth screwed up--apparently absorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel, any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to him. So, after a few moments' silence, he looked up at her and said mildly, "What dost say?" Mrs. Poyser had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands. "Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o' your corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands, either for love or money; and there's nayther love nor money here, as I can see, on'y other folks's love o' theirselves, and the money as is to go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own the land, and them as is born to sweat on't"--here Mrs. Poyser paused to gasp a little--"and I know it's christened folks's duty to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it; but I'll not make a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in't, for no landlord in England, not if he was King George himself." "No, no, my dear Mrs. Poyser, certainly not," said the squire, still confident in his own powers of persuasion, "you must not overwork yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?" "Aye, that's true," said Mr. Poyser, unable to repress an opinion on a question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case a purely abstract question. "I daresay," said Mrs. Poyser bitterly, turning her head half-way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair--"I daresay it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. How do I know whether the milk 'ull be wanted constant? What's to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty gallons o' milk on my mind--and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we're obliged to beg the butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles. And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work for a man an' hoss--that's to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water." "That difficulty--about the fetching and carrying--you will not have, Mrs. Poyser," said the squire, who thought that this entrance into particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs. Poyser's part. "Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony." "Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to both the gells at once and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna be wi' having our back kitchen turned into a public." "Well, Poyser," said the squire, shifting his tactics and looking as if he thought Mrs. Poyser had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and left the room, "you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall not forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three years, when the present one expires; otherwise, I daresay Thurle, who is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old tenant like you." To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to complete Mrs. Poyser's exasperation, even without the final threat. Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old place where he had been bred and born--for he believed the old squire had small spite enough for anything--was beginning a mild remonstrance explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and sell more stock, with, "Well, sir, I think as it's rether hard..." when Mrs. Poyser burst in with the desperate determination to have her say out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit and the only shelter were the work-house. "Then, sir, if I may speak--as, for all I'm a woman, and there's folks as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the rent, and save another quarter--I say, if Mr. Thurle's so ready to take farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if he likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't--wi' the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by dozens--and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect 'em to eat us up alive--as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long ago. I should like to see if there's another tenant besides Poyser as 'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles down--and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying and having to pay half--and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as that: a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon. You may run away from my words, sir," continued Mrs. Poyser, following the old squire beyond the door--for after the first moments of stunned surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile, had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get away immediately, for John was walking the pony up and down the yard, and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned. "You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin' underhand ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Harry to your friend, though nobody else is, but I tell you for once as we're not dumb creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha' got the lash i' their hands, for want o' knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th' only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty o' the same way o' thinking i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a brimstone match in everybody's nose--if it isna two-three old folks as you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all your scrapin'." There are occasions on which two servant-girls and a waggoner may be a formidable audience, and as the squire rode away on his black pony, even the gift of short-sightedness did not prevent him from being aware that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he suspected that sour old John was grinning behind him--which was also the fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's heels carried out the idea of Mrs. Poyser's solo in an impressive quartet. Mrs. Poyser, however, had no sooner seen the pony move off than she turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them into the back kitchen, and unspearing her knitting, began to knit again with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house. "Thee'st done it now," said Mr. Poyser, a little alarmed and uneasy, but not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak. "Yes, I know I've done it," said Mrs. Poyser; "but I've had my say out, and I shall be th' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent saying what I think, if I live to be as old as th' old squire; and there's little likelihood--for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only folks as aren't wanted i' th' other world." "But thee wutna like moving from th' old place, this Michaelmas twelvemonth," said Mr. Poyser, "and going into a strange parish, where thee know'st nobody. It'll be hard upon us both, and upo' Father too." "Eh, it's no use worreting; there's plenty o' things may happen between this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The captain may be master afore them, for what we know," said Mrs. Poyser, inclined to take an unusually hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her own merit and not by other people's fault. "I'm none for worreting," said Mr. Poyser, rising from his three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; "but I should be loath to leave th' old place, and the parish where I was bred and born, and Father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and niver thrive again."

Chapter 32

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter32

Mrs. Poyser 'Has Her Say Out' The next day Squire Donnithorne visits the Poysers to make a deal with them. He has a possible tenant for the Chase Farm but the man wants more plough land. If the Poysers would give up some plough land, they could have more dairy land and then Mrs. Poyser could make more money with her dairy. The Poysers see through this plan to cheat them of their land. Next, the squire threatens them that if they want their lease renewed, they should comply with his wishes. This is too much for Mrs. Poyser who tells off the squire on behalf of all the tenants for his cheap and miserly ways, for not keeping up the property, and for taking all the profits for himself. He rides off, and Mr. Poyser, though pleased at his wife's action, is worried that they will be evicted.

Commentary on Chapter 32 This is a comic scene where Mrs. Poyser's wit is on display. She mentions that it is worth any price to have had her say, for "There's no pleasure in living if you're to be corked up for iver" . When the squire threatens to evict them, she answers that it won't be so easy to find another tenant to take their place because "a maggot must be born in the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon" . The Poysers worry that they will be evicted on Michaelmas, twelvemonth. This means they have a year from Michael's Mass on Sept. 29, the date when farming contracts were made. Mrs. Poyser says ironically that there is no telling what could have happened by then. This is another bit of foreshadowing.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_33_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 33

chapter 33

{"name": "Chapter 33", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter33", "summary": "More Links It is harvest time, and Mrs. Poyser is the heroine of the valley for speaking her mind to the old squire. Mr. Irwine and his mother admire Mrs. Poyser for her backbone but doubt the old squire will be around much longer. Both Mrs. Poyser and Adam notice changes in Hetty after she receives the letter. She is quieter, more cooperative and less vain. She does her work without scolding and does not want to go anywhere. Adam takes it as a sign she is getting over Arthur. He feels hopeful. The narrator comments on Adam's love for Hetty. On the one hand, he falls in love with her because of the way she looks; he has no idea who she is. But, the narrator thinks Adam's love comes from his strength not his weakness, for love is like a mysterious music set off by beauty, and Hetty touches all the deep places in Adam. His work is prospering, and he can think of marriage. Jonathan Burge offers him a partnership, and so with his two jobs, he can afford to buy a house.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 33 Readers will understand more than Adam does about Hetty's changes. She seems to be hiding away, not wanting to call attention to herself. She has a harder, more mature look. She tries to be agreeable to Adam. She may already suspect that she is pregnant. In any case, she has been abandoned by Arthur and now plays up to Adam, dressing as he likes and acting demure. She is no trouble to her aunt. She depends on others now and must hide what she has done. The narrator tries to speculate on Adam's illusions about Hetty. Are they foolish or noble? They proceed from a noble mind who attributes its own nobility to another, but the love Adam feels is deep nonetheless. If it is an error, it is the error of a good person, one who does not know the minds of women. Eliot, however, by showing us the depth of each character, brings out the contradictions, complexity, and mystery of the human being. We assume we know others, but even people we are close to may not know us. The Poysers have raised Hetty and still they have no idea of the misery she is able to plunge all them into in just a few months."}

THE barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and nuts were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the farm-houses, and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods behind the Chase, and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn splendour under the dark low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with its fragrant basketfuls of purple damsons, and its paler purple daisies, and its lads and lasses leaving or seeking service and winding along between the yellow hedges, with their bundles under their arms. But though Michaelmas was come, Mr. Thurle, that desirable tenant, did not come to the Chase Farm, and the old squire, after all, had been obliged to put in a new bailiff. It was known throughout the two parishes that the squire's plan had been frustrated because the Poysers had refused to be "put upon," and Mrs. Poyser's outbreak was discussed in all the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by frequent repetition. The news that "Bony" was come back from Egypt was comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was nothing to Mrs. Poyser's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Irwine had heard a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception of the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill, avoided any quarrel with Mr. Donnithorne, he could not allow himself the pleasure of laughing at the old gentleman's discomfiture with any one besides his mother, who declared that if she were rich she should like to allow Mrs. Poyser a pension for life, and wanted to invite her to the parsonage that she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs. Poyser's own lips. "No, no, Mother," said Mr. Irwine; "it was a little bit of irregular justice on Mrs. Poyser's part, but a magistrate like me must not countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I have taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good influence I have over the old man." "Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses," said Mrs. Irwine. "She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers. And she says such sharp things too." "Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She's quite original in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about Craig--that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Now that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence." "But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of the farm next Michaelmas, eh?" said Mrs. Irwine. "Oh, that must not be; and Poyser is such a good tenant that Donnithorne is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Arthur and I must move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are must not go." "Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day," said Mrs. Irwine. "It struck me on Arthur's birthday that the old man was a little shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age. It's only women who have a right to live as long as that." "When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them," said Mr. Irwine, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand. Mrs. Poyser, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice to quit with "There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day"--one of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects under that hard condition. Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Poyser household. Mrs. Poyser thought she noticed a surprising improvement in Hetty. To be sure, the girl got "closer tempered, and sometimes she seemed as if there'd be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes," but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite eagerly, without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never wanted to go out now--indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore her aunt's putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to be a lady's maid must have been caused by some little pique or misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever Adam came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits and to talk more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or any other admirer happened to pay a visit there. Adam himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave way to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Arthur's letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again--not without dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Poyser for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might presently tell him Hetty was ill. But by and by there came a light step that he knew, and when Mrs. Poyser said, "Come, Hetty, where have you been?" Adam was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the changed look there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw her smiling as if she were pleased to see him--looking the same as ever at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen her in before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a change: the cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she had ever done of late, but there was something different in her eyes, in the expression of her face, in all her movements, Adam thought--something harder, older, less child-like. "Poor thing!" he said to himself, "that's allays likely. It's because she's had her first heartache. But she's got a spirit to bear up under it. Thank God for that." As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see him--turning up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to understand that she was glad for him to come--and going about her work in the same equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe that her feeling towards Arthur must have been much slighter than he had imagined in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been able to think of her girlish fancy that Arthur was in love with her and would marry her as a folly of which she was timely cured. And it perhaps was, as he had sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it would be--her heart was really turning with all the more warmth towards the man she knew to have a serious love for her. Possibly you think that Adam was not at all sagacious in his interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a sensible man to behave as he did--falling in love with a girl who really had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance, see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every respect--indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Adam was one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less--nay, I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them. It is more than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this impersonal expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever), and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time to come, in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind. Our good Adam had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for Hetty: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him. He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her? He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was large, unselfish, tender. The hopes he felt about Hetty softened a little his feeling towards Arthur. Surely his attentions to Hetty must have been of a slight kind; they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Arthur's position ought to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of playfulness about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger and had prevented them from laying any strong hold on Hetty's heart. As the new promise of happiness rose for Adam, his indignation and jealousy began to die out. Hetty was not made unhappy; he almost believed that she liked him best; and the thought sometimes crossed his mind that the friendship which had once seemed dead for ever might revive in the days to come, and he would not have to say "good-bye" to the grand old woods, but would like them better because they were Arthur's. For this new promise of happiness following so quickly on the shock of pain had an intoxicating effect on the sober Adam, who had all his life been used to much hardship and moderate hope. Was he really going to have an easy lot after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan Burge, finding it impossible to replace Adam, had at last made up his mind to offer him a share in the business, without further condition than that he should continue to give his energies to it and renounce all thought of having a separate business of his own. Son-in-law or no son-in-law, Adam had made himself too necessary to be parted with, and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than his skill in handicraft that his having the management of the woods made little difference in the value of his services; and as to the bargains about the squire's timber, it would be easy to call in a third person. Adam saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous work such as he had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was a lad: he might come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for he had always said to himself that Jonathan Burge's building business was like an acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree. So he gave his hand to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind full of happy visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be shocked when I say it) the image of Hetty hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the cheapening of bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite scheme for the strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder. What then? Adam's enthusiasm lay in these things; and our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence. Adam would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very soon, and if Dinah consented to have Seth, their mother would perhaps be more contented to live apart from Adam. But he told himself that he would not be hasty--he would not try Hetty's feeling for him until it had had time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church, he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Poyser, he knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if Hetty's eyes brightened at it. The months would be short with all he had to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of late must not hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he got home and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for the coming change by talking of the old house being too small for them all to go on living in it always.

Chapter 33

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter33

More Links It is harvest time, and Mrs. Poyser is the heroine of the valley for speaking her mind to the old squire. Mr. Irwine and his mother admire Mrs. Poyser for her backbone but doubt the old squire will be around much longer. Both Mrs. Poyser and Adam notice changes in Hetty after she receives the letter. She is quieter, more cooperative and less vain. She does her work without scolding and does not want to go anywhere. Adam takes it as a sign she is getting over Arthur. He feels hopeful. The narrator comments on Adam's love for Hetty. On the one hand, he falls in love with her because of the way she looks; he has no idea who she is. But, the narrator thinks Adam's love comes from his strength not his weakness, for love is like a mysterious music set off by beauty, and Hetty touches all the deep places in Adam. His work is prospering, and he can think of marriage. Jonathan Burge offers him a partnership, and so with his two jobs, he can afford to buy a house.

Commentary on Chapter 33 Readers will understand more than Adam does about Hetty's changes. She seems to be hiding away, not wanting to call attention to herself. She has a harder, more mature look. She tries to be agreeable to Adam. She may already suspect that she is pregnant. In any case, she has been abandoned by Arthur and now plays up to Adam, dressing as he likes and acting demure. She is no trouble to her aunt. She depends on others now and must hide what she has done. The narrator tries to speculate on Adam's illusions about Hetty. Are they foolish or noble? They proceed from a noble mind who attributes its own nobility to another, but the love Adam feels is deep nonetheless. If it is an error, it is the error of a good person, one who does not know the minds of women. Eliot, however, by showing us the depth of each character, brings out the contradictions, complexity, and mystery of the human being. We assume we know others, but even people we are close to may not know us. The Poysers have raised Hetty and still they have no idea of the misery she is able to plunge all them into in just a few months.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_34_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 34

chapter 34

{"name": "Chapter 34", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter34", "summary": "The Betrothal Adam walks Hetty home after church one Sunday in November. He asks her to take his arm. He is more impatient about her now and is waiting for a sign from Hetty to declare his love. He tells her his good news about becoming a partner with Jonathan Burge. Suddenly, she is alarmed, for she remembers that the partnership was supposed to be coupled with an engagement to Mary Burge. Just when she was counting on Adam, he seems to slip away. She cries, and Adam guesses it is because of Mary Burge. He believes Hetty has come to love him and proposes marriage. She accepts. They rush home to tell the Poysers, who are overjoyed. It is what they had wished. They set the marriage date for the spring so they will have time to get ready. Mr. Poyser tells Hetty to kiss Adam, and she turns away. Then he tells Adam he should kiss his fiancee. Adam gives Hetty a kiss on the lips. Hetty feels nothing for Adam, but she is content to be loved and taken care of. It's not Arthur or what she expected, but it will do.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 34 Readers will know why Hetty has \"more luxuriant womanliness\" than before, but Adam does not guess the possible reason. Adam does not seem to take it ill that Hetty does not come forth with a kiss on her own. Perhaps he thinks her shy. It is obvious she is looking for security, for she no longer has youthful hopes of love. The reader certainly guesses Hetty is pregnant and wonders if she knows. Although a woman today would certainly know by this time she was going to have a baby, Hetty is probably ignorant of such things and has no one to ask. Eliot never says outright that Hetty is pregnant, but it becomes plain in the next chapter. Knowing what we know about Hetty, there is no way this marriage could be happy. Even if disaster were not waiting, Adam would surely be disappointed to find Hetty did not love him. Her pretense could not hold up for long. For the moment, he is deliriously happy; his life has purpose and direction now."}

IT was a dry Sunday, and really a pleasant day for the 2d of November. There was no sunshine, but the clouds were high, and the wind was so still that the yellow leaves which fluttered down from the hedgerow elms must have fallen from pure decay. Nevertheless, Mrs. Poyser did not go to church, for she had taken a cold too serious to be neglected; only two winters ago she had been laid up for weeks with a cold; and since his wife did not go to church, Mr. Poyser considered that on the whole it would be as well for him to stay away too and "keep her company." He could perhaps have given no precise form to the reasons that determined this conclusion, but it is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. However it was, no one from the Poyser family went to church that afternoon except Hetty and the boys; yet Adam was bold enough to join them after church, and say that he would walk home with them, though all the way through the village he appeared to be chiefly occupied with Marty and Tommy, telling them about the squirrels in Binton Coppice, and promising to take them there some day. But when they came to the fields he said to the boys, "Now, then, which is the stoutest walker? Him as gets to th' home-gate first shall be the first to go with me to Binton Coppice on the donkey. But Tommy must have the start up to the next stile, because he's the smallest." Adam had never behaved so much like a determined lover before. As soon as the boys had both set off, he looked down at Hetty and said, "Won't you hang on my arm, Hetty?" in a pleading tone, as if he had already asked her and she had refused. Hetty looked up at him smilingly and put her round arm through his in a moment. It was nothing to her, putting her arm through Adam's, but she knew he cared a great deal about having her arm through his, and she wished him to care. Her heart beat no faster, and she looked at the half-bare hedgerows and the ploughed field with the same sense of oppressive dulness as before. But Adam scarcely felt that he was walking. He thought Hetty must know that he was pressing her arm a little--a very little. Words rushed to his lips that he dared not utter--that he had made up his mind not to utter yet--and so he was silent for the length of that field. The calm patience with which he had once waited for Hetty's love, content only with her presence and the thought of the future, had forsaken him since that terrible shock nearly three months ago. The agitations of jealousy had given a new restlessness to his passion--had made fear and uncertainty too hard almost to bear. But though he might not speak to Hetty of his love, he would tell her about his new prospects and see if she would be pleased. So when he was enough master of himself to talk, he said, "I'm going to tell your uncle some news that'll surprise him, Hetty; and I think he'll be glad to hear it too." "What's that?" Hetty said indifferently. "Why, Mr. Burge has offered me a share in his business, and I'm going to take it." There was a change in Hetty's face, certainly not produced by any agreeable impression from this news. In fact she felt a momentary annoyance and alarm, for she had so often heard it hinted by her uncle that Adam might have Mary Burge and a share in the business any day, if he liked, that she associated the two objects now, and the thought immediately occurred that perhaps Adam had given her up because of what had happened lately, and had turned towards Mary Burge. With that thought, and before she had time to remember any reasons why it could not be true, came a new sense of forsakenness and disappointment. The one thing--the one person--her mind had rested on in its dull weariness, had slipped away from her, and peevish misery filled her eyes with tears. She was looking on the ground, but Adam saw her face, saw the tears, and before he had finished saying, "Hetty, dear Hetty, what are you crying for?" his eager rapid thought had flown through all the causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on half the true one. Hetty thought he was going to marry Mary Burge--she didn't like him to marry--perhaps she didn't like him to marry any one but herself? All caution was swept away--all reason for it was gone, and Adam could feel nothing but trembling joy. He leaned towards her and took her hand, as he said: "I could afford to be married now, Hetty--I could make a wife comfortable; but I shall never want to be married if you won't have me." Hetty looked up at him and smiled through her tears, as she had done to Arthur that first evening in the wood, when she had thought he was not coming, and yet he came. It was a feebler relief, a feebler triumph she felt now, but the great dark eyes and the sweet lips were as beautiful as ever, perhaps more beautiful, for there was a more luxuriant womanliness about Hetty of late. Adam could hardly believe in the happiness of that moment. His right hand held her left, and he pressed her arm close against his heart as he leaned down towards her. "Do you really love me, Hetty? Will you be my own wife, to love and take care of as long as I live?" Hetty did not speak, but Adam's face was very close to hers, and she put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be caressed--she wanted to feel as if Arthur were with her again. Adam cared for no words after that, and they hardly spoke through the rest of the walk. He only said, "I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't I, Hetty?" and she said, "Yes." The red fire-light on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces that evening, when Hetty was gone upstairs and Adam took the opportunity of telling Mr. and Mrs. Poyser and the grandfather that he saw his way to maintaining a wife now, and that Hetty had consented to have him. "I hope you have no objections against me for her husband," said Adam; "I'm a poor man as yet, but she shall want nothing as I can work for." "Objections?" said Mr. Poyser, while the grandfather leaned forward and brought out his long "Nay, nay." "What objections can we ha' to you, lad? Never mind your being poorish as yet; there's money in your head-piece as there's money i' the sown field, but it must ha' time. You'n got enough to begin on, and we can do a deal tow'rt the bit o' furniture you'll want. Thee'st got feathers and linen to spare--plenty, eh?" This question was of course addressed to Mrs. Poyser, who was wrapped up in a warm shawl and was too hoarse to speak with her usual facility. At first she only nodded emphatically, but she was presently unable to resist the temptation to be more explicit. "It ud be a poor tale if I hadna feathers and linen," she said, hoarsely, "when I never sell a fowl but what's plucked, and the wheel's a-going every day o' the week." "Come, my wench," said Mr. Poyser, when Hetty came down, "come and kiss us, and let us wish you luck." Hetty went very quietly and kissed the big good-natured man. "There!" he said, patting her on the back, "go and kiss your aunt and your grandfather. I'm as wishful t' have you settled well as if you was my own daughter; and so's your aunt, I'll be bound, for she's done by you this seven 'ear, Hetty, as if you'd been her own. Come, come, now," he went on, becoming jocose, as soon as Hetty had kissed her aunt and the old man, "Adam wants a kiss too, I'll warrant, and he's a right to one now." Hetty turned away, smiling, towards her empty chair. "Come, Adam, then, take one," persisted Mr. Poyser, "else y' arena half a man." Adam got up, blushing like a small maiden--great strong fellow as he was--and, putting his arm round Hetty stooped down and gently kissed her lips. It was a pretty scene in the red fire-light; for there were no candles--why should there be, when the fire was so bright and was reflected from all the pewter and the polished oak? No one wanted to work on a Sunday evening. Even Hetty felt something like contentment in the midst of all this love. Adam's attachment to her, Adam's caress, stirred no passion in her, were no longer enough to satisfy her vanity, but they were the best her life offered her now--they promised her some change. There was a great deal of discussion before Adam went away, about the possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in. No house was empty except the one next to Will Maskery's in the village, and that was too small for Adam now. Mr. Poyser insisted that the best plan would be for Seth and his mother to move and leave Adam in the old home, which might be enlarged after a while, for there was plenty of space in the woodyard and garden; but Adam objected to turning his mother out. "Well, well," said Mr. Poyser at last, "we needna fix everything to-night. We must take time to consider. You canna think o' getting married afore Easter. I'm not for long courtships, but there must be a bit o' time to make things comfortable." "Aye, to be sure," said Mrs. Poyser, in a hoarse whisper; "Christian folks can't be married like cuckoos, I reckon." "I'm a bit daunted, though," said Mr. Poyser, "when I think as we may have notice to quit, and belike be forced to take a farm twenty mile off." "Eh," said the old man, staring at the floor and lifting his hands up and down, while his arms rested on the elbows of his chair, "it's a poor tale if I mun leave th' ould spot an be buried in a strange parish. An' you'll happen ha' double rates to pay," he added, looking up at his son. "Well, thee mustna fret beforehand, father," said Martin the younger. "Happen the captain 'ull come home and make our peace wi' th' old squire. I build upo' that, for I know the captain 'll see folks righted if he can."

Chapter 34

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter34

The Betrothal Adam walks Hetty home after church one Sunday in November. He asks her to take his arm. He is more impatient about her now and is waiting for a sign from Hetty to declare his love. He tells her his good news about becoming a partner with Jonathan Burge. Suddenly, she is alarmed, for she remembers that the partnership was supposed to be coupled with an engagement to Mary Burge. Just when she was counting on Adam, he seems to slip away. She cries, and Adam guesses it is because of Mary Burge. He believes Hetty has come to love him and proposes marriage. She accepts. They rush home to tell the Poysers, who are overjoyed. It is what they had wished. They set the marriage date for the spring so they will have time to get ready. Mr. Poyser tells Hetty to kiss Adam, and she turns away. Then he tells Adam he should kiss his fiancee. Adam gives Hetty a kiss on the lips. Hetty feels nothing for Adam, but she is content to be loved and taken care of. It's not Arthur or what she expected, but it will do.

Commentary on Chapter 34 Readers will know why Hetty has "more luxuriant womanliness" than before, but Adam does not guess the possible reason. Adam does not seem to take it ill that Hetty does not come forth with a kiss on her own. Perhaps he thinks her shy. It is obvious she is looking for security, for she no longer has youthful hopes of love. The reader certainly guesses Hetty is pregnant and wonders if she knows. Although a woman today would certainly know by this time she was going to have a baby, Hetty is probably ignorant of such things and has no one to ask. Eliot never says outright that Hetty is pregnant, but it becomes plain in the next chapter. Knowing what we know about Hetty, there is no way this marriage could be happy. Even if disaster were not waiting, Adam would surely be disappointed to find Hetty did not love him. Her pretense could not hold up for long. For the moment, he is deliriously happy; his life has purpose and direction now.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_35_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 4.chapter 35

chapter 35

{"name": "Chapter 35", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter35", "summary": "The Hidden Dread Adam doesn't see much of Hetty during the winter between November and February because he is working two jobs and getting ready for the wedding in March. Two rooms are prepared for Hetty and Adam in the Bede home, so that Seth and Lisbeth can stay in the house. Adam does not know why Hetty seems depressed sometimes and thinks it's because of his mother living with them. Mrs. Poyser is surprised at Hetty's ability to take on extra housework at Hall Farm and assumes she is learning how to be a housewife. In February Hetty goes to Treddleston to get some things for her wedding. She wears her red cloak and bonnet and wanders about in a daze, feeling lost. When she looks at a pond and wonders if she could drown herself in it, it is understood that she is pregnant. The narrator finally answers the reader's questions about Hetty's condition, but indirectly, since she cannot discuss it openly with a Victorian audience. She calls the pregnancy \"the hidden dread\" and says Hetty only found out after her engagement to Adam. The narrator gives pride as a reason Hetty does not tell anyone. She thinks Arthur cannot do anything for her because her one dread is discovery, and he cannot save her from that. Now, she thinks she must run away. The only thought is that she has to hide, so that no one will ever know what happened to her. Telling her aunt she is going to see Dinah Morris for a while, she leaves by coach, silently crying tears at parting from Adam, who had given her love and protection. They will not miss her for at least two weeks. She plans to go to Arthur at Windsor, for surely he will take care of her. She knows she will never see home again.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 35 This is the last chapter of the fourth book, the book where the consequences of the love affair between Hetty and Arthur come out. It opened with the crisis of Adam seeing them kiss, and it ends with Hetty running away, approximately eight months pregnant, trying to escape discovery. The next book will reveal the full tragedy. The narrator tries to explain Hetty's puzzling behavior. She doesn't really understand she is pregnant for a long time, apparently, a detail hard for a modern reader to swallow. Her character has been explained, however, as not wanting to face unpleasant facts. And, most women at this time were ignorant of anatomy and sex, having to learn things from other women. Hetty, like Arthur, depends on the opinions others have of her. She seems to have little moral integrity of her own. For instance, she never seems to give one thought to the baby or what she could do for it. She waits so long to admit the problem and to do anything, because like Arthur, she thinks something will happen to save her from this fate, a miscarriage perhaps. Equally hard to understand is how she could hide it, but with aprons and cloaks, it might be possible. One also wonders why she waits to contact Arthur as he told her to do if there was any trouble. The narrator explains that Hetty does not think that Arthur could cover up for her. He can take care of her and give her money, but he cannot save her reputation. This reminds us again of the small town atmosphere. If she goes to anyone she knows for help--Arthur and Dinah are the two who might do something--they would have to let her family and friends know. In her pride, she believes herself alone in her suffering, and the best solution for her is to disappear, so at least her reputation will be saved. Hetty's reasoning is not that of an adult, and by shifting to Hetty's childish and fearful point of view in this chapter and in the fifth book, Eliot does something surprising no doubt for a Victorian audience. She does not try to excuse Hetty as a fallen woman, but she makes her plight sympathetic and understandable. We must have human pity for her. Her grief and fear make her close to insane in her thinking and actions. Arthur had thought to himself that even in the worst case, he could help Hetty, make it up to her, and make her glad that she had been with him. The evil consequences are more than he could have imagined and cannot be fixed with money. Anyone would be sorely tested by this trial, but Hetty does not have the inner resources or faith, like Dinah would, to survive such an experience and to make courageous choices."}

IT was a busy time for Adam--the time between the beginning of November and the beginning of February, and he could see little of Hetty, except on Sundays. But a happy time, nevertheless, for it was taking him nearer and nearer to March, when they were to be married, and all the little preparations for their new housekeeping marked the progress towards the longed-for day. Two new rooms had been "run up" to the old house, for his mother and Seth were to live with them after all. Lisbeth had cried so piteously at the thought of leaving Adam that he had gone to Hetty and asked her if, for the love of him, she would put up with his mother's ways and consent to live with her. To his great delight, Hetty said, "Yes; I'd as soon she lived with us as not." Hetty's mind was oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than poor Lisbeth's ways; she could not care about them. So Adam was consoled for the disappointment he had felt when Seth had come back from his visit to Snowfield and said "it was no use--Dinah's heart wasna turned towards marrying." For when he told his mother that Hetty was willing they should all live together and there was no more need of them to think of parting, she said, in a more contented tone than he had heard her speak in since it had been settled that he was to be married, "Eh, my lad, I'll be as still as th' ould tabby, an' ne'er want to do aught but th' offal work, as she wonna like t' do. An' then we needna part the platters an' things, as ha' stood on the shelf together sin' afore thee wast born." There was only one cloud that now and then came across Adam's sunshine: Hetty seemed unhappy sometimes. But to all his anxious, tender questions, she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented and wished nothing different; and the next time he saw her she was more lively than usual. It might be that she was a little overdone with work and anxiety now, for soon after Christmas Mrs. Poyser had taken another cold, which had brought on inflammation, and this illness had confined her to her room all through January. Hetty had to manage everything downstairs, and half-supply Molly's place too, while that good damsel waited on her mistress, and she seemed to throw herself so entirely into her new functions, working with a grave steadiness which was new in her, that Mr. Poyser often told Adam she was wanting to show him what a good housekeeper he would have; but he "doubted the lass was o'erdoing it--she must have a bit o' rest when her aunt could come downstairs." This desirable event of Mrs. Poyser's coming downstairs happened in the early part of February, when some mild weather thawed the last patch of snow on the Binton Hills. On one of these days, soon after her aunt came down, Hetty went to Treddleston to buy some of the wedding things which were wanting, and which Mrs. Poyser had scolded her for neglecting, observing that she supposed "it was because they were not for th' outside, else she'd ha' bought 'em fast enough." It was about ten o'clock when Hetty set off, and the slight hoar-frost that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as the sun mounted the cloudless sky. Bright February days have a stronger charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the same: their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! And the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loamshire--the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire: an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness. Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in it: no wonder he needs a suffering God. Hetty, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway branches off: there are two roads before her--one along by the hedgerow, which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it. No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if trying to guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs. No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if she had, they might find her--they might find out why she had drowned herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where they can't find her. After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks after her betrothal to Adam, she had waited and waited, in the blind vague hope that something would happen to set her free from her terror; but she could wait no longer. All the force of her nature had been concentrated on the one effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible dread from every course that could tend towards a betrayal of her miserable secret. Whenever the thought of writing to Arthur had occurred to her, she had rejected it. He could do nothing for her that would shelter her from discovery and scorn among the relatives and neighbours who once more made all her world, now her airy dream had vanished. Her imagination no longer saw happiness with Arthur, for he could do nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something else would happen--something must happen--to set her free from this dread. In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they will die. But now necessity was pressing hard upon her--now the time of her marriage was close at hand--she could no longer rest in this blind trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes could detect her; and then the terror of wandering out into the world, of which she knew nothing, made the possibility of going to Arthur a thought which brought some comfort with it. She felt so helpless now, so unable to fashion the future for herself, that the prospect of throwing herself on him had a relief in it which was stronger than her pride. As she sat by the pool and shuddered at the dark cold water, the hope that he would receive her tenderly--that he would care for her and think for her--was like a sense of lulling warmth, that made her for the moment indifferent to everything else; and she began now to think of nothing but the scheme by which she should get away. She had had a letter from Dinah lately, full of kind words about the coming marriage, which she had heard of from Seth; and when Hetty had read this letter aloud to her uncle, he had said, "I wish Dinah 'ud come again now, for she'd be a comfort to your aunt when you're gone. What do you think, my wench, o' going to see her as soon as you can be spared and persuading her to come back wi' you? You might happen persuade her wi' telling her as her aunt wants her, for all she writes o' not being able to come." Hetty had not liked the thought of going to Snowfield, and felt no longing to see Dinah, so she only said, "It's so far off, Uncle." But now she thought this proposed visit would serve as a pretext for going away. She would tell her aunt when she got home again that she should like the change of going to Snowfield for a week or ten days. And then, when she got to Stoniton, where nobody knew her, she would ask for the coach that would take her on the way to Windsor. Arthur was at Windsor, and she would go to him. As soon as Hetty had determined on this scheme, she rose from the grassy bank of the pool, took up her basket, and went on her way to Treddleston, for she must buy the wedding things she had come out for, though she would never want them. She must be careful not to raise any suspicion that she was going to run away. Mrs. Poyser was quite agreeably surprised that Hetty wished to go and see Dinah and try to bring her back to stay over the wedding. The sooner she went the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and Adam, when he came in the evening, said, if Hetty could set off to-morrow, he would make time to go with her to Treddleston and see her safe into the Stoniton coach. "I wish I could go with you and take care of you, Hetty," he said, the next morning, leaning in at the coach door; "but you won't stay much beyond a week--the time 'ull seem long." He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand held hers in its grasp. Hetty felt a sense of protection in his presence--she was used to it now: if she could have had the past undone and known no other love than her quiet liking for Adam! The tears rose as she gave him the last look. "God bless her for loving me," said Adam, as he went on his way to work again, with Gyp at his heels. But Hetty's tears were not for Adam--not for the anguish that would come upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for the misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender man who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was obliged to cling to him. At three o'clock that day, when Hetty was on the coach that was to take her, they said, to Leicester--part of the long, long way to Windsor--she felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards the beginning of new misery. Yet Arthur was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to her. Book Five

Chapter 35

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter35

The Hidden Dread Adam doesn't see much of Hetty during the winter between November and February because he is working two jobs and getting ready for the wedding in March. Two rooms are prepared for Hetty and Adam in the Bede home, so that Seth and Lisbeth can stay in the house. Adam does not know why Hetty seems depressed sometimes and thinks it's because of his mother living with them. Mrs. Poyser is surprised at Hetty's ability to take on extra housework at Hall Farm and assumes she is learning how to be a housewife. In February Hetty goes to Treddleston to get some things for her wedding. She wears her red cloak and bonnet and wanders about in a daze, feeling lost. When she looks at a pond and wonders if she could drown herself in it, it is understood that she is pregnant. The narrator finally answers the reader's questions about Hetty's condition, but indirectly, since she cannot discuss it openly with a Victorian audience. She calls the pregnancy "the hidden dread" and says Hetty only found out after her engagement to Adam. The narrator gives pride as a reason Hetty does not tell anyone. She thinks Arthur cannot do anything for her because her one dread is discovery, and he cannot save her from that. Now, she thinks she must run away. The only thought is that she has to hide, so that no one will ever know what happened to her. Telling her aunt she is going to see Dinah Morris for a while, she leaves by coach, silently crying tears at parting from Adam, who had given her love and protection. They will not miss her for at least two weeks. She plans to go to Arthur at Windsor, for surely he will take care of her. She knows she will never see home again.

Commentary on Chapter 35 This is the last chapter of the fourth book, the book where the consequences of the love affair between Hetty and Arthur come out. It opened with the crisis of Adam seeing them kiss, and it ends with Hetty running away, approximately eight months pregnant, trying to escape discovery. The next book will reveal the full tragedy. The narrator tries to explain Hetty's puzzling behavior. She doesn't really understand she is pregnant for a long time, apparently, a detail hard for a modern reader to swallow. Her character has been explained, however, as not wanting to face unpleasant facts. And, most women at this time were ignorant of anatomy and sex, having to learn things from other women. Hetty, like Arthur, depends on the opinions others have of her. She seems to have little moral integrity of her own. For instance, she never seems to give one thought to the baby or what she could do for it. She waits so long to admit the problem and to do anything, because like Arthur, she thinks something will happen to save her from this fate, a miscarriage perhaps. Equally hard to understand is how she could hide it, but with aprons and cloaks, it might be possible. One also wonders why she waits to contact Arthur as he told her to do if there was any trouble. The narrator explains that Hetty does not think that Arthur could cover up for her. He can take care of her and give her money, but he cannot save her reputation. This reminds us again of the small town atmosphere. If she goes to anyone she knows for help--Arthur and Dinah are the two who might do something--they would have to let her family and friends know. In her pride, she believes herself alone in her suffering, and the best solution for her is to disappear, so at least her reputation will be saved. Hetty's reasoning is not that of an adult, and by shifting to Hetty's childish and fearful point of view in this chapter and in the fifth book, Eliot does something surprising no doubt for a Victorian audience. She does not try to excuse Hetty as a fallen woman, but she makes her plight sympathetic and understandable. We must have human pity for her. Her grief and fear make her close to insane in her thinking and actions. Arthur had thought to himself that even in the worst case, he could help Hetty, make it up to her, and make her glad that she had been with him. The evil consequences are more than he could have imagined and cannot be fixed with money. Anyone would be sorely tested by this trial, but Hetty does not have the inner resources or faith, like Dinah would, to survive such an experience and to make courageous choices.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/36.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_36_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 36

chapter 36

{"name": "Chapter 36", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter36", "summary": "Book Fifth Chapter 36: The Journey in Hope Hetty sets out with her little saved money, with no idea where Windsor is or how long it takes to get there. The coachman tells her Windsor is near London. She despairs and decides to take carriers' carts and farmer's wagons because the coach costs too much. On her own now with no knowledge of the big world, she realizes that her whole life has been managed for her, and she remembers her kind uncle and home. Now she can only have a hidden life because of the shame. She thinks Arthur perhaps can shelter her from this. She is proud and afraid of poverty and begging. She walks until tired and then begins to sob. Catching a ride on a cart, she makes it to the next town and gets a room. The clerk at the coach office writes down the stops she has to go through to get to Windsor. She is still a hundred miles away. On the seventh day she reaches Windsor with no money left and is fainting from hunger at the door of the Green Man inn where Arthur is supposed to be. The landlord takes her in and gives her a meal, telling her that Arthur is no longer there, for his regiment left for Ireland. Hetty collapses, and the landlady, seeing she is pregnant but a respectable looking girl, puts her to bed.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 36 Hetty longs to be with someone familiar who will take care of her, for she has been taken care of all her life, and she is frightened and not physically strong. She gets help from strangers because she is pretty and looks in trouble, though she is proud. While suffering makes Adam and Dinah more sympathetic to others, it has the opposite effect on Hetty. She can think of no one's suffering but her own. She does not think of the baby or Adam or the sorrow of the family she leaves behind. Yet she notices things keenly like a starving person, such as the friendly little spaniel on the road. When her one hope of Arthur is gone, she collapses and has nothing to hold her up. She goes farther and farther away from hope and from a solution, like the slippery slope that Adam mentions in his father's case: \"there's no slipping up hill\" when once you begin the downward path. Hetty is close to the bottom."}

A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called by duty, not urged by dread. What was it then to Hetty? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many cuts with his whip and glances at Hetty out of the corner of his eye, he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, "He's pretty nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?" "Who?" said Hetty, rather startled. "Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin' arter--which is it?" Hetty felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this coachman must know something about her. He must know Adam, and might tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Hetty to understand that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances. She was too frightened to speak. "Hegh, hegh!" said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so gratifying as he had expected, "you munna take it too ser'ous; if he's behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a sweetheart any day." Hetty's fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she had formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome this by proposing the visit to Dinah, her thoughts flew to the meeting with Arthur and the question how he would behave to her--not resting on any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant of traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store of money--her three guineas--in her pocket, she thought herself amply provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn, where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to Windsor. "Well, I can't rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for it's where the king lives," was the answer. "Anyhow, you'd best go t' Ashby next--that's south'ard. But there's as many places from here to London as there's houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I've never been no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like you to be thinking o' taking such a journey as that?" "I'm going to my brother--he's a soldier at Windsor," said Hetty, frightened at the landlord's questioning look. "I can't afford to go by the coach; do you think there's a cart goes toward Ashby in the morning?" "Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but you might run over the town before you found out. You'd best set off and walk, and trust to summat overtaking you." Every word sank like lead on Hetty's spirits; she saw the journey stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing to the rest of the journey. But it must be done--she must get to Arthur. Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her! She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle; whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure, because all the business of her life was managed for her--this kittenlike Hetty, who till a few months ago had never felt any other grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded at by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with her little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide from any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and find that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short nightmare. She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret for her own sake. Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other people's sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Arthur had been so tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for her, though it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain bearable. For Hetty could conceive no other existence for herself in future than a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have any more definite idea of her probable future than that Arthur would take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He would not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing and ambition. The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a departing hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of heart at the length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all afraid of spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would have to ask people's charity; for Hettv had the pride not only of a proud nature but of a proud class--the class that pays the most poor-rates, and most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate. It had not yet occurred to her that she might get money for her locket and earrings which she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many rides were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings, which had a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the other bright-flaming coin. For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first she had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and read that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage sank. She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost hungry again in the keen morning air; for though Hetty was accustomed to much movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks which produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops falling on her face--it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on. When Hetty recovered from her burst of weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter. Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man, she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of these small creatures. Hetty cared little for animals, as you know, but at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward--a large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or mantle. "Could you take me up in your waggon, if you're going towards Ashby?" said Hetty. "I'll pay you for it." "Aw," said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs to heavy faces, "I can take y' up fawst enough wi'out bein' paid for't if you dooant mind lyin' a bit closish a-top o' the wool-packs. Where do you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?" "I come from Stoniton. I'm going a long way--to Windsor." "What! Arter some service, or what?" "Going to my brother--he's a soldier there." "Well, I'm going no furder nor Leicester--and fur enough too--but I'll take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and let me put y' in." To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the awning to let in the air, was luxury to Hetty now, and she half-slept away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down and have "some victual"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this "public." Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day of Hetty's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in her life Hetty wished no one would look at her. She set out walking again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her, twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon, finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Hetty! It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses, where she must go to get food and ask questions, because there were always men lounging there, who stared at her and joked her rudely. Her body was very weary too with these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they had made her look more pale and worn than all the time of hidden dread she had gone through at home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford, her impatience and weariness had become too strong for her economical caution; she determined to take the coach for the rest of the way, though it should cost her all her remaining money. She would need nothing at Windsor but to find Arthur. When she had paid the fare for the last coach, she had only a shilling; and as she got down at the sign of the Green Man in Windsor at twelve o'clock in the middle of the seventh day, hungry and faint, the coachman came up, and begged her to "remember him." She put her hand in her pocket and took out the shilling, but the tears came with the sense of exhaustion and the thought that she was giving away her last means of getting food, which she really required before she could go in search of Arthur. As she held out the shilling, she lifted up her dark tear-filled eyes to the coachman's face and said, "Can you give me back sixpence?" "No, no," he said, gruffly, "never mind--put the shilling up again." The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely tearful face of Hetty's would have found out the sensitive fibre in most men. "Come, young woman, come in," he said, "and have adrop o' something; you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that." He took her into the bar and said to his wife, "Here, missis, take this young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome"--for Hetty's tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Arthur. She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and looked at her earnestly. No wonder: Hetty had thrown off her bonnet, and her curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in its youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman's eyes presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed. "Why, you're not very fit for travelling," she said, glancing while she spoke at Hetty's ringless hand. "Have you come far?" "Yes," said Hetty, roused by this question to exert more self-command, and feeling the better for the food she had taken. "I've come a good long way, and it's very tiring. But I'm better now. Could you tell me which way to go to this place?" Here Hetty took from her pocket a bit of paper: it was the end of Arthur's letter on which he had written his address. While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper which Hetty handed across the table, and read the address. "Why, what do you want at this house?" he said. It is in the nature of innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to ask as many questions as possible before giving any information. "I want to see a gentleman as is there," said Hetty. "But there's no gentleman there," returned the landlord. "It's shut up--been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps I can let you know where to find him." "It's Captain Donnithorne," said Hetty tremulously, her heart beginning to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should find Arthur at once. "Captain Donnithorne? Stop a bit," said the landlord, slowly. "Was he in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and reddish whiskers--and had a servant by the name o' Pym?" "Oh yes," said Hetty; "you know him--where is he?" "A fine sight o' miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia's gone to Ireland; it's been gone this fortnight." "Look there! She's fainting," said the landlady, hastening to support Hetty, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress. "Here's a bad business, I suspect," said the landlord, as he brought in some water. "Ah, it's plain enough what sort of business it is," said the wife. "She's not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the house--they're all honest folks in the north." "I never saw a prettier young woman in my life," said the husband. "She's like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one's 'eart to look at her." "It 'ud have been a good deal better for her if she'd been uglier and had more conduct," said the landlady, who on any charitable construction must have been supposed to have more "conduct" than beauty. "But she's coming to again. Fetch a drop more water."

Chapter 36

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter36

Book Fifth Chapter 36: The Journey in Hope Hetty sets out with her little saved money, with no idea where Windsor is or how long it takes to get there. The coachman tells her Windsor is near London. She despairs and decides to take carriers' carts and farmer's wagons because the coach costs too much. On her own now with no knowledge of the big world, she realizes that her whole life has been managed for her, and she remembers her kind uncle and home. Now she can only have a hidden life because of the shame. She thinks Arthur perhaps can shelter her from this. She is proud and afraid of poverty and begging. She walks until tired and then begins to sob. Catching a ride on a cart, she makes it to the next town and gets a room. The clerk at the coach office writes down the stops she has to go through to get to Windsor. She is still a hundred miles away. On the seventh day she reaches Windsor with no money left and is fainting from hunger at the door of the Green Man inn where Arthur is supposed to be. The landlord takes her in and gives her a meal, telling her that Arthur is no longer there, for his regiment left for Ireland. Hetty collapses, and the landlady, seeing she is pregnant but a respectable looking girl, puts her to bed.

Commentary on Chapter 36 Hetty longs to be with someone familiar who will take care of her, for she has been taken care of all her life, and she is frightened and not physically strong. She gets help from strangers because she is pretty and looks in trouble, though she is proud. While suffering makes Adam and Dinah more sympathetic to others, it has the opposite effect on Hetty. She can think of no one's suffering but her own. She does not think of the baby or Adam or the sorrow of the family she leaves behind. Yet she notices things keenly like a starving person, such as the friendly little spaniel on the road. When her one hope of Arthur is gone, she collapses and has nothing to hold her up. She goes farther and farther away from hope and from a solution, like the slippery slope that Adam mentions in his father's case: "there's no slipping up hill" when once you begin the downward path. Hetty is close to the bottom.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/37.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_37_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 37

chapter 37

{"name": "Chapter 37", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter37", "summary": "The Journey in Despair Hetty is in bed the rest of the day, too ill to think. She has no hope left. The next day she tries to think of a plan. She cannot get any work in her condition. Remembering a starving unwed mother and child at Hayslope who had been sent to the parish workhouse, a fate to be feared, she longs to be back home safe. No one will welcome a runaway in her condition. Above all, she does not want her family to find out what has happened to her. She decides to sell the presents Arthur gave her, and if she is not strong enough to commit suicide, she will find Dinah. Hetty gets money from the landlord for her earrings and locket and sets out back north again. She goes on and on, without a clear plan, until she gets to Stratford-on-Avon. She walks into the surrounding fields looking for a pool to drown herself. She finds a pool, but not able to throw herself in, she falls asleep there. In the cold and dark she awakens in fear. Remembering a shepherd's hovel nearby, she gropes until she finds it, and sleeps there on a bed of straw. In the morning, a gruff shepherd tells her to get back to the road because she looks like a \"wild woman\" . She continues her journey north towards Dinah in Snowfield.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 37 Hetty finds she cannot commit suicide because she has, the narrator tells us, \"the luxurious nature of a round, soft-coated pet animal\" . She is torn between thoughts of suicide, begging, the workhouse, and throwing herself on the mercy of her aunt and uncle. She wants to go on living as long as possible, but she has no hope that she can be delivered from the evil she is in. She does not think she can even tell Dinah. When she thinks of death, she does not know about an afterlife, for she is not a religious person. She begins to have a hard look, like a wild animal, like the wild woman the shepherd sees in her. The narrator says she has a \"Medusa face\" . Medusa was a monster with the face of a woman and hair of snakes whose look could turn someone to stone. This is a strange image for Hetty whom we have been led to believe was more like a soft and helpless animal, a little dog that drew the affection of others. Eliot prepares us here for the major transformation Hetty is undergoing. Without any help or spiritual life to sustain her, she is coming close to the madness that destroys the moral sense in a person, never a strong point with Hetty anyway. We will not be surprised at what she might do in her desperation. At this point she seems scarcely aware of the child she is carrying except as baggage and shame. When Hetty wakes up in the shepherd's hut, she is so glad to be alive that she passionately kisses her own arms. After repeating that Hetty has no sorrow except for herself, the narrator confesses to be sorry for her: \"My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet\" . Though the narrator says some harsh things of Hetty, she wants the reader to pity her fate by understanding step by step, how she arrived there."}

HETTY was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be addressed to her--too ill even to think with any distinctness of the evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed, and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The sensations of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the tendance of the good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her; such a respite as there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man to throw himself on the sand instead of toiling onward under the scorching sun. But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the keenness of mental suffering--when she lay the next morning looking at the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour--she began to think what course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to look at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold and hunger--a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken to the parish. "The parish!" You can perhaps hardly understand the effect of that word on a mind like Hetty's, brought up among people who were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them a mark of idleness and vice--and it was idleness and vice that brought burdens on the parish. To Hetty the "parish" was next to the prison in obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers--to beg--lay in the same far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Hetty had all her life thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from church, being carried into Joshua Rann's, came back upon her with the new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide HER from the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread of shame; for Hetty had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet animal. How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared for as she had always been! Her aunt's scolding about trifles would have been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it in a time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same Hetty that used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder roses peeping in at the window--she, a runaway whom her friends would not open their doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the knowledge that she had no money to pay for what she received, and must offer those strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then she thought of her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached it and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the locket and ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with them there was a beautiful silver thimble which Adam had bought her, the words "Remember me" making the ornament of the border; a steel purse, with her one shilling in it; and a small red-leather case, fastening with a strap. Those beautiful little ear-rings, with their delicate pearls and garnet, that she had tried in her ears with such longing in the bright sunshine on the 30th of July! She had no longing to put them in her ears now: her head with its dark rings of hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and the sadness that rested about her brow and eyes was something too hard for regretful memory. Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was because there were some thin gold rings in them, which were also worth a little money. Yes, she could surely get some money for her ornaments: those Arthur had given her must have cost a great deal of money. The landlord and landlady had been good to her; perhaps they would help her to get the money for these things. But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who knew her. They should never know what had happened to her. What could she do? She would go away from Windsor--travel again as she had done the last week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges round them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps, when there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to drown herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would get away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn't like these people at the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for Captain Donnithorne. She must think of some reason to tell them why she had asked for him. With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket, meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had her hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there might be something in this case which she had forgotten--something worth selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name, which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Hetty's mind like a newly discovered message. The name was--Dinah Morris, Snowfield. There was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by Dinah's own hand with a little pencil, one evening that they were sitting together and Hetty happened to have the red case lying open before her. Hetty did not read the text now: she was only arrested by the name. Now, for the first time, she remembered without indifference the affectionate kindness Dinah had shown her, and those words of Dinah in the bed-chamber--that Hetty must think of her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she were to go to Dinah, and ask her to help her? Dinah did not think about things as other people did. She was a mystery to Hetty, but Hetty knew she was always kind. She couldn't imagine Dinah's face turning away from her in dark reproof or scorn, Dinah's voice willingly speaking ill of her, or rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Dinah did not seem to belong to that world of Hetty's, whose glance she dreaded like scorching fire. But even to her Hetty shrank from beseeching and confession. She could not prevail on herself to say, "I will go to Dinah": she only thought of that as a possible alternative, if she had not courage for death. The good landlady was amazed when she saw Hetty come downstairs soon after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed. Hetty told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a soldier, and Captain Donnithorne might know, for he had been very kind to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked doubtfully at Hetty as she told it; but there was a resolute air of self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a remark that might seem like prying into other people's affairs. She only invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course of it Hetty brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the landlord if he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she said, had cost her much more than she expected, and now she had no money to get back to her friends, which she wanted to do at once. It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she had examined the contents of Hetty's pocket yesterday, and she and her husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Hetty had been miserably deluded by the fine young officer. "Well," said the landlord, when Hetty had spread the precious trifles before him, "we might take 'em to the jeweller's shop, for there's one not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn't give you a quarter o' what the things are worth. And you wouldn't like to part with 'em?" he added, looking at her inquiringly. "Oh, I don't mind," said Hetty, hastily, "so as I can get money to go back." "And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell 'em," he went on, "for it isn't usual for a young woman like you to have fine jew'llery like that." The blood rushed to Hetty's face with anger. "I belong to respectable folks," she said; "I'm not a thief." "No, that you aren't, I'll be bound," said the landlady; "and you'd no call to say that," looking indignantly at her husband. "The things were gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen." "I didn't mean as I thought so," said the husband, apologetically, "but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn't be offering much money for 'em." "Well," said the wife, "suppose you were to advance some money on the things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she got home, she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might do as we liked with 'em." I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect they would have in that case on the mind of the grocer's wife had presented itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination. The landlord took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a meditative manner. He wished Hetty well, doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers would decline to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as possible. "How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?" said the well-wisher, at length. "Three guineas," answered Hetty, fixing on the sum she set out with, for want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much. "Well, I've no objections to advance you three guineas," said the landlord; "and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn't going to run away." "Oh yes, I'll be very glad if you'll give me that," said Hetty, relieved at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller's and be stared at and questioned. "But if you want the things again, you'll write before long," said the landlady, "because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds as you don't want 'em." "Yes," said Hetty indifferently. The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And they were accommodating Hetty, poor thing--a pretty, respectable-looking young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o'clock Hetty said "Good-bye" to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had worn all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles back along the way she had come. There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense of dependence. Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah. She would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would never be found, and no one should know what had become of her. When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country. Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy Warwickshire fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a hiding-place even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than she came, often getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the hedgerows, looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering if it were very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything worse after death than what she dreaded in life. Religious doctrines had taken no hold on Hetty's mind. She was one of those numerous people who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You would misunderstand her thoughts during these wretched days, if you imagined that they were influenced either by religious fears or religious hopes. She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before by mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way towards it--fields among which she thought she might find just the sort of pool she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she carried her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong in her. She craved food and rest--she hastened towards them at the very moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap towards death. It was already five days since she had left Windsor, for she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or questioning looks, and recovering her air of proud self-dependence whenever she was under observation, choosing her decent lodging at night, and dressing herself neatly in the morning, and setting off on her way steadily, or remaining under shelter if it rained, as if she had a happy life to cherish. And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked glass, or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard and even fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as long as ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was never dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting, childish prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it--the sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the passionate, passionless lips. At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in that wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was not a wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits, leaving mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She roamed up and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow before she came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to rest. The afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening, as if the sun were setting behind it. After a little while Hetty started up again, feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she must put off finding the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some shelter for the night. She had quite lost her way in the fields, and might as well go in one direction as another, for aught she knew. She walked through field after field, and no village, no house was in sight; but there, at the corner of this pasture, there was a break in the hedges; the land seemed to dip down a little, and two trees leaned towards each other across the opening. Hetty's heart gave a great beat as she thought there must be a pool there. She walked towards it heavily over the tufted grass, with pale lips and a sense of trembling. It was as if the thing were come in spite of herself, instead of being the object of her search. There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near. She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass, trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer, no one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her basket--she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water--make it heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look about for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down beside her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to hurry--there was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her elbow on the basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her basket--three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and then sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that came over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed dreamy attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank down on her knees. She was fast asleep. When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was frightened at this darkness--frightened at the long night before her. If she could but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to walk about that she might get warm again, as if she would have more resolution then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright hearth and the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and lying down, the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and holidays with their simple joys of dress and feasting--all the sweets of her young life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching her arms towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she thought of Arthur. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing would do. She wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life of shame that he dared not end by death. The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude--out of all human reach--became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to life again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation: wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she was still in life--that she might yet know light and warmth again. She walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to the night--the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living creature--perhaps a field-mouse--rushing across the grass. She no longer felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope in lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her, however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude. There were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set down her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right--this was the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field where the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it. She reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open. It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on the ground. Hetty sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears came--she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor--tears and sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she was still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool again--fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against the gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief of unconsciousness. Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to Hetty as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream--that she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle in her hand. She trembled under her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes. There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel--the light of early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a smock-frock. "Why, what do you do here, young woman?" the man said roughly. Hetty trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt that she was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place. But in spite of her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence here, that she found words at once. "I lost my way," she said. "I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got away from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Will you tell me the way to the nearest village?" She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket. The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still, and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, "Aw, I can show you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin' out o' the highroad?" he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. "Y'ull be gettin' into mischief, if you dooant mind." "Yes," said Hetty, "I won't do it again. I'll keep in the road, if you'll be so good as show me how to get to it." "Why dooant you keep where there's a finger-poasses an' folks to ax the way on?" the man said, still more gruffly. "Anybody 'ud think you was a wild woman, an' look at yer." Hetty was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out of the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her the way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to point out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence ready, and when he was turning away, without saying good-morning, she held it out to him and said, "Thank you; will you please to take something for your trouble?" He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, "I want none o' your money. You'd better take care on't, else you'll get it stool from yer, if you go trapesin' about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway." The man left her without further speech, and Hetty held on her way. Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think of drowning herself--she could not do it, at least while she had money left to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her waking this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money would be all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then, and she would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said. The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after escaping from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now. Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man's hard wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death--it was worse; it was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and shrank as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge from it. She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of Dinah. The thought of Dinah urged itself more strongly now, since the experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from the pool. If it had been only going to Dinah--if nobody besides Dinah would ever know--Hetty could have made up her mind to go to her. The soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than she could rush on death. She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to give her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting less and less able to bear the day's weariness. And yet--such is the strange action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the very ends we dread--Hetty, when she set out again from Norton, asked the straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that day. Poor wandering Hetty, with the rounded childish face and the hard, unloving, despairing soul looking out of it--with the narrow heart and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her desire that a village may be near. What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it? God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!

Chapter 37

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter37

The Journey in Despair Hetty is in bed the rest of the day, too ill to think. She has no hope left. The next day she tries to think of a plan. She cannot get any work in her condition. Remembering a starving unwed mother and child at Hayslope who had been sent to the parish workhouse, a fate to be feared, she longs to be back home safe. No one will welcome a runaway in her condition. Above all, she does not want her family to find out what has happened to her. She decides to sell the presents Arthur gave her, and if she is not strong enough to commit suicide, she will find Dinah. Hetty gets money from the landlord for her earrings and locket and sets out back north again. She goes on and on, without a clear plan, until she gets to Stratford-on-Avon. She walks into the surrounding fields looking for a pool to drown herself. She finds a pool, but not able to throw herself in, she falls asleep there. In the cold and dark she awakens in fear. Remembering a shepherd's hovel nearby, she gropes until she finds it, and sleeps there on a bed of straw. In the morning, a gruff shepherd tells her to get back to the road because she looks like a "wild woman" . She continues her journey north towards Dinah in Snowfield.

Commentary on Chapter 37 Hetty finds she cannot commit suicide because she has, the narrator tells us, "the luxurious nature of a round, soft-coated pet animal" . She is torn between thoughts of suicide, begging, the workhouse, and throwing herself on the mercy of her aunt and uncle. She wants to go on living as long as possible, but she has no hope that she can be delivered from the evil she is in. She does not think she can even tell Dinah. When she thinks of death, she does not know about an afterlife, for she is not a religious person. She begins to have a hard look, like a wild animal, like the wild woman the shepherd sees in her. The narrator says she has a "Medusa face" . Medusa was a monster with the face of a woman and hair of snakes whose look could turn someone to stone. This is a strange image for Hetty whom we have been led to believe was more like a soft and helpless animal, a little dog that drew the affection of others. Eliot prepares us here for the major transformation Hetty is undergoing. Without any help or spiritual life to sustain her, she is coming close to the madness that destroys the moral sense in a person, never a strong point with Hetty anyway. We will not be surprised at what she might do in her desperation. At this point she seems scarcely aware of the child she is carrying except as baggage and shame. When Hetty wakes up in the shepherd's hut, she is so glad to be alive that she passionately kisses her own arms. After repeating that Hetty has no sorrow except for herself, the narrator confesses to be sorry for her: "My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet" . Though the narrator says some harsh things of Hetty, she wants the reader to pity her fate by understanding step by step, how she arrived there.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/38.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_38_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 38

chapter 38

{"name": "Chapter 38", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter38", "summary": "The Quest The narrative switches to Adam's point of view. After Hetty has been gone for two weeks, the family begins to worry, and Adam decides to go to Snowfield to get her. Mrs. Poyser tells him to invite Dinah to come back too for the wedding. Adam starts his journey in hope for he has never been happier in his life. When he reaches Dinah's cottage, he asks to see her, but the old woman there says Dinah has gone to Leeds to preach. He then asks to see the other woman, Hetty, but the woman says she has never been there. Now Adam is worried. He wonders if Hetty is with Dinah at Leeds, but the old woman does not have an address for her. Adam next inquires at the coach stop, but she was never on the coach for Snowfield. The innkeeper takes him to Oakbourne in his cart, one of the stops of the Treddleston coach in which she departed. Adam vacillates between fear of an accident and fear that she has run off with Arthur. Adam knows Arthur is in Ireland. The innkeeper in Oakbourne knows Hetty did not take the coach that goes to Snowfield, but he does not know where she went. From here Adam goes to Stoniton, knowing that Hetty must have gone here at first. The coachman remembers her, but not what happened after she left the coach. Adam can trace her no farther and returns home. He tells everything to his brother Seth but not his mother. Seth is surprised when Adam falls on his neck weeping, for he has never seen his brother break down. Next, Adam delivers the news to Mr. Poyser, but he does not tell him his suspicions about Arthur. Mr. Poyser is shocked and apologizes to Adam. Mr. Poyser thinks she did not want to be married and went to become a lady's maid. Adam asks Mr. Poyser to be easy with Hetty if she should decide to come home. They decide to keep everything quiet for now until they find her. Next Adam decides to go to Ireland to find Arthur, where he thinks Hetty has gone. He wants to go secretly and wills everything to Seth, if he should not return. He decides he must also inform Mr. Irwine.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 38 Eliot skillfully builds suspense as a film would do by inter-cutting scenes, returning to the people Hetty has left behind as they realize she is gone. Adam has a piece of the puzzle that the others do not, concerning her involvement with Arthur. Readers know more than Adam does, but we too are waiting to find out what happens to her. Adam's grief is so intense that his old jealousy is aroused, and Seth is worried for him. He hints that he hopes Adam won't do anything rash. He supposedly means suicide, but the reader wonders about his anger and revenge towards Arthur. For the moment, Adam is crushed to realize that Hetty does not want to marry him, that she has run away. Yet, it is significant that he always begs for leniency towards her. He decides that he must tell Mr. Irwine about Hetty and Arthur because \"I can't stand alone in this way any longer\" . He knows now it is too late to protect their secret."}

THE first ten days after Hetty's departure passed as quietly as any other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Adam at his daily work. They had expected Hetty to stay away a week or ten days at least, perhaps a little longer if Dinah came back with her, because there might then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a fortnight had passed they began to feel a little surprise that Hetty did not return; she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with Dinah than any one could have supposed. Adam, for his part, was getting very impatient to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear the next day (Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch her. There was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was light, and perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive pretty early at Snowfield, and bring back Hetty the next day--Dinah too, if she were coming. It was quite time Hetty came home, and he would afford to lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her. His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on Saturday evening. Mrs. Poyser desired him emphatically not to come back without Hetty, for she had been quite too long away, considering the things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Dinah, Mrs. Poyser had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could make her believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the folks at Snowfield. "Though," said Mrs. Poyser, by way of conclusion, "you might tell her she's got but one aunt left, and SHE'S wasted pretty nigh to a shadder; and we shall p'rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her next Michaelmas, and shall die o' broken hearts among strange folks, and leave the children fatherless and motherless." "Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who certainly had the air of a man perfectly heart-whole, "it isna so bad as that. Thee't looking rarely now, and getting flesh every day. But I'd be glad for Dinah t' come, for she'd help thee wi' the little uns: they took t' her wonderful." So at daybreak, on Sunday, Adam set off. Seth went with him the first mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that Dinah might come again made him restless, and the walk with Adam in the cold morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a sense of Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low grey sky, and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and on the black hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet hurrying down the hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds. For they walked in silence, though with a pleased sense of companionship. "Good-bye, lad," said Adam, laying his hand on Seth's shoulder and looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. "I wish thee wast going all the way wi' me, and as happy as I am." "I'm content, Addy, I'm content," said Seth cheerfully. "I'll be an old bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi' thy children." They turned away from each other, and Seth walked leisurely homeward, mentally repeating one of his favourite hymns--he was very fond of hymns: Dark and cheerless is the morn Unaccompanied by thee: Joyless is the day's return Till thy mercy's beams I see: Till thou inward light impart, Glad my eyes and warm my heart. Visit, then, this soul of mine, Pierce the gloom of sin and grief-- Fill me, Radiancy Divine, Scatter all my unbelief. More and more thyself display, Shining to the perfect day. Adam walked much faster, and any one coming along the Oakbourne road at sunrise that morning must have had a pleasant sight in this tall broad-chested man, striding along with a carriage as upright and firm as any soldier's, glancing with keen glad eyes at the dark-blue hills as they began to show themselves on his way. Seldom in Adam's life had his face been so free from any cloud of anxiety as it was this morning; and this freedom from care, as is usual with constructive practical minds like his, made him all the more observant of the objects round him and all the more ready to gather suggestions from them towards his own favourite plans and ingenious contrivances. His happy love--the knowledge that his steps were carrying him nearer and nearer to Hetty, who was so soon to be his--was to his thoughts what the sweet morning air was to his sensations: it gave him a consciousness of well-being that made activity delightful. Every now and then there was a rush of more intense feeling towards her, which chased away other images than Hetty; and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that all this happiness was given to him--that this life of ours had such sweetness in it. For Adam had a devout mind, though he was perhaps rather impatient of devout words, and his tenderness lay very close to his reverence, so that the one could hardly be stirred without the other. But after feeling had welled up and poured itself out in this way, busy thought would come back with the greater vigour; and this morning it was intent on schemes by which the roads might be improved that were so imperfect all through the country, and on picturing all the benefits that might come from the exertions of a single country gentleman, if he would set himself to getting the roads made good in his own district. It seemed a very short walk, the ten miles to Oakbourne, that pretty town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After this, the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows, but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been and were no longer. "A hungry land," said Adam to himself. "I'd rather go south'ard, where they say it's as flat as a table, than come to live here; though if Dinah likes to live in a country where she can be the most comfort to folks, she's i' the right to live o' this side; for she must look as if she'd come straight from heaven, like th' angels in the desert, to strengthen them as ha' got nothing t' eat." And when at last he came in sight of Snowfield, he thought it looked like a town that was "fellow to the country," though the stream through the valley where the great mill stood gave a pleasant greenness to the lower fields. The town lay, grim, stony, and unsheltered, up the side of a steep hill, and Adam did not go forward to it at present, for Seth had told him where to find Dinah. It was at a thatched cottage outside the town, a little way from the mill--an old cottage, standing sideways towards the road, with a little bit of potato-ground before it. Here Dinah lodged with an elderly couple; and if she and Hetty happened to be out, Adam could learn where they were gone, or when they would be at home again. Dinah might be out on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have left Hetty at home. Adam could not help hoping this, and as he recognized the cottage by the roadside before him, there shone out in his face that involuntary smile which belongs to the expectation of a near joy. He hurried his step along the narrow causeway, and rapped at the door. It was opened by a very clean old woman, with a slow palsied shake of the head. "Is Dinah Morris at home?" said Adam. "Eh?...no," said the old woman, looking up at this tall stranger with a wonder that made her slower of speech than usual. "Will you please to come in?" she added, retiring from the door, as if recollecting herself. "Why, ye're brother to the young man as come afore, arena ye?" "Yes," said Adam, entering. "That was Seth Bede. I'm his brother Adam. He told me to give his respects to you and your good master." "Aye, the same t' him. He was a gracious young man. An' ye feature him, on'y ye're darker. Sit ye down i' th' arm-chair. My man isna come home from meeting." Adam sat down patiently, not liking to hurry the shaking old woman with questions, but looking eagerly towards the narrow twisting stairs in one corner, for he thought it was possible Hetty might have heard his voice and would come down them. "So you're come to see Dinah Morris?" said the old woman, standing opposite to him. "An' you didn' know she was away from home, then?" "No," said Adam, "but I thought it likely she might be away, seeing as it's Sunday. But the other young woman--is she at home, or gone along with Dinah?" The old woman looked at Adam with a bewildered air. "Gone along wi' her?" she said. "Eh, Dinah's gone to Leeds, a big town ye may ha' heared on, where there's a many o' the Lord's people. She's been gone sin' Friday was a fortnight: they sent her the money for her journey. You may see her room here," she went on, opening a door and not noticing the effect of her words on Adam. He rose and followed her, and darted an eager glance into the little room with its narrow bed, the portrait of Wesley on the wall, and the few books lying on the large Bible. He had had an irrational hope that Hetty might be there. He could not speak in the first moment after seeing that the room was empty; an undefined fear had seized him--something had happened to Hetty on the journey. Still the old woman was so slow of speech and apprehension, that Hetty might be at Snowfield after all. "It's a pity ye didna know," she said. "Have ye come from your own country o' purpose to see her?" "But Hetty--Hetty Sorrel," said Adam, abruptly; "Where is she?" "I know nobody by that name," said the old woman, wonderingly. "Is it anybody ye've heared on at Snowfield?" "Did there come no young woman here--very young and pretty--Friday was a fortnight, to see Dinah Morris?" "Nay; I'n seen no young woman." "Think; are you quite sure? A girl, eighteen years old, with dark eyes and dark curly hair, and a red cloak on, and a basket on her arm? You couldn't forget her if you saw her." "Nay; Friday was a fortnight--it was the day as Dinah went away--there come nobody. There's ne'er been nobody asking for her till you come, for the folks about know as she's gone. Eh dear, eh dear, is there summat the matter?" The old woman had seen the ghastly look of fear in Adam's face. But he was not stunned or confounded: he was thinking eagerly where he could inquire about Hetty. "Yes; a young woman started from our country to see Dinah, Friday was a fortnight. I came to fetch her back. I'm afraid something has happened to her. I can't stop. Good-bye." He hastened out of the cottage, and the old woman followed him to the gate, watching him sadly with her shaking head as he almost ran towards the town. He was going to inquire at the place where the Oakbourne coach stopped. No! No young woman like Hetty had been seen there. Had any accident happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn't stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Adam was in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the eagerness of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in his pockets looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to take him back to Oakbourne in his own "taxed cart" this very evening. It was not five o'clock; there was plenty of time for Adam to take a meal and yet to get to Oakbourne before ten o'clock. The innkeeper declared that he really wanted to go to Oakbourne, and might as well go to-night; he should have all Monday before him then. Adam, after making an ineffectual attempt to eat, put the food in his pocket, and, drinking a draught of ale, declared himself ready to set off. As they approached the cottage, it occurred to him that he would do well to learn from the old woman where Dinah was to be found in Leeds: if there was trouble at the Hall Farm--he only half-admitted the foreboding that there would be--the Poysers might like to send for Dinah. But Dinah had not left any address, and the old woman, whose memory for names was infirm, could not recall the name of the "blessed woman" who was Dinah's chief friend in the Society at Leeds. During that long, long journey in the taxed cart, there was time for all the conjectures of importunate fear and struggling hope. In the very first shock of discovering that Hetty had not been to Snowfield, the thought of Arthur had darted through Adam like a sharp pang, but he tried for some time to ward off its return by busying himself with modes of accounting for the alarming fact, quite apart from that intolerable thought. Some accident had happened. Hetty had, by some strange chance, got into a wrong vehicle from Oakbourne: she had been taken ill, and did not want to frighten them by letting them know. But this frail fence of vague improbabilities was soon hurled down by a rush of distinct agonizing fears. Hetty had been deceiving herself in thinking that she could love and marry him: she had been loving Arthur all the while; and now, in her desperation at the nearness of their marriage, she had run away. And she was gone to him. The old indignation and jealousy rose again, and prompted the suspicion that Arthur had been dealing falsely--had written to Hetty--had tempted her to come to him--being unwilling, after all, that she should belong to another man besides himself. Perhaps the whole thing had been contrived by him, and he had given her directions how to follow him to Ireland--for Adam knew that Arthur had been gone thither three weeks ago, having recently learnt it at the Chase. Every sad look of Hetty's, since she had been engaged to Adam, returned upon him now with all the exaggeration of painful retrospect. He had been foolishly sanguine and confident. The poor thing hadn't perhaps known her own mind for a long while; had thought that she could forget Arthur; had been momentarily drawn towards the man who offered her a protecting, faithful love. He couldn't bear to blame her: she never meant to cause him this dreadful pain. The blame lay with that man who had selfishly played with her heart--had perhaps even deliberately lured her away. At Oakbourne, the ostler at the Royal Oak remembered such a young woman as Adam described getting out of the Treddleston coach more than a fortnight ago--wasn't likely to forget such a pretty lass as that in a hurry--was sure she had not gone on by the Buxton coach that went through Snowfield, but had lost sight of her while he went away with the horses and had never set eyes on her again. Adam then went straight to the house from which the Stonition coach started: Stoniton was the most obvious place for Hetty to go to first, whatever might be her destination, for she would hardly venture on any but the chief coach-roads. She had been noticed here too, and was remembered to have sat on the box by the coachman; but the coachman could not be seen, for another man had been driving on that road in his stead the last three or four days. He could probably be seen at Stoniton, through inquiry at the inn where the coach put up. So the anxious heart-stricken Adam must of necessity wait and try to rest till morning--nay, till eleven o'clock, when the coach started. At Stoniton another delay occurred, for the old coachman who had driven Hetty would not be in the town again till night. When he did come he remembered Hetty well, and remembered his own joke addressed to her, quoting it many times to Adam, and observing with equal frequency that he thought there was something more than common, because Hetty had not laughed when he joked her. But he declared, as the people had done at the inn, that he had lost sight of Hetty directly she got down. Part of the next morning was consumed in inquiries at every house in the town from which a coach started--(all in vain, for you know Hetty did not start from Stonition by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)--and then in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of road, in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No, she was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Adam was to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to what he should do beyond that, he had come to two distinct resolutions amidst the tumult of thought and feeling which was going on within him while he went to and fro. He would not mention what he knew of Arthur Donnithorne's behaviour to Hetty till there was a clear necessity for it: it was still possible Hetty might come back, and the disclosure might be an injury or an offence to her. And as soon as he had been home and done what was necessary there to prepare for his further absence, he would start off to Ireland: if he found no trace of Hetty on the road, he would go straight to Arthur Donnithorne and make himself certain how far he was acquainted with her movements. Several times the thought occurred to him that he would consult Mr. Irwine, but that would be useless unless he told him all, and so betrayed the secret about Arthur. It seems strange that Adam, in the incessant occupation of his mind about Hetty, should never have alighted on the probability that she had gone to Windsor, ignorant that Arthur was no longer there. Perhaps the reason was that he could not conceive Hetty's throwing herself on Arthur uncalled; he imagined no cause that could have driven her to such a step, after that letter written in August. There were but two alternatives in his mind: either Arthur had written to her again and enticed her away, or she had simply fled from her approaching marriage with himself because she found, after all, she could not love him well enough, and yet was afraid of her friends' anger if she retracted. With this last determination on his mind, of going straight to Arthur, the thought that he had spent two days in inquiries which had proved to be almost useless, was torturing to Adam; and yet, since he would not tell the Poysers his conviction as to where Hetty was gone, or his intention to follow her thither, he must be able to say to them that he had traced her as far as possible. It was after twelve o'clock on Tuesday night when Adam reached Treddleston; and, unwilling to disturb his mother and Seth, and also to encounter their questions at that hour, he threw himself without undressing on a bed at the "Waggon Overthrown," and slept hard from pure weariness. Not more than four hours, however, for before five o'clock he set out on his way home in the faint morning twilight. He always kept a key of the workshop door in his pocket, so that he could let himself in; and he wished to enter without awaking his mother, for he was anxious to avoid telling her the new trouble himself by seeing Seth first, and asking him to tell her when it should be necessary. He walked gently along the yard, and turned the key gently in the door; but, as he expected, Gyp, who lay in the workshop, gave a sharp bark. It subsided when he saw Adam, holding up his finger at him to impose silence, and in his dumb, tailless joy he must content himself with rubbing his body against his master's legs. Adam was too heart-sick to take notice of Gyp's fondling. He threw himself on the bench and stared dully at the wood and the signs of work around him, wondering if he should ever come to feel pleasure in them again, while Gyp, dimly aware that there was something wrong with his master, laid his rough grey head on Adam's knee and wrinkled his brows to look up at him. Hitherto, since Sunday afternoon, Adam had been constantly among strange people and in strange places, having no associations with the details of his daily life, and now that by the light of this new morning he was come back to his home and surrounded by the familiar objects that seemed for ever robbed of their charm, the reality--the hard, inevitable reality of his troubles pressed upon him with a new weight. Right before him was an unfinished chest of drawers, which he had been making in spare moments for Hetty's use, when his home should be hers. Seth had not heard Adam's entrance, but he had been roused by Gyp's bark, and Adam heard him moving about in the room above, dressing himself. Seth's first thoughts were about his brother: he would come home to-day, surely, for the business would be wanting him sadly by to-morrow, but it was pleasant to think he had had a longer holiday than he had expected. And would Dinah come too? Seth felt that that was the greatest happiness he could look forward to for himself, though he had no hope left that she would ever love him well enough to marry him; but he had often said to himself, it was better to be Dinah's friend and brother than any other woman's husband. If he could but be always near her, instead of living so far off! He came downstairs and opened the inner door leading from the kitchen into the workshop, intending to let out Gyp; but he stood still in the doorway, smitten with a sudden shock at the sight of Adam seated listlessly on the bench, pale, unwashed, with sunken blank eyes, almost like a drunkard in the morning. But Seth felt in an instant what the marks meant--not drunkenness, but some great calamity. Adam looked up at him without speaking, and Seth moved forward towards the bench, himself trembling so that speech did not come readily. "God have mercy on us, Addy," he said, in a low voice, sitting down on the bench beside Adam, "what is it?" Adam was unable to speak. The strong man, accustomed to suppress the signs of sorrow, had felt his heart swell like a child's at this first approach of sympathy. He fell on Seth's neck and sobbed. Seth was prepared for the worst now, for, even in his recollections of their boyhood, Adam had never sobbed before. "Is it death, Adam? Is she dead?" he asked, in a low tone, when Adam raised his head and was recovering himself. "No, lad; but she's gone--gone away from us. She's never been to Snowfield. Dinah's been gone to Leeds ever since last Friday was a fortnight, the very day Hetty set out. I can't find out where she went after she got to Stoniton." Seth was silent from utter astonishment: he knew nothing that could suggest to him a reason for Hetty's going away. "Hast any notion what she's done it for?" he said, at last. "She can't ha' loved me. She didn't like our marriage when it came nigh--that must be it," said Adam. He had determined to mention no further reason. "I hear Mother stirring," said Seth. "Must we tell her?" "No, not yet," said Adam, rising from the bench and pushing the hair from his face, as if he wanted to rouse himself. "I can't have her told yet; and I must set out on another journey directly, after I've been to the village and th' Hall Farm. I can't tell thee where I'm going, and thee must say to her I'm gone on business as nobody is to know anything about. I'll go and wash myself now." Adam moved towards the door of the workshop, but after a step or two he turned round, and, meeting Seth's eyes with a calm sad glance, he said, "I must take all the money out o' the tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest 'll be thine, to take care o' Mother with." Seth was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible secret under all this. "Brother," he said, faintly--he never called Adam "Brother" except in solemn moments--"I don't believe you'll do anything as you can't ask God's blessing on." "Nay, lad," said Adam, "don't be afraid. I'm for doing nought but what's a man's duty." The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she would only distress him by words, half of blundering affection, half of irrepressible triumph that Hetty proved as unfit to be his wife as she had always foreseen, brought back some of his habitual firmness and self-command. He had felt ill on his journey home--he told her when she came down--had stayed all night at Tredddleston for that reason; and a bad headache, that still hung about him this morning, accounted for his paleness and heavy eyes. He determined to go to the village, in the first place, attend to his business for an hour, and give notice to Burge of his being obliged to go on a journey, which he must beg him not to mention to any one; for he wished to avoid going to the Hall Farm near breakfast-time, when the children and servants would be in the house-place, and there must be exclamations in their hearing about his having returned without Hetty. He waited until the clock struck nine before he left the work-yard at the village, and set off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was an immense relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr. Poyser advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of going to the house. Mr. Poyser was walking briskly this March morning, with a sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast the master's eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his spud as a useful companion by the way. His surprise was great when he caught sight of Adam, but he was not a man given to presentiments of evil. "Why, Adam, lad, is't you? Have ye been all this time away and not brought the lasses back, after all? Where are they?" "No, I've not brought 'em," said Adam, turning round, to indicate that he wished to walk back with Mr. Poyser. "Why," said Martin, looking with sharper attention at Adam, "ye look bad. Is there anything happened?" "Yes," said Adam, heavily. "A sad thing's happened. I didna find Hetty at Snowfield." Mr. Poyser's good-natured face showed signs of troubled astonishment. "Not find her? What's happened to her?" he said, his thoughts flying at once to bodily accident. "That I can't tell, whether anything's happened to her. She never went to Snowfield--she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can't learn nothing of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach." "Why, you donna mean she's run away?" said Martin, standing still, so puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a trouble by him. "She must ha' done," said Adam. "She didn't like our marriage when it came to the point--that must be it. She'd mistook her feelings." Martin was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and rooting up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing. His usual slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was painful. At last he looked up, right in Adam's face, saying, "Then she didna deserve t' ha' ye, my lad. An' I feel i' fault myself, for she was my niece, and I was allays hot for her marr'ing ye. There's no amends I can make ye, lad--the more's the pity: it's a sad cut-up for ye, I doubt." Adam could say nothing; and Mr. Poyser, after pursuing his walk for a little while, went on, "I'll be bound she's gone after trying to get a lady's maid's place, for she'd got that in her head half a year ago, and wanted me to gi' my consent. But I'd thought better on her"--he added, shaking his head slowly and sadly--"I'd thought better on her, nor to look for this, after she'd gi'en y' her word, an' everything been got ready." Adam had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr. Poyser, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He had no warrant for the certainty that she was gone to Arthur. "It was better it should be so," he said, as quietly as he could, "if she felt she couldn't like me for a husband. Better run away before than repent after. I hope you won't look harshly on her if she comes back, as she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home." "I canna look on her as I've done before," said Martin decisively. "She's acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I'll not turn my back on her: she's but a young un, and it's the first harm I've knowed on her. It'll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Dinah come back wi' ye? She'd ha' helped to pacify her aunt a bit." "Dinah wasn't at Snowfield. She's been gone to Leeds this fortnight, and I couldn't learn from th' old woman any direction where she is at Leeds, else I should ha' brought it you." "She'd a deal better be staying wi' her own kin," said Mr. Poyser, indignantly, "than going preaching among strange folks a-that'n." "I must leave you now, Mr. Poyser," said Adam, "for I've a deal to see to." "Aye, you'd best be after your business, and I must tell the missis when I go home. It's a hard job." "But," said Adam, "I beg particular, you'll keep what's happened quiet for a week or two. I've not told my mother yet, and there's no knowing how things may turn out." "Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We'n no need to say why the match is broke off, an' we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi' me, lad: I wish I could make thee amends." There was something in Martin Poyser's throat at that moment which caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion. Yet Adam knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men grasped each other's hard hands in mutual understanding. There was nothing now to hinder Adam from setting off. He had told Seth to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Adam Bede had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey--and to say as much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the Poysers learned that he was gone away again, Adam knew they would infer that he was gone in search of Hetty. He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the impulse which had frequently visited him before--to go to Mr. Irwine, and make a confidant of him--recurred with the new force which belongs to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey--a difficult one--by sea--and no soul would know where he was gone. If anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any matter concerning Hetty? Mr. Irwine was to be trusted; and the feeling which made Adam shrink from telling anything which was her secret must give way before the need there was that she should have some one else besides himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst extremity. Towards Arthur, even though he might have incurred no new guilt, Adam felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Hetty's interest called on him to speak. "I must do it," said Adam, when these thoughts, which had spread themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; "it's the right thing. I can't stand alone in this way any longer."

Chapter 38

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter38

The Quest The narrative switches to Adam's point of view. After Hetty has been gone for two weeks, the family begins to worry, and Adam decides to go to Snowfield to get her. Mrs. Poyser tells him to invite Dinah to come back too for the wedding. Adam starts his journey in hope for he has never been happier in his life. When he reaches Dinah's cottage, he asks to see her, but the old woman there says Dinah has gone to Leeds to preach. He then asks to see the other woman, Hetty, but the woman says she has never been there. Now Adam is worried. He wonders if Hetty is with Dinah at Leeds, but the old woman does not have an address for her. Adam next inquires at the coach stop, but she was never on the coach for Snowfield. The innkeeper takes him to Oakbourne in his cart, one of the stops of the Treddleston coach in which she departed. Adam vacillates between fear of an accident and fear that she has run off with Arthur. Adam knows Arthur is in Ireland. The innkeeper in Oakbourne knows Hetty did not take the coach that goes to Snowfield, but he does not know where she went. From here Adam goes to Stoniton, knowing that Hetty must have gone here at first. The coachman remembers her, but not what happened after she left the coach. Adam can trace her no farther and returns home. He tells everything to his brother Seth but not his mother. Seth is surprised when Adam falls on his neck weeping, for he has never seen his brother break down. Next, Adam delivers the news to Mr. Poyser, but he does not tell him his suspicions about Arthur. Mr. Poyser is shocked and apologizes to Adam. Mr. Poyser thinks she did not want to be married and went to become a lady's maid. Adam asks Mr. Poyser to be easy with Hetty if she should decide to come home. They decide to keep everything quiet for now until they find her. Next Adam decides to go to Ireland to find Arthur, where he thinks Hetty has gone. He wants to go secretly and wills everything to Seth, if he should not return. He decides he must also inform Mr. Irwine.

Commentary on Chapter 38 Eliot skillfully builds suspense as a film would do by inter-cutting scenes, returning to the people Hetty has left behind as they realize she is gone. Adam has a piece of the puzzle that the others do not, concerning her involvement with Arthur. Readers know more than Adam does, but we too are waiting to find out what happens to her. Adam's grief is so intense that his old jealousy is aroused, and Seth is worried for him. He hints that he hopes Adam won't do anything rash. He supposedly means suicide, but the reader wonders about his anger and revenge towards Arthur. For the moment, Adam is crushed to realize that Hetty does not want to marry him, that she has run away. Yet, it is significant that he always begs for leniency towards her. He decides that he must tell Mr. Irwine about Hetty and Arthur because "I can't stand alone in this way any longer" . He knows now it is too late to protect their secret.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/39.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_39_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 39

chapter 39

{"name": "Chapter 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter39", "summary": "The Tidings When Arthur arrives at the parsonage, he is kept waiting as Mr. Irwine talks to a strange man . When Adam is admitted, he tells Mr. Irwine that he has come to him for help because he looks up to him the most and must tell him some painful news. Mr. Irwine is looking at Adam strangely and has his hand on a letter. Adam tells him Hetty has run away and that he is going to look for her. Mr. Irwine asks if Adam knows why she ran away. Adam says there is someone else involved. Mr. Irwine looks relieved. Adam then tells him the other person is Arthur, and Mr. Irwine is shocked and full of grief as Adam tells about the secret meetings and how he made Arthur write the letter to Hetty. Mr. Irwine then tells Adam to prepare himself for a heavy blow. He can at least thank God he is not the guilty one. He shows Adam the letter from a magistrate in Stoniton with news of Hetty. She has been arrested for killing her baby. Adam is stricken, saying Hetty never had a child. The letter mentions that she denies having a baby, but there is evidence. Mr. Irwine says they can only hope she didn't do it. The trial is coming soon. Adam says he forgives Hetty, but he will bring Arthur back to see Hetty's misery; it is all his fault. Arthur, however, is on his way home already because his grandfather has sent for him. Mr. Irwine switches Adam's attention to Hetty and advises him to go to Stoniton with him to identify Hetty. He tells Adam there are others to think of in this crisis.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 39 Eliot shocks the characters and readers at the same time by skillfully postponing the outcome of Hetty's tortured journey until we hear this official report reach her family and friends. Eliot further delays telling the details and final scenes of Hetty's story until the trial. Adam's blow is hard to witness, for he has tried so hard and was so close, he thought, to happiness: \"O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too to hard to think she is wicked\" . Mr. Irwine comes into his own as the moral leader in this crisis. It is clear that he first thought Adam was the father of the baby. Relieved at first when Adam says it was someone else, he is doubly hurt to find the man is Arthur. He remembers Arthur trying to confess something to him. Though crushed himself for his protege and surrogate son, Mr. Irwine thinks of others and how to soften the blow so that the right things can be done. Adam claims that Arthur is to blame and should suffer the consequences, not Hetty. He continues to load all the guilt on Arthur. Mr. Irwine counsels Adam wisely against revenge, and tells him that Arthur's suffering will be worse, since he caused the tragedy. He must put his attention on giving help. Knowing everyone's nature, Mr. Irwine begins skillfully to orchestrate the community response, fulfilling his office of spiritual counselor admirably. He gives Adam some action to do--come with him to Stoniton Prison."}

ADAM turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be gone out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state of strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it he saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel. But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and though there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr. Irwine's: it had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong to some one who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but Adam could hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he wanted to speak to the rector. The double suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as he threw himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the clock on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said, but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming out, and as Adam was in a hurry, he would let the master know at once. Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us in our sleep. Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He was to go into the study immediately. "I can't think what that strange person's come about," the butler added, from mere incontinence of remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, "he's gone i' the dining-room. And master looks unaccountable--as if he was frightened." Adam took no notice of the words: he could not care about other people's business. But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine's face, he felt in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely different from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine's hand was on it, but the changed glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to preoccupation with some disagreeable business, for he was looking eagerly towards the door, as if Adam's entrance were a matter of poignant anxiety to him. "You want to speak to me, Adam," he said, in that low constrainedly quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress agitation. "Sit down here." He pointed to a chair just opposite to him, at no more than a yard's distance from his own, and Adam sat down with a sense that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine's gave an additional unexpected difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his mind to a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative reasons. "I come to you, sir," he said, "as the gentleman I look up to most of anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as it'll pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o' the wrong other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till I'd good reason." Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, "You was t' ha' married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o' the fifteenth o' this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th' happiest man i' the parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me." Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then, determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out. "She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was going to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took the coach to Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now I'm going a long journey to look for her, and I can't trust t' anybody but you where I'm going." Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down. "Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?" he said. "It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir," said Adam. "She didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I doubt. There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's somebody else concerned besides me." A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came across the eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine's face at that moment. Adam was looking on the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak. But when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr. Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching. "You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he said, "and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him, and had felt so ever since we were lads...." Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam's arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, "No, Adam, no--don't say it, for God's sake!" Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine's feeling, repented of the words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back in his chair, saying, "Go on--I must know it." "That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents and used to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove. There'd been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I'd loved her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more than a bit o' flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty he'd meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I hadn't understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and I thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd expected...and she behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn't know her own feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too late...I don't want to blame her...I can't think as she meant to deceive me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and--you know the rest, sir. But it's on my mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away, and she's gone to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to work again till I know what's become of her." During Adam's narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him. It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when Arthur breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man's secrets...it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as it rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity, for the man who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said solemnly: "Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than any you have yet known. But you are not guilty--you have not the worst of all sorrows. God help him who has!" The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam's there was trembling suspense, in Mr. Irwine's hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on. "I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to him. She is in Stonyshire--at Stoniton." Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said, persuasively, "Wait, Adam, wait." So he sat down. "She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse for you to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever." Adam's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and he whispered, "Tell me." "She has been arrested...she is in prison." It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and sharply, "For what?" "For a great crime--the murder of her child." "It CAN'T BE!" Adam almost shouted, starting up from his chair and making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting his back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Irwine. "It isn't possible. She never had a child. She can't be guilty. WHO says it?" "God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is." "But who says she is guilty?" said Adam violently. "Tell me everything." "Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and the constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not confess her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can be no doubt it is Hetty. The description of her person corresponds, only that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small red-leather pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it--one at the beginning, 'Hetty Sorrel, Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Dinah Morris, Snowfield.' She will not say which is her own name--she denies everything, and will answer no questions, and application has been made to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her, for it was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own name." "But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Hetty?" said Adam, still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole frame. "I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and none of us know it." "Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime; but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and read that letter, Adam." Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his eyes steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give some orders. When he came back, Adam's eyes were still on the first page--he couldn't read--he could not put the words together and make out what they meant. He threw it down at last and clenched his fist. "It's HIS doing," he said; "if there's been any crime, it's at his door, not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me first. Let 'em put HIM on his trial--let him stand in court beside her, and I'll tell 'em how he got hold of her heart, and 'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to me. Is HE to go free, while they lay all the punishment on her...so weak and young?" The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor Adam's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of appealing anguish, "I can't bear it...O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too hard to think she's wicked." Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam before him, with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in moments of terrible emotion--the hard bloodless look of the skin, the deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow, moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless, with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that short space he was living through all his love again. "She can't ha' done it," he said, still without moving his eyes, as if he were only talking to himself: "it was fear made her hide it...I forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Hetty...thee wast deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Hetty...but they'll never make me believe it." He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce abruptness, "I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make him go and look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he can't forget it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he lives it shall follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--I'll fetch him, I'll drag him myself." In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically and looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now took him by the arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, "No, Adam, no; I'm sure you will wish to stay and see what good can be done for her, instead of going on a useless errand of vengeance. The punishment will surely fall without your aid. Besides, he is no longer in Ireland. He must be on his way home--or would be, long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I know, wrote for him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go with me to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as soon as you can compose yourself." While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of the actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened. "Remember," Mr. Irwine went on, "there are others to think of, and act for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty's friends, the good Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam--from your sense of duty to God and man--that you will try to act as long as action can be of any use." In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for Adam's own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours. "You will go with me to Stoniton, Adam?" he said again, after a moment's pause. "We have to see if it is really Hetty who is there, you know." "Yes, sir," said Adam, "I'll do what you think right. But the folks at th' Hall Farm?" "I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I shall return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready."

Chapter 39

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter39

The Tidings When Arthur arrives at the parsonage, he is kept waiting as Mr. Irwine talks to a strange man . When Adam is admitted, he tells Mr. Irwine that he has come to him for help because he looks up to him the most and must tell him some painful news. Mr. Irwine is looking at Adam strangely and has his hand on a letter. Adam tells him Hetty has run away and that he is going to look for her. Mr. Irwine asks if Adam knows why she ran away. Adam says there is someone else involved. Mr. Irwine looks relieved. Adam then tells him the other person is Arthur, and Mr. Irwine is shocked and full of grief as Adam tells about the secret meetings and how he made Arthur write the letter to Hetty. Mr. Irwine then tells Adam to prepare himself for a heavy blow. He can at least thank God he is not the guilty one. He shows Adam the letter from a magistrate in Stoniton with news of Hetty. She has been arrested for killing her baby. Adam is stricken, saying Hetty never had a child. The letter mentions that she denies having a baby, but there is evidence. Mr. Irwine says they can only hope she didn't do it. The trial is coming soon. Adam says he forgives Hetty, but he will bring Arthur back to see Hetty's misery; it is all his fault. Arthur, however, is on his way home already because his grandfather has sent for him. Mr. Irwine switches Adam's attention to Hetty and advises him to go to Stoniton with him to identify Hetty. He tells Adam there are others to think of in this crisis.

Commentary on Chapter 39 Eliot shocks the characters and readers at the same time by skillfully postponing the outcome of Hetty's tortured journey until we hear this official report reach her family and friends. Eliot further delays telling the details and final scenes of Hetty's story until the trial. Adam's blow is hard to witness, for he has tried so hard and was so close, he thought, to happiness: "O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too to hard to think she is wicked" . Mr. Irwine comes into his own as the moral leader in this crisis. It is clear that he first thought Adam was the father of the baby. Relieved at first when Adam says it was someone else, he is doubly hurt to find the man is Arthur. He remembers Arthur trying to confess something to him. Though crushed himself for his protege and surrogate son, Mr. Irwine thinks of others and how to soften the blow so that the right things can be done. Adam claims that Arthur is to blame and should suffer the consequences, not Hetty. He continues to load all the guilt on Arthur. Mr. Irwine counsels Adam wisely against revenge, and tells him that Arthur's suffering will be worse, since he caused the tragedy. He must put his attention on giving help. Knowing everyone's nature, Mr. Irwine begins skillfully to orchestrate the community response, fulfilling his office of spiritual counselor admirably. He gives Adam some action to do--come with him to Stoniton Prison.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/40.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_40_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 40

chapter 40

{"name": "Chapter 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter40", "summary": "The Bitter Waters Spread When Mr. Irwine returns from Stoniton, his mother tells him Squire Donnithorne is dead. She does not know about the tragedy and rejoices that now her godson Arthur will be the new squire. Mr. Irwine does not send a letter to Arthur about the events because he will be home soon for his grandfather's funeral. He gets some sleep and then prepares to break the news to Hall Farm and to the Bedes. Adam has stayed in Stoniton to be near Hetty though he can't bear to see her. He continues to believe Hetty innocent, though Mr. Irwine knows she is not. He decides to let Adam hope, for he is crushed enough. Irwine thinks at least there could be a pardon. Adam also continues to denounce Arthur as the sole perpetrator of any crime. Irwine finds it hard to hear so much against Arthur to whom he has been a father. The Poysers take the news hard. The trial is to be held the next week, and Martin Poyser will probably be called to testify, but he is so upset by the disgrace to the family, he swears never to see Hetty again. Both old Poyser and Martin are hard against Hetty, but Mrs. Poyser is less severe on her. Martin believes they will have to leave the country now. Mrs. Poyser thinks they should send for Dinah. Lisbeth Bede also wants to send for Dinah in their trouble. Seth offers to go to Leeds to look for her, but Lisbeth won't let him go. Instead, a letter is sent. Mr. Irwine tells Jonathan Burge why Adam will be away from work for a while, and soon all Hayslope and Broxton know the news. A few neighbors go to the Poysers to comfort them, and one of them is Bartle Massey, the school teacher. Then Bartle Massey goes to Mr. Irwine and asks him how Adam is doing. Irwine tells him Adam is taking it hard and still believes in Hetty's innocence. He himself saw Hetty at Stoniton and could not believe the change in her: \"she shrank up like a frightened animal\" . Irwine is afraid Adam could lose control and seek revenge against Arthur. Massey offers to go to Stoniton and stay with Adam until the trial is over. He can keep an eye on him.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 40 The impact of Hetty's crime on the small town is like a bombshell. The Poysers feel betrayed and vow they will have to leave the area for they are ruined forever. Their children will be marked out as having a murderess for a cousin. Mrs. Poyser is surprisingly more understanding and forgiving of Hetty than her husband. Lisbeth and Seth feel sorrow for Adam. Bartle Massey feels his worst opinion of women has been confirmed, but he wants to stick by his friend Adam. Thus, the best and worst of small town life are revealed. Gossip travels fast, and censure as well, but there are friends to stand by each other. Bartle marvels that Mr. Irwine is \"everybody's friend in this business\" . Though he has personal feelings, he puts them aside to help everyone else. He is impartial and therefore, the best kind of help. It is telling that the two people most wanted in the crisis are Dinah and Mr. Irwine, the ones with the largest understanding and skill in healing the hearts of others. Both have religious callings, but the important point for Eliot is their humane point of view. They are able to see a larger picture than the other characters. They are able to hold the community together and comfort those in trouble. These are the kind of human beings a society needs, implies Eliot. They are the exemplars of Eliot's moral standard that goes beyond religious doctrine to the unselfish values of unity and sympathy. In this way, Eliot traces in her story the action that causes healing as well as the action that causes tragedy."}

MR. IRWINE returned from Stoniton in a post-chaise that night, and the first words Carroll said to him, as he entered the house, were, that Squire Donnithorne was dead--found dead in his bed at ten o'clock that morning--and that Mrs. Irwine desired him to say she should be awake when Mr. Irwine came home, and she begged him not to go to bed without seeing her. "Well, Dauphin," Mrs. Irwine said, as her son entered her room, "you're come at last. So the old gentleman's fidgetiness and low spirits, which made him send for Arthur in that sudden way, really meant something. I suppose Carroll has told you that Donnithorne was found dead in his bed this morning. You will believe my prognostications another time, though I daresay I shan't live to prognosticate anything but my own death." "What have they done about Arthur?" said Mr. Irwine. "Sent a messenger to await him at Liverpool?" "Yes, Ralph was gone before the news was brought to us. Dear Arthur, I shall live now to see him master at the Chase, and making good times on the estate, like a generous-hearted fellow as he is. He'll be as happy as a king now." Mr. Irwine could not help giving a slight groan: he was worn with anxiety and exertion, and his mother's light words were almost intolerable. "What are you so dismal about, Dauphin? Is there any bad news? Or are you thinking of the danger for Arthur in crossing that frightful Irish Channel at this time of year?" "No, Mother, I'm not thinking of that; but I'm not prepared to rejoice just now." "You've been worried by this law business that you've been to Stoniton about. What in the world is it, that you can't tell me?" "You will know by and by, mother. It would not be right for me to tell you at present. Good-night: you'll sleep now you have no longer anything to listen for." Mr. Irwine gave up his intention of sending a letter to meet Arthur, since it would not now hasten his return: the news of his grandfather's death would bring him as soon as he could possibly come. He could go to bed now and get some needful rest, before the time came for the morning's heavy duty of carrying his sickening news to the Hall Farm and to Adam's home. Adam himself was not come back from Stoniton, for though he shrank from seeing Hetty, he could not bear to go to a distance from her again. "It's no use, sir," he said to the rector, "it's no use for me to go back. I can't go to work again while she's here, and I couldn't bear the sight o' the things and folks round home. I'll take a bit of a room here, where I can see the prison walls, and perhaps I shall get, in time, to bear seeing her." Adam had not been shaken in his belief that Hetty was innocent of the crime she was charged with, for Mr. Irwine, feeling that the belief in her guilt would be a crushing addition to Adam's load, had kept from him the facts which left no hope in his own mind. There was not any reason for thrusting the whole burden on Adam at once, and Mr. Irwine, at parting, only said, "If the evidence should tell too strongly against her, Adam, we may still hope for a pardon. Her youth and other circumstances will be a plea for her." "Ah, and it's right people should know how she was tempted into the wrong way," said Adam, with bitter earnestness. "It's right they should know it was a fine gentleman made love to her, and turned her head wi' notions. You'll remember, sir, you've promised to tell my mother, and Seth, and the people at the farm, who it was as led her wrong, else they'll think harder of her than she deserves. You'll be doing her a hurt by sparing him, and I hold him the guiltiest before God, let her ha' done what she may. If you spare him, I'll expose him!" "I think your demand is just, Adam," said Mr. Irwine, "but when you are calmer, you will judge Arthur more mercifully. I say nothing now, only that his punishment is in other hands than ours." Mr. Irwine felt it hard upon him that he should have to tell of Arthur's sad part in the story of sin and sorrow--he who cared for Arthur with fatherly affection, who had cared for him with fatherly pride. But he saw clearly that the secret must be known before long, even apart from Adam's determination, since it was scarcely to be supposed that Hetty would persist to the end in her obstinate silence. He made up his mind to withhold nothing from the Poysers, but to tell them the worst at once, for there was no time to rob the tidings of their suddenness. Hetty's trial must come on at the Lent assizes, and they were to be held at Stoniton the next week. It was scarcely to be hoped that Martin Poyser could escape the pain of being called as a witness, and it was better he should know everything as long beforehand as possible. Before ten o'clock on Thursday morning the home at the Hall Farm was a house of mourning for a misfortune felt to be worse than death. The sense of family dishonour was too keen even in the kind-hearted Martin Poyser the younger to leave room for any compassion towards Hetty. He and his father were simple-minded farmers, proud of their untarnished character, proud that they came of a family which had held up its head and paid its way as far back as its name was in the parish register; and Hetty had brought disgrace on them all--disgrace that could never be wiped out. That was the all-conquering feeling in the mind both of father and son--the scorching sense of disgrace, which neutralised all other sensibility--and Mr. Irwine was struck with surprise to observe that Mrs. Poyser was less severe than her husband. We are often startled by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of traditional impressions. "I'm willing to pay any money as is wanted towards trying to bring her off," said Martin the younger when Mr. Irwine was gone, while the old grandfather was crying in the opposite chair, "but I'll not go nigh her, nor ever see her again, by my own will. She's made our bread bitter to us for all our lives to come, an' we shall ne'er hold up our heads i' this parish nor i' any other. The parson talks o' folks pitying us: it's poor amends pity 'ull make us." "Pity?" said the grandfather, sharply. "I ne'er wanted folks's pity i' MY life afore...an' I mun begin to be looked down on now, an' me turned seventy-two last St. Thomas's, an' all th' underbearers and pall-bearers as I'n picked for my funeral are i' this parish and the next to 't....It's o' no use now...I mun be ta'en to the grave by strangers." "Don't fret so, father," said Mrs. Poyser, who had spoken very little, being almost overawed by her husband's unusual hardness and decision. "You'll have your children wi' you; an' there's the lads and the little un 'ull grow up in a new parish as well as i' th' old un." "Ah, there's no staying i' this country for us now," said Mr. Poyser, and the hard tears trickled slowly down his round cheeks. "We thought it 'ud be bad luck if the old squire gave us notice this Lady day, but I must gi' notice myself now, an' see if there can anybody be got to come an' take to the crops as I'n put i' the ground; for I wonna stay upo' that man's land a day longer nor I'm forced to't. An' me, as thought him such a good upright young man, as I should be glad when he come to be our landlord. I'll ne'er lift my hat to him again, nor sit i' the same church wi' him...a man as has brought shame on respectable folks...an' pretended to be such a friend t' everybody....Poor Adam there...a fine friend he's been t' Adam, making speeches an' talking so fine, an' all the while poisoning the lad's life, as it's much if he can stay i' this country any more nor we can." "An' you t' ha' to go into court, and own you're akin t' her," said the old man. "Why, they'll cast it up to the little un, as isn't four 'ear old, some day--they'll cast it up t' her as she'd a cousin tried at the 'sizes for murder." "It'll be their own wickedness, then," said Mrs. Poyser, with a sob in her voice. "But there's One above 'ull take care o' the innicent child, else it's but little truth they tell us at church. It'll be harder nor ever to die an' leave the little uns, an' nobody to be a mother to 'em." "We'd better ha' sent for Dinah, if we'd known where she is," said Mr. Poyser; "but Adam said she'd left no direction where she'd be at Leeds." "Why, she'd be wi' that woman as was a friend t' her Aunt Judith," said Mrs. Poyser, comforted a little by this suggestion of her husband. "I've often heard Dinah talk of her, but I can't remember what name she called her by. But there's Seth Bede; he's like enough to know, for she's a preaching woman as the Methodists think a deal on." "I'll send to Seth," said Mr. Poyser. "I'll send Alick to tell him to come, or else to send up word o' the woman's name, an' thee canst write a letter ready to send off to Treddles'on as soon as we can make out a direction." "It's poor work writing letters when you want folks to come to you i' trouble," said Mrs. Poyser. "Happen it'll be ever so long on the road, an' never reach her at last." Before Alick arrived with the message, Lisbeth's thoughts too had already flown to Dinah, and she had said to Seth, "Eh, there's no comfort for us i' this world any more, wi'out thee couldst get Dinah Morris to come to us, as she did when my old man died. I'd like her to come in an' take me by th' hand again, an' talk to me. She'd tell me the rights on't, belike--she'd happen know some good i' all this trouble an' heart-break comin' upo' that poor lad, as ne'er done a bit o' wrong in's life, but war better nor anybody else's son, pick the country round. Eh, my lad...Adam, my poor lad!" "Thee wouldstna like me to leave thee, to go and fetch Dinah?" said Seth, as his mother sobbed and rocked herself to and fro. "Fetch her?" said Lisbeth, looking up and pausing from her grief, like a crying child who hears some promise of consolation. "Why, what place is't she's at, do they say?" "It's a good way off, mother--Leeds, a big town. But I could be back in three days, if thee couldst spare me." "Nay, nay, I canna spare thee. Thee must go an' see thy brother, an' bring me word what he's a-doin'. Mester Irwine said he'd come an' tell me, but I canna make out so well what it means when he tells me. Thee must go thysen, sin' Adam wonna let me go to him. Write a letter to Dinah canstna? Thee't fond enough o' writin' when nobody wants thee." "I'm not sure where she'd be i' that big town," said Seth. "If I'd gone myself, I could ha' found out by asking the members o' the Society. But perhaps if I put Sarah Williamson, Methodist preacher, Leeds, o' th' outside, it might get to her; for most like she'd be wi' Sarah Williamson." Alick came now with the message, and Seth, finding that Mrs. Poyser was writing to Dinah, gave up the intention of writing himself; but he went to the Hall Farm to tell them all he could suggest about the address of the letter, and warn them that there might be some delay in the delivery, from his not knowing an exact direction. On leaving Lisbeth, Mr. Irwine had gone to Jonathan Burge, who had also a claim to be acquainted with what was likely to keep Adam away from business for some time; and before six o'clock that evening there were few people in Broxton and Hayslope who had not heard the sad news. Mr. Irwine had not mentioned Arthur's name to Burge, and yet the story of his conduct towards Hetty, with all the dark shadows cast upon it by its terrible consequences, was presently as well known as that his grandfather was dead, and that he was come into the estate. For Martin Poyser felt no motive to keep silence towards the one or two neighbours who ventured to come and shake him sorrowfully by the hand on the first day of his trouble; and Carroll, who kept his ears open to all that passed at the rectory, had framed an inferential version of the story, and found early opportunities of communicating it. One of those neighbours who came to Martin Poyser and shook him by the hand without speaking for some minutes was Bartle Massey. He had shut up his school, and was on his way to the rectory, where he arrived about half-past seven in the evening, and, sending his duty to Mr. Irwine, begged pardon for troubling him at that hour, but had something particular on his mind. He was shown into the study, where Mr. Irwine soon joined him. "Well, Bartle?" said Mr. Irwine, putting out his hand. That was not his usual way of saluting the schoolmaster, but trouble makes us treat all who feel with us very much alike. "Sit down." "You know what I'm come about as well as I do, sir, I daresay," said Bartle. "You wish to know the truth about the sad news that has reached you...about Hetty Sorrel?" "Nay, sir, what I wish to know is about Adam Bede. I understand you left him at Stoniton, and I beg the favour of you to tell me what's the state of the poor lad's mind, and what he means to do. For as for that bit o' pink-and-white they've taken the trouble to put in jail, I don't value her a rotten nut--not a rotten nut--only for the harm or good that may come out of her to an honest man--a lad I've set such store by--trusted to, that he'd make my bit o' knowledge go a good way in the world....Why, sir, he's the only scholar I've had in this stupid country that ever had the will or the head-piece for mathematics. If he hadn't had so much hard work to do, poor fellow, he might have gone into the higher branches, and then this might never have happened--might never have happened." Bartle was heated by the exertion of walking fast in an agitated frame of mind, and was not able to check himself on this first occasion of venting his feelings. But he paused now to rub his moist forehead, and probably his moist eyes also. "You'll excuse me, sir," he said, when this pause had given him time to reflect, "for running on in this way about my own feelings, like that foolish dog of mine howling in a storm, when there's nobody wants to listen to me. I came to hear you speak, not to talk myself--if you'll take the trouble to tell me what the poor lad's doing." "Don't put yourself under any restraint, Bartle," said Mr. Irwine. "The fact is, I'm very much in the same condition as you just now; I've a great deal that's painful on my mind, and I find it hard work to be quite silent about my own feelings and only attend to others. I share your concern for Adam, though he is not the only one whose sufferings I care for in this affair. He intends to remain at Stoniton till after the trial: it will come on probably a week to-morrow. He has taken a room there, and I encouraged him to do so, because I think it better he should be away from his own home at present; and, poor fellow, he still believes Hetty is innocent--he wants to summon up courage to see her if he can; he is unwilling to leave the spot where she is." "Do you think the creatur's guilty, then?" said Bartle. "Do you think they'll hang her?" "I'm afraid it will go hard with her. The evidence is very strong. And one bad symptom is that she denies everything--denies that she has had a child in the face of the most positive evidence. I saw her myself, and she was obstinately silent to me; she shrank up like a frightened animal when she saw me. I was never so shocked in my life as at the change in her. But I trust that, in the worst case, we may obtain a pardon for the sake of the innocent who are involved." "Stuff and nonsense!" said Bartle, forgetting in his irritation to whom he was speaking. "I beg your pardon, sir, I mean it's stuff and nonsense for the innocent to care about her being hanged. For my own part, I think the sooner such women are put out o' the world the better; and the men that help 'em to do mischief had better go along with 'em for that matter. What good will you do by keeping such vermin alive, eating the victual that 'ud feed rational beings? But if Adam's fool enough to care about it, I don't want him to suffer more than's needful....Is he very much cut up, poor fellow?" Bartle added, taking out his spectacles and putting them on, as if they would assist his imagination. "Yes, I'm afraid the grief cuts very deep," said Mr. Irwine. "He looks terribly shattered, and a certain violence came over him now and then yesterday, which made me wish I could have remained near him. But I shall go to Stoniton again to-morrow, and I have confidence enough in the strength of Adam's principle to trust that he will be able to endure the worst without being driven to anything rash." Mr. Irwine, who was involuntarily uttering his own thoughts rather than addressing Bartle Massey in the last sentence, had in his mind the possibility that the spirit of vengeance to-wards Arthur, which was the form Adam's anguish was continually taking, might make him seek an encounter that was likely to end more fatally than the one in the Grove. This possibility heightened the anxiety with which he looked forward to Arthur's arrival. But Bartle thought Mr. Irwine was referring to suicide, and his face wore a new alarm. "I'll tell you what I have in my head, sir," he said, "and I hope you'll approve of it. I'm going to shut up my school--if the scholars come, they must go back again, that's all--and I shall go to Stoniton and look after Adam till this business is over. I'll pretend I'm come to look on at the assizes; he can't object to that. What do you think about it, sir?" "Well," said Mr. Irwine, rather hesitatingly, "there would be some real advantages in that...and I honour you for your friendship towards him, Bartle. But...you must be careful what you say to him, you know. I'm afraid you have too little fellow-feeling in what you consider his weakness about Hetty." "Trust to me, sir--trust to me. I know what you mean. I've been a fool myself in my time, but that's between you and me. I shan't thrust myself on him only keep my eye on him, and see that he gets some good food, and put in a word here and there." "Then," said Mr. Irwine, reassured a little as to Bartle's discretion, "I think you'll be doing a good deed; and it will be well for you to let Adam's mother and brother know that you're going." "Yes, sir, yes," said Bartle, rising, and taking off his spectacles, "I'll do that, I'll do that; though the mother's a whimpering thing--I don't like to come within earshot of her; however, she's a straight-backed, clean woman, none of your slatterns. I wish you good-bye, sir, and thank you for the time you've spared me. You're everybody's friend in this business--everybody's friend. It's a heavy weight you've got on your shoulders." "Good-bye, Bartle, till we meet at Stoniton, as I daresay we shall." Bartle hurried away from the rectory, evading Carroll's conversational advances, and saying in an exasperated tone to Vixen, whose short legs pattered beside him on the gravel, "Now, I shall be obliged to take you with me, you good-for-nothing woman. You'd go fretting yourself to death if I left you--you know you would, and perhaps get snapped up by some tramp. And you'll be running into bad company, I expect, putting your nose in every hole and corner where you've no business! But if you do anything disgraceful, I'll disown you--mind that, madam, mind that!"

Chapter 40

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter40

The Bitter Waters Spread When Mr. Irwine returns from Stoniton, his mother tells him Squire Donnithorne is dead. She does not know about the tragedy and rejoices that now her godson Arthur will be the new squire. Mr. Irwine does not send a letter to Arthur about the events because he will be home soon for his grandfather's funeral. He gets some sleep and then prepares to break the news to Hall Farm and to the Bedes. Adam has stayed in Stoniton to be near Hetty though he can't bear to see her. He continues to believe Hetty innocent, though Mr. Irwine knows she is not. He decides to let Adam hope, for he is crushed enough. Irwine thinks at least there could be a pardon. Adam also continues to denounce Arthur as the sole perpetrator of any crime. Irwine finds it hard to hear so much against Arthur to whom he has been a father. The Poysers take the news hard. The trial is to be held the next week, and Martin Poyser will probably be called to testify, but he is so upset by the disgrace to the family, he swears never to see Hetty again. Both old Poyser and Martin are hard against Hetty, but Mrs. Poyser is less severe on her. Martin believes they will have to leave the country now. Mrs. Poyser thinks they should send for Dinah. Lisbeth Bede also wants to send for Dinah in their trouble. Seth offers to go to Leeds to look for her, but Lisbeth won't let him go. Instead, a letter is sent. Mr. Irwine tells Jonathan Burge why Adam will be away from work for a while, and soon all Hayslope and Broxton know the news. A few neighbors go to the Poysers to comfort them, and one of them is Bartle Massey, the school teacher. Then Bartle Massey goes to Mr. Irwine and asks him how Adam is doing. Irwine tells him Adam is taking it hard and still believes in Hetty's innocence. He himself saw Hetty at Stoniton and could not believe the change in her: "she shrank up like a frightened animal" . Irwine is afraid Adam could lose control and seek revenge against Arthur. Massey offers to go to Stoniton and stay with Adam until the trial is over. He can keep an eye on him.

Commentary on Chapter 40 The impact of Hetty's crime on the small town is like a bombshell. The Poysers feel betrayed and vow they will have to leave the area for they are ruined forever. Their children will be marked out as having a murderess for a cousin. Mrs. Poyser is surprisingly more understanding and forgiving of Hetty than her husband. Lisbeth and Seth feel sorrow for Adam. Bartle Massey feels his worst opinion of women has been confirmed, but he wants to stick by his friend Adam. Thus, the best and worst of small town life are revealed. Gossip travels fast, and censure as well, but there are friends to stand by each other. Bartle marvels that Mr. Irwine is "everybody's friend in this business" . Though he has personal feelings, he puts them aside to help everyone else. He is impartial and therefore, the best kind of help. It is telling that the two people most wanted in the crisis are Dinah and Mr. Irwine, the ones with the largest understanding and skill in healing the hearts of others. Both have religious callings, but the important point for Eliot is their humane point of view. They are able to see a larger picture than the other characters. They are able to hold the community together and comfort those in trouble. These are the kind of human beings a society needs, implies Eliot. They are the exemplars of Eliot's moral standard that goes beyond religious doctrine to the unselfish values of unity and sympathy. In this way, Eliot traces in her story the action that causes healing as well as the action that causes tragedy.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/41.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_41_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 41

chapter 41

{"name": "Chapter 41", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter41", "summary": "The Eve of the Trial In a rented room in Stoniton, Bartle Massey and Adam await the arrival of Mr. Irwine. Bartle pretends to read, but he is watching Adam who sits haggard and listless. Mr. Irwine comes from the prison where he and the chaplain were talking to Hetty. Adam has requested to see her before the trial, but she is not seeing anyone. She won't even see her family. Mr. Irwine mentions how changed she is and that such a meeting now would be suffering for Adam. Adam asks if Arthur is back. He becomes angry, saying he wants justice done to him. Mr. Irwine says he has left a letter for Arthur as soon as he arrives. He assures Adam that Arthur will suffer and defends him as a weak but not a cruel person. He repeats that vengeance will not help Hetty. Mr. Irwine tries to explain that passion is not justice and Arthur cannot bear all the blame. People are interconnected and evil spreads like a disease. In fact, Adam himself is in danger of committing a wrong. Mr. Poyser is in town for the trial, but Irwine won't let him meet with Adam in his present state because Martin is upset enough. Both Adam and Mr. Irwine express the wish that Dinah were present.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 41 Irwine presents one of Eliot's favorite ideas of the interconnectedness of everyone. Adam wants to pinpoint blame, but evil is like a disease that spreads. Who can say where it starts and stops? Adam himself is taking infection in his desire to do something violent to Arthur. Irwine tries to break the idea to Adam that Hetty could be guilty of a crime that came from what she and Arthur did together. Adam voices another of Eliot's favorite ideas, that evil cannot be undone. The law of cause and effect is scientifically observable and therefore, the moral law requiring unselfish behavior is also practical if one wants to avoid suffering for oneself and others. Irwine assures Adam that Arthur will carry this burden his whole life; therefore, there is no need to punish him. He is punished by a force larger than Adam. Irwine also mentions the fact of Hetty's hardness of heart to Adam. This will be an important point in the trial. Her aunt had called her hard-hearted many times, but this has escalated to bring her to total isolation. Irwine says, \"a fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures\" . This is the worst sort of suffering, for no healing or transformation can take place. Hetty believes there is no help for her, and in her pride, she will not confess or reach out."}

AN upper room in a dull Stoniton street, with two beds in it--one laid on the floor. It is ten o'clock on Thursday night, and the dark wall opposite the window shuts out the moonlight that might have struggled with the light of the one dip candle by which Bartle Massey is pretending to read, while he is really looking over his spectacles at Adam Bede, seated near the dark window. You would hardly have known it was Adam without being told. His face has got thinner this last week: he has the sunken eyes, the neglected beard of a man just risen from a sick-bed. His heavy black hair hangs over his forehead, and there is no active impulse in him which inclines him to push it off, that he may be more awake to what is around him. He has one arm over the back of the chair, and he seems to be looking down at his clasped hands. He is roused by a knock at the door. "There he is," said Bartle Massey, rising hastily and unfastening the door. It was Mr. Irwine. Adam rose from his chair with instinctive respect, as Mr. Irwine approached him and took his hand. "I'm late, Adam," he said, sitting down on the chair which Bartle placed for him, "but I was later in setting off from Broxton than I intended to be, and I have been incessantly occupied since I arrived. I have done everything now, however--everything that can be done to-night, at least. Let us all sit down." Adam took his chair again mechanically, and Bartle, for whom there was no chair remaining, sat on the bed in the background. "Have you seen her, sir?" said Adam tremulously. "Yes, Adam; I and the chaplain have both been with her this evening." "Did you ask her, sir...did you say anything about me?" "Yes," said Mr. Irwine, with some hesitation, "I spoke of you. I said you wished to see her before the trial, if she consented." As Mr. Irwine paused, Adam looked at him with eager, questioning eyes. "You know she shrinks from seeing any one, Adam. It is not only you--some fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures. She has scarcely said anything more than 'No' either to me or the chaplain. Three or four days ago, before you were mentioned to her, when I asked her if there was any one of her family whom she would like to see--to whom she could open her mind--she said, with a violent shudder, 'Tell them not to come near me--I won't see any of them.'" Adam's head was hanging down again, and he did not speak. There was silence for a few minutes, and then Mr. Irwine said, "I don't like to advise you against your own feelings, Adam, if they now urge you strongly to go and see her to-morrow morning, even without her consent. It is just possible, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, that the interview might affect her favourably. But I grieve to say I have scarcely any hope of that. She didn't seem agitated when I mentioned your name; she only said 'No,' in the same cold, obstinate way as usual. And if the meeting had no good effect on her, it would be pure, useless suffering to you--severe suffering, I fear. She is very much changed..." Adam started up from his chair and seized his hat, which lay on the table. But he stood still then, and looked at Mr. Irwine, as if he had a question to ask which it was yet difficult to utter. Bartle Massey rose quietly, turned the key in the door, and put it in his pocket. "Is he come back?" said Adam at last. "No, he is not," said Mr. Irwine, quietly. "Lay down your hat, Adam, unless you like to walk out with me for a little fresh air. I fear you have not been out again to-day." "You needn't deceive me, sir," said Adam, looking hard at Mr. Irwine and speaking in a tone of angry suspicion. "You needn't be afraid of me. I only want justice. I want him to feel what she feels. It's his work...she was a child as it 'ud ha' gone t' anybody's heart to look at...I don't care what she's done...it was him brought her to it. And he shall know it...he shall feel it...if there's a just God, he shall feel what it is t' ha' brought a child like her to sin and misery." "I'm not deceiving you, Adam," said Mr. Irwine. "Arthur Donnithorne is not come back--was not come back when I left. I have left a letter for him: he will know all as soon as he arrives." "But you don't mind about it," said Adam indignantly. "You think it doesn't matter as she lies there in shame and misery, and he knows nothing about it--he suffers nothing." "Adam, he WILL know--he WILL suffer, long and bitterly. He has a heart and a conscience: I can't be entirely deceived in his character. I am convinced--I am sure he didn't fall under temptation without a struggle. He may be weak, but he is not callous, not coldly selfish. I am persuaded that this will be a shock of which he will feel the effects all his life. Why do you crave vengeance in this way? No amount of torture that you could inflict on him could benefit her." "No--O God, no," Adam groaned out, sinking on his chair again; "but then, that's the deepest curse of all...that's what makes the blackness of it...IT CAN NEVER BE UNDONE. My poor Hetty...she can never be my sweet Hetty again...the prettiest thing God had made--smiling up at me...I thought she loved me...and was good..." Adam's voice had been gradually sinking into a hoarse undertone, as if he were only talking to himself; but now he said abruptly, looking at Mr. Irwine, "But she isn't as guilty as they say? You don't think she is, sir? She can't ha' done it." "That perhaps can never be known with certainty, Adam," Mr. Irwine answered gently. "In these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what seems to us strong evidence, and yet, for want of knowing some small fact, our judgment is wrong. But suppose the worst: you have no right to say that the guilt of her crime lies with him, and that he ought to bear the punishment. It is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral guilt and retribution. We find it impossible to avoid mistakes even in determining who has committed a single criminal act, and the problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen consequences of his own deed is one that might well make us tremble to look into it. The evil consequences that may lie folded in a single act of selfish indulgence is a thought so awful that it ought surely to awaken some feeling less presumptuous than a rash desire to punish. You have a mind that can understand this fully, Adam, when you are calm. Don't suppose I can't enter into the anguish that drives you into this state of revengeful hatred. But think of this: if you were to obey your passion--for it IS passion, and you deceive yourself in calling it justice--it might be with you precisely as it has been with Arthur; nay, worse; your passion might lead you yourself into a horrible crime." "No--not worse," said Adam, bitterly; "I don't believe it's worse--I'd sooner do it--I'd sooner do a wickedness as I could suffer for by myself than ha' brought HER to do wickedness and then stand by and see 'em punish her while they let me alone; and all for a bit o' pleasure, as, if he'd had a man's heart in him, he'd ha' cut his hand off sooner than he'd ha' taken it. What if he didn't foresee what's happened? He foresaw enough; he'd no right to expect anything but harm and shame to her. And then he wanted to smooth it off wi' lies. No--there's plenty o' things folks are hanged for not half so hateful as that. Let a man do what he will, if he knows he's to bear the punishment himself, he isn't half so bad as a mean selfish coward as makes things easy t' himself and knows all the while the punishment 'll fall on somebody else." "There again you partly deceive yourself, Adam. There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Arthur's has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it. An act of vengeance on your part against Arthur would simply be another evil added to those we are suffering under: you could not bear the punishment alone; you would entail the worst sorrows on every one who loves you. You would have committed an act of blind fury that would leave all the present evils just as they were and add worse evils to them. You may tell me that you meditate no fatal act of vengeance, but the feeling in your mind is what gives birth to such actions, and as long as you indulge it, as long as you do not see that to fix your mind on Arthur's punishment is revenge, and not justice, you are in danger of being led on to the commission of some great wrong. Remember what you told me about your feelings after you had given that blow to Arthur in the Grove." Adam was silent: the last words had called up a vivid image of the past, and Mr. Irwine left him to his thoughts, while he spoke to Bartle Massey about old Mr. Donnithorne's funeral and other matters of an indifferent kind. But at length Adam turned round and said, in a more subdued tone, "I've not asked about 'em at th' Hall Farm, sir. Is Mr. Poyser coming?" "He is come; he is in Stoniton to-night. But I could not advise him to see you, Adam. His own mind is in a very perturbed state, and it is best he should not see you till you are calmer." "Is Dinah Morris come to 'em, sir? Seth said they'd sent for her." "No. Mr. Poyser tells me she was not come when he left. They're afraid the letter has not reached her. It seems they had no exact address." Adam sat ruminating a little while, and then said, "I wonder if Dinah 'ud ha' gone to see her. But perhaps the Poysers would ha' been sorely against it, since they won't come nigh her themselves. But I think she would, for the Methodists are great folks for going into the prisons; and Seth said he thought she would. She'd a very tender way with her, Dinah had; I wonder if she could ha' done any good. You never saw her, sir, did you?" "Yes, I did. I had a conversation with her--she pleased me a good deal. And now you mention it, I wish she would come, for it is possible that a gentle mild woman like her might move Hetty to open her heart. The jail chaplain is rather harsh in his manner." "But it's o' no use if she doesn't come," said Adam sadly. "If I'd thought of it earlier, I would have taken some measures for finding her out," said Mr. Irwine, "but it's too late now, I fear...Well, Adam, I must go now. Try to get some rest to-night. God bless you. I'll see you early to-morrow morning."

Chapter 41

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter41

The Eve of the Trial In a rented room in Stoniton, Bartle Massey and Adam await the arrival of Mr. Irwine. Bartle pretends to read, but he is watching Adam who sits haggard and listless. Mr. Irwine comes from the prison where he and the chaplain were talking to Hetty. Adam has requested to see her before the trial, but she is not seeing anyone. She won't even see her family. Mr. Irwine mentions how changed she is and that such a meeting now would be suffering for Adam. Adam asks if Arthur is back. He becomes angry, saying he wants justice done to him. Mr. Irwine says he has left a letter for Arthur as soon as he arrives. He assures Adam that Arthur will suffer and defends him as a weak but not a cruel person. He repeats that vengeance will not help Hetty. Mr. Irwine tries to explain that passion is not justice and Arthur cannot bear all the blame. People are interconnected and evil spreads like a disease. In fact, Adam himself is in danger of committing a wrong. Mr. Poyser is in town for the trial, but Irwine won't let him meet with Adam in his present state because Martin is upset enough. Both Adam and Mr. Irwine express the wish that Dinah were present.

Commentary on Chapter 41 Irwine presents one of Eliot's favorite ideas of the interconnectedness of everyone. Adam wants to pinpoint blame, but evil is like a disease that spreads. Who can say where it starts and stops? Adam himself is taking infection in his desire to do something violent to Arthur. Irwine tries to break the idea to Adam that Hetty could be guilty of a crime that came from what she and Arthur did together. Adam voices another of Eliot's favorite ideas, that evil cannot be undone. The law of cause and effect is scientifically observable and therefore, the moral law requiring unselfish behavior is also practical if one wants to avoid suffering for oneself and others. Irwine assures Adam that Arthur will carry this burden his whole life; therefore, there is no need to punish him. He is punished by a force larger than Adam. Irwine also mentions the fact of Hetty's hardness of heart to Adam. This will be an important point in the trial. Her aunt had called her hard-hearted many times, but this has escalated to bring her to total isolation. Irwine says, "a fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures" . This is the worst sort of suffering, for no healing or transformation can take place. Hetty believes there is no help for her, and in her pride, she will not confess or reach out.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/42.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_42_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 42

chapter 42

{"name": "Chapter 42", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter42", "summary": "The Morning of the Trial Adam does not go to the trial in the morning but waits till Bartle comes to him at lunchtime to hear about it. He has thought of seeing Hetty because it might melt her hardness if someone forgave her, but still he is afraid to see her in her changed state. The narrator says that the kind of unbearable suffering Adam experiences can be a baptism into a new state of life. He feels as if he is just waking up. He goes through a fire baptism into a new pity. Bartle tells him about the court scene as he tries to get Adam to eat bread and drink wine. The court is filled with spectators. The doctor has testified as to whether she had borne a child, and Martin Poyser testified. It was so hard on Martin that Bartle tells Adam he must be a friend to Poyser now. They made Poyser look at his niece, and she trembled and hid her face in her hands. Mr. Irwine took care of Martin in the courtroom. Irwine will also be a witness on Hetty's behalf. Adam keeps asking about the other evidence, and Bartle says he cannot hide the fact that the doctor's evidence has been hard on her, though she still denies having a child. Adam asks if there is anyone to stand by her in the court? Bartle says only the chaplain. Adam says one man should be there, but since he is not, Adam says he will go. \"I'll stand by her--I'll own her\". Adam admits that he used to be hard, but he will never be hard again. Suddenly, he looks like his old self.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 42 This chapter is important for showing Adam's conversion to a new sense of humanity. He was always a good man, but the narrator says that suffering can be an awakening to a new unselfishness and pity. This baptism of Adam's once again reminds one of Paradise Lost where Adam and Eve have to learn how to be good in a fallen state, how to feel love and compassion for one another, instead of blame. It is to be contrasted, however, with Hetty's response of hardness. Adam's suffering makes him reach out; hers shuts her down. She cannot admit she did anything wrong, and so therefore, no forgiveness and growth can take place. Adam grows to maturity here by putting aside his old moral harshness and deciding to stand by Hetty, even if she committed the crime. He will own her, not be ashamed of her, like her uncle. This is true Christian behavior and more like what Dinah Morris would do. Even his look changes after he softens. He is now closer to the ethic that Bartle announces in this chapter as he praises Mr. Irwine for helping Martin Poyser: \"It's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by his neighbor\" ."}

AT one o'clock the next day, Adam was alone in his dull upper room; his watch lay before him on the table, as if he were counting the long minutes. He had no knowledge of what was likely to be said by the witnesses on the trial, for he had shrunk from all the particulars connected with Hetty's arrest and accusation. This brave active man, who would have hastened towards any danger or toil to rescue Hetty from an apprehended wrong or misfortune, felt himself powerless to contemplate irremediable evil and suffering. The susceptibility which would have been an impelling force where there was any possibility of action became helpless anguish when he was obliged to be passive, or else sought an active outlet in the thought of inflicting justice on Arthur. Energetic natures, strong for all strenuous deeds, will often rush away from a hopeless sufferer, as if they were hard-hearted. It is the overmastering sense of pain that drives them. They shrink by an ungovernable instinct, as they would shrink from laceration. Adam had brought himself to think of seeing Hetty, if she would consent to see him, because he thought the meeting might possibly be a good to her--might help to melt away this terrible hardness they told him of. If she saw he bore her no ill will for what she had done to him, she might open her heart to him. But this resolution had been an immense effort--he trembled at the thought of seeing her changed face, as a timid woman trembles at the thought of the surgeon's knife, and he chose now to bear the long hours of suspense rather than encounter what seemed to him the more intolerable agony of witnessing her trial. Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories, the bitter regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible Right--all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an eager crowd into the hours of this single morning, made Adam look back on all the previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence, and he had only now awaked to full consciousness. It seemed to him as if he had always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment's stroke that had never left a bruise. Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity. "O God," Adam groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at the face of the watch, "and men have suffered like this before...and poor helpless young things have suffered like her....Such a little while ago looking so happy and so pretty...kissing 'em all, her grandfather and all of 'em, and they wishing her luck....O my poor, poor Hetty...dost think on it now?" Adam started and looked round towards the door. Vixen had begun to whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the stairs. It was Bartle Massey come back. Could it be all over? Bartle entered quietly, and, going up to Adam, grasped his hand and said, "I'm just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out of court for a bit." Adam's heart beat so violently he was unable to speak--he could only return the pressure of his friend's hand--and Bartle, drawing up the other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his spectacles. "That's a thing never happened to me before," he observed, "to go out o' the door with my spectacles on. I clean forgot to take 'em off." The old man made this trivial remark, thinking it better not to respond at all to Adam's agitation: he would gather, in an indirect way, that there was nothing decisive to communicate at present. "And now," he said, rising again, "I must see to your having a bit of the loaf, and some of that wine Mr. Irwine sent this morning. He'll be angry with me if you don't have it. Come, now," he went on, bringing forward the bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, "I must have a bit and a sup myself. Drink a drop with me, my lad--drink with me." Adam pushed the cup gently away and said, entreatingly, "Tell me about it, Mr. Massey--tell me all about it. Was she there? Have they begun?" "Yes, my boy, yes--it's taken all the time since I first went; but they're slow, they're slow; and there's the counsel they've got for her puts a spoke in the wheel whenever he can, and makes a deal to do with cross-examining the witnesses and quarrelling with the other lawyers. That's all he can do for the money they give him; and it's a big sum--it's a big sum. But he's a 'cute fellow, with an eye that 'ud pick the needles out of the hay in no time. If a man had got no feelings, it 'ud be as good as a demonstration to listen to what goes on in court; but a tender heart makes one stupid. I'd have given up figures for ever only to have had some good news to bring to you, my poor lad." "But does it seem to be going against her?" said Adam. "Tell me what they've said. I must know it now--I must know what they have to bring against her." "Why, the chief evidence yet has been the doctors; all but Martin Poyser--poor Martin. Everybody in court felt for him--it was like one sob, the sound they made when he came down again. The worst was when they told him to look at the prisoner at the bar. It was hard work, poor fellow--it was hard work. Adam, my boy, the blow falls heavily on him as well as you; you must help poor Martin; you must show courage. Drink some wine now, and show me you mean to bear it like a man." Bartle had made the right sort of appeal. Adam, with an air of quiet obedience, took up the cup and drank a little. "Tell me how SHE looked," he said presently. "Frightened, very frightened, when they first brought her in; it was the first sight of the crowd and the judge, poor creatur. And there's a lot o' foolish women in fine clothes, with gewgaws all up their arms and feathers on their heads, sitting near the judge: they've dressed themselves out in that way, one 'ud think, to be scarecrows and warnings against any man ever meddling with a woman again. They put up their glasses, and stared and whispered. But after that she stood like a white image, staring down at her hands and seeming neither to hear nor see anything. And she's as white as a sheet. She didn't speak when they asked her if she'd plead 'guilty' or 'not guilty,' and they pleaded 'not guilty' for her. But when she heard her uncle's name, there seemed to go a shiver right through her; and when they told him to look at her, she hung her head down, and cowered, and hid her face in her hands. He'd much ado to speak poor man, his voice trembled so. And the counsellors--who look as hard as nails mostly--I saw, spared him as much as they could. Mr. Irwine put himself near him and went with him out o' court. Ah, it's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by a neighbour and uphold him in such trouble as that." "God bless him, and you too, Mr. Massey," said Adam, in a low voice, laying his hand on Bartle's arm. "Aye, aye, he's good metal; he gives the right ring when you try him, our parson does. A man o' sense--says no more than's needful. He's not one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was than those who have to bear it. I've had to do with such folks in my time--in the south, when I was in trouble myself. Mr. Irwine is to be a witness himself, by and by, on her side, you know, to speak to her character and bringing up." "But the other evidence...does it go hard against her!" said Adam. "What do you think, Mr. Massey? Tell me the truth." "Yes, my lad, yes. The truth is the best thing to tell. It must come at last. The doctors' evidence is heavy on her--is heavy. But she's gone on denying she's had a child from first to last. These poor silly women-things--they've not the sense to know it's no use denying what's proved. It'll make against her with the jury, I doubt, her being so obstinate: they may be less for recommending her to mercy, if the verdict's against her. But Mr. Irwine 'ull leave no stone unturned with the judge--you may rely upon that, Adam." "Is there nobody to stand by her and seem to care for her in the court?" said Adam. "There's the chaplain o' the jail sits near her, but he's a sharp ferrety-faced man--another sort o' flesh and blood to Mr. Irwine. They say the jail chaplains are mostly the fag-end o' the clergy." "There's one man as ought to be there," said Adam bitterly. Presently he drew himself up and looked fixedly out of the window, apparently turning over some new idea in his mind. "Mr. Massey," he said at last, pushing the hair off his forehead, "I'll go back with you. I'll go into court. It's cowardly of me to keep away. I'll stand by her--I'll own her--for all she's been deceitful. They oughtn't to cast her off--her own flesh and blood. We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. I used to be hard sometimes: I'll never be hard again. I'll go, Mr. Massey--I'll go with you." There was a decision in Adam's manner which would have prevented Bartle from opposing him, even if he had wished to do so. He only said, "Take a bit, then, and another sup, Adam, for the love of me. See, I must stop and eat a morsel. Now, you take some." Nerved by an active resolution, Adam took a morsel of bread and drank some wine. He was haggard and unshaven, as he had been yesterday, but he stood upright again, and looked more like the Adam Bede of former days.

Chapter 42

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter42

The Morning of the Trial Adam does not go to the trial in the morning but waits till Bartle comes to him at lunchtime to hear about it. He has thought of seeing Hetty because it might melt her hardness if someone forgave her, but still he is afraid to see her in her changed state. The narrator says that the kind of unbearable suffering Adam experiences can be a baptism into a new state of life. He feels as if he is just waking up. He goes through a fire baptism into a new pity. Bartle tells him about the court scene as he tries to get Adam to eat bread and drink wine. The court is filled with spectators. The doctor has testified as to whether she had borne a child, and Martin Poyser testified. It was so hard on Martin that Bartle tells Adam he must be a friend to Poyser now. They made Poyser look at his niece, and she trembled and hid her face in her hands. Mr. Irwine took care of Martin in the courtroom. Irwine will also be a witness on Hetty's behalf. Adam keeps asking about the other evidence, and Bartle says he cannot hide the fact that the doctor's evidence has been hard on her, though she still denies having a child. Adam asks if there is anyone to stand by her in the court? Bartle says only the chaplain. Adam says one man should be there, but since he is not, Adam says he will go. "I'll stand by her--I'll own her". Adam admits that he used to be hard, but he will never be hard again. Suddenly, he looks like his old self.

Commentary on Chapter 42 This chapter is important for showing Adam's conversion to a new sense of humanity. He was always a good man, but the narrator says that suffering can be an awakening to a new unselfishness and pity. This baptism of Adam's once again reminds one of Paradise Lost where Adam and Eve have to learn how to be good in a fallen state, how to feel love and compassion for one another, instead of blame. It is to be contrasted, however, with Hetty's response of hardness. Adam's suffering makes him reach out; hers shuts her down. She cannot admit she did anything wrong, and so therefore, no forgiveness and growth can take place. Adam grows to maturity here by putting aside his old moral harshness and deciding to stand by Hetty, even if she committed the crime. He will own her, not be ashamed of her, like her uncle. This is true Christian behavior and more like what Dinah Morris would do. Even his look changes after he softens. He is now closer to the ethic that Bartle announces in this chapter as he praises Mr. Irwine for helping Martin Poyser: "It's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by his neighbor" .

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/43.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_43_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 43

chapter 43

{"name": "Chapter 43", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter43", "summary": "The Verdict Adam Bede's tall figure entering the courtroom is striking. Even Mr. Irwine is surprised by the signs of suffering and grief about him. He goes to sit by Hetty's side, but she does not see him, for she stands with her head down, looking at her hands. Adam is looking to see whether she is different, but she is not to him. She still is the pretty sweet girl he fell in love with. The first witness is Sarah Stone, a widowed shopkeeper in Stoniton. She tells how Hetty came to her door one night and out of pity, she took her in. That night, the baby was born, and she herself dressed it in clothes she had made. She took care of the baby and mother and offered to send for Hetty's friends, but Hetty refused. When the woman went out for a while, Hetty ran away with the baby. At this point, Adam is moved and thinks that Hetty couldn't have killed her baby. She must have loved it, but the next witness is the man who found the baby, John Olding, an old peasant man. He was crossing the fields and saw Hetty there. She looked frightened when he came towards her and walked on. He thought she looked crazy. In the field he kept hearing cries but thinking it some animal, he ignored it until it stopped. An hour later he went to where the cries were and found a baby's body. It was cold. He took it to his wife who said it was dead. Then they sent for the constable and began looking for Hetty. They found her the next day, sitting near the place where she had left the baby, apparently in shock, for she did not move until they took her away. Adam's agony is supreme when he realizes what Hetty has done, and he hides his face on his arm and calls to God for help. The jury quickly finds her guilty, but there is no recommendation for mercy, and when the judge hands out the death sentence, Adam reaches out to her, but Hetty screams and faints.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 43 The narrator tells us that Hetty did not receive the mercy of the court, despite all the testimony to her virtuous upbringing by relatives and Mr. Irwine, because of her coldness and hardness. She does not respond, confess, or seem repentant or sorry. It appears to be cold-blooded murder, but from the testimony one gathers Hetty was not completely sane and that furthermore, she was not able to leave the scene, even to save her own life, because of shock or guilt. Though we have been told more details during the court case, there is still the mystery of what happened to make Hetty do this. We have not yet heard her side of it, though the facts seem to warrant the verdict. Eliot's story was timely for her readers because though it was set in an earlier period, infanticide was a common crime in Victorian England and reached crisis proportions by the 1860s. The newspapers were full of cases, and one of the more famous remarks on such a newspaper account was made by writer Matthew Arnold . He was disturbed by the cold impersonality and indifference of the press stories. The facts were given and then the phrase that Arnold found inhumane: \"Wragg is in custody.\" Arnold felt that English society needed to come up with some response a bit more insightful to infanticide other than \"Wragg is in custody,\" as though that solved the problem. Why was Wragg in custody? Who was she? Why was she forced into doing this? What about all the other Wraggs? Eliot takes the bare facts of such a case and takes us inside the heads of the characters to show us how such a heinous crime can be committed by people who are no better or worse than the general population. Eliot chooses the psychological investigation of such an act, but a sociological analysis would show such a high rate of infanticide resulted from the severe pressures and restrictions on women for sexual misconduct, especially of the lower and middle classes, and for having a baby out of wedlock. Hetty goes through the alternatives in her mind. She had few options, unless there were some sympathetic relative. Dinah is a possibility, but Hetty could not hide her shame there or live a normal life afterwards. Hetty knows her uncle's family will not take her back because she dishonors them. Arthur is too far away. Most women had no money of their own or means to get it. Abortion was illegal, difficult, and very dangerous, often killing or maiming the woman. With an illegitimate child, a woman could not get work, a place to live, or get married. She was an outcast and would not be received by decent people. A pregnant servant was thrown into the street or sent to the poorhouse, a place little more than a jail. Prostitution was one avenue chosen by poor women with unwanted infants. A woman in poverty might kill her child to save it from suffering starvation. Infants were regularly abandoned or given to baby farms that, for a fee, would starve the unwanted babies. Upper class women had more choices; with money, they could go to the country, have the child and give it away. These conditions are hard to imagine in the world today where there are many single working mothers and little censure for having a child out of wedlock. Adam's remark that the man should be guilty too and made to pay was especially relevant for a Victorian audience, since the amended Poor Law of 1834 cast all the guilt on the woman alone for support of a bastard child. A man was not legally responsible. Many orphanages refused illegitimate children."}

THE place fitted up that day as a court of justice was a grand old hall, now destroyed by fire. The midday light that fell on the close pavement of human heads was shed through a line of high pointed windows, variegated with the mellow tints of old painted glass. Grim dusty armour hung in high relief in front of the dark oaken gallery at the farther end, and under the broad arch of the great mullioned window opposite was spread a curtain of old tapestry, covered with dim melancholy figures, like a dozing indistinct dream of the past. It was a place that through the rest of the year was haunted with the shadowy memories of old kings and queens, unhappy, discrowned, imprisoned; but to-day all those shadows had fled, and not a soul in the vast hall felt the presence of any but a living sorrow, which was quivering in warm hearts. But that sorrow seemed to have made it itself feebly felt hitherto, now when Adam Bede's tall figure was suddenly seen being ushered to the side of the prisoner's dock. In the broad sunlight of the great hall, among the sleek shaven faces of other men, the marks of suffering in his face were startling even to Mr. Irwine, who had last seen him in the dim light of his small room; and the neighbours from Hayslope who were present, and who told Hetty Sorrel's story by their firesides in their old age, never forgot to say how it moved them when Adam Bede, poor fellow, taller by the head than most of the people round him, came into court and took his place by her side. But Hetty did not see him. She was standing in the same position Bartle Massey had described, her hands crossed over each other and her eyes fixed on them. Adam had not dared to look at her in the first moments, but at last, when the attention of the court was withdrawn by the proceedings he turned his face towards her with a resolution not to shrink. Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the likeness we see--it is the likeness, which makes itself felt the more keenly because something else was and is not. There they were--the sweet face and neck, with the dark tendrils of hair, the long dark lashes, the rounded cheek and the pouting lips--pale and thin, yes, but like Hetty, and only Hetty. Others thought she looked as if some demon had cast a blighting glance upon her, withered up the woman's soul in her, and left only a hard despairing obstinacy. But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man; and to Adam, this pale, hard-looking culprit was the Hetty who had smiled at him in the garden under the apple-tree boughs--she was that Hetty's corpse, which he had trembled to look at the first time, and then was unwilling to turn away his eyes from. But presently he heard something that compelled him to listen, and made the sense of sight less absorbing. A woman was in the witness-box, a middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice. She said, "My name is Sarah Stone. I am a widow, and keep a small shop licensed to sell tobacco, snuff, and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton. The prisoner at the bar is the same young woman who came, looking ill and tired, with a basket on her arm, and asked for a lodging at my house on Saturday evening, the 27th of February. She had taken the house for a public, because there was a figure against the door. And when I said I didn't take in lodgers, the prisoner began to cry, and said she was too tired to go anywhere else, and she only wanted a bed for one night. And her prettiness, and her condition, and something respectable about her clothes and looks, and the trouble she seemed to be in made me as I couldn't find in my heart to send her away at once. I asked her to sit down, and gave her some tea, and asked her where she was going, and where her friends were. She said she was going home to her friends: they were farming folks a good way off, and she'd had a long journey that had cost her more money than she expected, so as she'd hardly any money left in her pocket, and was afraid of going where it would cost her much. She had been obliged to sell most of the things out of her basket, but she'd thankfully give a shilling for a bed. I saw no reason why I shouldn't take the young woman in for the night. I had only one room, but there were two beds in it, and I told her she might stay with me. I thought she'd been led wrong, and got into trouble, but if she was going to her friends, it would be a good work to keep her out of further harm." The witness then stated that in the night a child was born, and she identified the baby-clothes then shown to her as those in which she had herself dressed the child. "Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me ever since my last child was born. I took a deal of trouble both for the child and the mother. I couldn't help taking to the little thing and being anxious about it. I didn't send for a doctor, for there seemed no need. I told the mother in the day-time she must tell me the name of her friends, and where they lived, and let me write to them. She said, by and by she would write herself, but not to-day. She would have no nay, but she would get up and be dressed, in spite of everything I could say. She said she felt quite strong enough; and it was wonderful what spirit she showed. But I wasn't quite easy what I should do about her, and towards evening I made up my mind I'd go, after Meeting was over, and speak to our minister about it. I left the house about half-past eight o'clock. I didn't go out at the shop door, but at the back door, which opens into a narrow alley. I've only got the ground-floor of the house, and the kitchen and bedroom both look into the alley. I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap. She hadn't cried or seemed low at all, as she did the night before. I thought she had a strange look with her eyes, and she got a bit flushed towards evening. I was afraid of the fever, and I thought I'd call and ask an acquaintance of mine, an experienced woman, to come back with me when I went out. It was a very dark night. I didn't fasten the door behind me; there was no lock; it was a latch with a bolt inside, and when there was nobody in the house I always went out at the shop door. But I thought there was no danger in leaving it unfastened that little while. I was longer than I meant to be, for I had to wait for the woman that came back with me. It was an hour and a half before we got back, and when we went in, the candle was standing burning just as I left it, but the prisoner and the baby were both gone. She'd taken her cloak and bonnet, but she'd left the basket and the things in it....I was dreadful frightened, and angry with her for going. I didn't go to give information, because I'd no thought she meant to do any harm, and I knew she had money in her pocket to buy her food and lodging. I didn't like to set the constable after her, for she'd a right to go from me if she liked." The effect of this evidence on Adam was electrical; it gave him new force. Hetty could not be guilty of the crime--her heart must have clung to her baby--else why should she have taken it with her? She might have left it behind. The little creature had died naturally, and then she had hidden it. Babies were so liable to death--and there might be the strongest suspicions without any proof of guilt. His mind was so occupied with imaginary arguments against such suspicions, that he could not listen to the cross-examination by Hetty's counsel, who tried, without result, to elicit evidence that the prisoner had shown some movements of maternal affection towards the child. The whole time this witness was being examined, Hetty had stood as motionless as before: no word seemed to arrest her ear. But the sound of the next witness's voice touched a chord that was still sensitive, she gave a start and a frightened look towards him, but immediately turned away her head and looked down at her hands as before. This witness was a man, a rough peasant. He said: "My name is John Olding. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd's Hole, two miles out of Stoniton. A week last Monday, towards one o'clock in the afternoon, I was going towards Hetton Coppice, and about a quarter of a mile from the coppice I saw the prisoner, in a red cloak, sitting under a bit of a haystack not far off the stile. She got up when she saw me, and seemed as if she'd be walking on the other way. It was a regular road through the fields, and nothing very uncommon to see a young woman there, but I took notice of her because she looked white and scared. I should have thought she was a beggar-woman, only for her good clothes. I thought she looked a bit crazy, but it was no business of mine. I stood and looked back after her, but she went right on while she was in sight. I had to go to the other side of the coppice to look after some stakes. There's a road right through it, and bits of openings here and there, where the trees have been cut down, and some of 'em not carried away. I didn't go straight along the road, but turned off towards the middle, and took a shorter way towards the spot I wanted to get to. I hadn't got far out of the road into one of the open places before I heard a strange cry. I thought it didn't come from any animal I knew, but I wasn't for stopping to look about just then. But it went on, and seemed so strange to me in that place, I couldn't help stopping to look. I began to think I might make some money of it, if it was a new thing. But I had hard work to tell which way it came from, and for a good while I kept looking up at the boughs. And then I thought it came from the ground; and there was a lot of timber-choppings lying about, and loose pieces of turf, and a trunk or two. And I looked about among them, but could find nothing, and at last the cry stopped. So I was for giving it up, and I went on about my business. But when I came back the same way pretty nigh an hour after, I couldn't help laying down my stakes to have another look. And just as I was stooping and laying down the stakes, I saw something odd and round and whitish lying on the ground under a nut-bush by the side of me. And I stooped down on hands and knees to pick it up. And I saw it was a little baby's hand." At these words a thrill ran through the court. Hetty was visibly trembling; now, for the first time, she seemed to be listening to what a witness said. "There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among them. But there was a hole left in one place and I could see down it and see the child's head; and I made haste and did away the turf and the choppings, and took out the child. It had got comfortable clothes on, but its body was cold, and I thought it must be dead. I made haste back with it out of the wood, and took it home to my wife. She said it was dead, and I'd better take it to the parish and tell the constable. And I said, 'I'll lay my life it's that young woman's child as I met going to the coppice.' But she seemed to be gone clean out of sight. And I took the child on to Hetton parish and told the constable, and we went on to Justice Hardy. And then we went looking after the young woman till dark at night, and we went and gave information at Stoniton, as they might stop her. And the next morning, another constable came to me, to go with him to the spot where I found the child. And when we got there, there was the prisoner a-sitting against the bush where I found the child; and she cried out when she saw us, but she never offered to move. She'd got a big piece of bread on her lap." Adam had given a faint groan of despair while this witness was speaking. He had hidden his face on his arm, which rested on the boarding in front of him. It was the supreme moment of his suffering: Hetty was guilty; and he was silently calling to God for help. He heard no more of the evidence, and was unconscious when the case for the prosecution had closed--unconscious that Mr. Irwine was in the witness-box, telling of Hetty's unblemished character in her own parish and of the virtuous habits in which she had been brought up. This testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her--a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times. At last Adam lifted up his head, for there was a general movement round him. The judge had addressed the jury, and they were retiring. The decisive moment was not far off. Adam felt a shuddering horror that would not let him look at Hetty, but she had long relapsed into her blank hard indifference. All eyes were strained to look at her, but she stood like a statue of dull despair. There was a mingled rustling, whispering, and low buzzing throughout the court during this interval. The desire to listen was suspended, and every one had some feeling or opinion to express in undertones. Adam sat looking blankly before him, but he did not see the objects that were right in front of his eyes--the counsel and attorneys talking with an air of cool business, and Mr. Irwine in low earnest conversation with the judge--did not see Mr. Irwine sit down again in agitation and shake his head mournfully when somebody whispered to him. The inward action was too intense for Adam to take in outward objects until some strong sensation roused him. It was not very long, hardly more than a quarter of an hour, before the knock which told that the jury had come to their decision fell as a signal for silence on every ear. It is sublime--that sudden pause of a great multitude which tells that one soul moves in them all. Deeper and deeper the silence seemed to become, like the deepening night, while the jurymen's names were called over, and the prisoner was made to hold up her hand, and the jury were asked for their verdict. "Guilty." It was the verdict every one expected, but there was a sigh of disappointment from some hearts that it was followed by no recommendation to mercy. Still the sympathy of the court was not with the prisoner. The unnaturalness of her crime stood out the more harshly by the side of her hard immovability and obstinate silence. Even the verdict, to distant eyes, had not appeared to move her, but those who were near saw her trembling. The stillness was less intense until the judge put on his black cap, and the chaplain in his canonicals was observed behind him. Then it deepened again, before the crier had had time to command silence. If any sound were heard, it must have been the sound of beating hearts. The judge spoke, "Hester Sorrel...." The blood rushed to Hetty's face, and then fled back again as she looked up at the judge and kept her wide-open eyes fixed on him, as if fascinated by fear. Adam had not yet turned towards her, there was a deep horror, like a great gulf, between them. But at the words "and then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead," a piercing shriek rang through the hall. It was Hetty's shriek. Adam started to his feet and stretched out his arms towards her. But the arms could not reach her: she had fallen down in a fainting-fit, and was carried out of court.

Chapter 43

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter43

The Verdict Adam Bede's tall figure entering the courtroom is striking. Even Mr. Irwine is surprised by the signs of suffering and grief about him. He goes to sit by Hetty's side, but she does not see him, for she stands with her head down, looking at her hands. Adam is looking to see whether she is different, but she is not to him. She still is the pretty sweet girl he fell in love with. The first witness is Sarah Stone, a widowed shopkeeper in Stoniton. She tells how Hetty came to her door one night and out of pity, she took her in. That night, the baby was born, and she herself dressed it in clothes she had made. She took care of the baby and mother and offered to send for Hetty's friends, but Hetty refused. When the woman went out for a while, Hetty ran away with the baby. At this point, Adam is moved and thinks that Hetty couldn't have killed her baby. She must have loved it, but the next witness is the man who found the baby, John Olding, an old peasant man. He was crossing the fields and saw Hetty there. She looked frightened when he came towards her and walked on. He thought she looked crazy. In the field he kept hearing cries but thinking it some animal, he ignored it until it stopped. An hour later he went to where the cries were and found a baby's body. It was cold. He took it to his wife who said it was dead. Then they sent for the constable and began looking for Hetty. They found her the next day, sitting near the place where she had left the baby, apparently in shock, for she did not move until they took her away. Adam's agony is supreme when he realizes what Hetty has done, and he hides his face on his arm and calls to God for help. The jury quickly finds her guilty, but there is no recommendation for mercy, and when the judge hands out the death sentence, Adam reaches out to her, but Hetty screams and faints.

Commentary on Chapter 43 The narrator tells us that Hetty did not receive the mercy of the court, despite all the testimony to her virtuous upbringing by relatives and Mr. Irwine, because of her coldness and hardness. She does not respond, confess, or seem repentant or sorry. It appears to be cold-blooded murder, but from the testimony one gathers Hetty was not completely sane and that furthermore, she was not able to leave the scene, even to save her own life, because of shock or guilt. Though we have been told more details during the court case, there is still the mystery of what happened to make Hetty do this. We have not yet heard her side of it, though the facts seem to warrant the verdict. Eliot's story was timely for her readers because though it was set in an earlier period, infanticide was a common crime in Victorian England and reached crisis proportions by the 1860s. The newspapers were full of cases, and one of the more famous remarks on such a newspaper account was made by writer Matthew Arnold . He was disturbed by the cold impersonality and indifference of the press stories. The facts were given and then the phrase that Arnold found inhumane: "Wragg is in custody." Arnold felt that English society needed to come up with some response a bit more insightful to infanticide other than "Wragg is in custody," as though that solved the problem. Why was Wragg in custody? Who was she? Why was she forced into doing this? What about all the other Wraggs? Eliot takes the bare facts of such a case and takes us inside the heads of the characters to show us how such a heinous crime can be committed by people who are no better or worse than the general population. Eliot chooses the psychological investigation of such an act, but a sociological analysis would show such a high rate of infanticide resulted from the severe pressures and restrictions on women for sexual misconduct, especially of the lower and middle classes, and for having a baby out of wedlock. Hetty goes through the alternatives in her mind. She had few options, unless there were some sympathetic relative. Dinah is a possibility, but Hetty could not hide her shame there or live a normal life afterwards. Hetty knows her uncle's family will not take her back because she dishonors them. Arthur is too far away. Most women had no money of their own or means to get it. Abortion was illegal, difficult, and very dangerous, often killing or maiming the woman. With an illegitimate child, a woman could not get work, a place to live, or get married. She was an outcast and would not be received by decent people. A pregnant servant was thrown into the street or sent to the poorhouse, a place little more than a jail. Prostitution was one avenue chosen by poor women with unwanted infants. A woman in poverty might kill her child to save it from suffering starvation. Infants were regularly abandoned or given to baby farms that, for a fee, would starve the unwanted babies. Upper class women had more choices; with money, they could go to the country, have the child and give it away. These conditions are hard to imagine in the world today where there are many single working mothers and little censure for having a child out of wedlock. Adam's remark that the man should be guilty too and made to pay was especially relevant for a Victorian audience, since the amended Poor Law of 1834 cast all the guilt on the woman alone for support of a bastard child. A man was not legally responsible. Many orphanages refused illegitimate children.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/44.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_44_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 44

chapter 44

{"name": "Chapter 44", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter44", "summary": "Arthur's Return Arthur's thoughts on returning to England are all about his grandfather whom he pities and thinks of kindly, and his new position. He is happy and on top of the world thinking that now he has come into his own. He thinks on all the benevolent acts he will accomplish, starting with the Irwines and the Bedes. He has no worry about Hetty, for he had heard she was engaged to Adam. He wants to do something handsome for the couple and is glad he has left behind the mistakes of last summer. Although he is not in love with Hetty, she still causes his heart to beat faster when he thinks of her. When he returns home, the servants are all silent and downcast, but he thinks it is for his grandfather. Mr. Irwine's letter is waiting for him, and he reads it first. It says that Hetty is being tried for child murder in Stoniton. He rushes out of the house, gets his horse and gallops to Stoniton.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 44 As Arthur returns home, he seems to be stuck in the same mode as before. He thinks he just scraped by in the affair with Hetty, and he won't do it again. He vows to be better in the future. The fact that he rushes out of the house to Stoniton as soon as he hears the news confirms Mr. Irwine's better thoughts of Arthur's character. He does not slink away or try to reason himself out of culpability. He rushes to help. Like Adam, Arthur will be baptized anew by Hetty's suffering."}

When Arthur Donnithorne landed at Liverpool and read the letter from his Aunt Lydia, briefly announcing his grand-father's death, his first feeling was, "Poor Grandfather! I wish I could have got to him to be with him when he died. He might have felt or wished something at the last that I shall never know now. It was a lonely death." It is impossible to say that his grief was deeper than that. Pity and softened memory took place of the old antagonism, and in his busy thoughts about the future, as the chaise carried him rapidly along towards the home where he was now to be master, there was a continually recurring effort to remember anything by which he could show a regard for his grandfather's wishes, without counteracting his own cherished aims for the good of the tenants and the estate. But it is not in human nature--only in human pretence--for a young man like Arthur, with a fine constitution and fine spirits, thinking well of himself, believing that others think well of him, and having a very ardent intention to give them more and more reason for that good opinion--it is not possible for such a young man, just coming into a splendid estate through the death of a very old man whom he was not fond of, to feel anything very different from exultant joy. Now his real life was beginning; now he would have room and opportunity for action, and he would use them. He would show the Loamshire people what a fine country gentleman was; he would not exchange that career for any other under the sun. He felt himself riding over the hills in the breezy autumn days, looking after favourite plans of drainage and enclosure; then admired on sombre mornings as the best rider on the best horse in the hunt; spoken well of on market-days as a first-rate landlord; by and by making speeches at election dinners, and showing a wonderful knowledge of agriculture; the patron of new ploughs and drills, the severe upbraider of negligent landowners, and withal a jolly fellow that everybody must like--happy faces greeting him everywhere on his own estate, and the neighbouring families on the best terms with him. The Irwines should dine with him every week, and have their own carriage to come in, for in some very delicate way that Arthur would devise, the lay-impropriator of the Hayslope tithes would insist on paying a couple of hundreds more to the vicar; and his aunt should be as comfortable as possible, and go on living at the Chase, if she liked, in spite of her old-maidish ways--at least until he was married, and that event lay in the indistinct background, for Arthur had not yet seen the woman who would play the lady-wife to the first-rate country gentleman. These were Arthur's chief thoughts, so far as a man's thoughts through hours of travelling can be compressed into a few sentences, which are only like the list of names telling you what are the scenes in a long long panorama full of colour, of detail, and of life. The happy faces Arthur saw greeting him were not pale abstractions, but real ruddy faces, long familiar to him: Martin Poyser was there--the whole Poyser family. What--Hetty? Yes; for Arthur was at ease about Hetty--not quite at ease about the past, for a certain burning of the ears would come whenever he thought of the scenes with Adam last August, but at ease about her present lot. Mr. Irwine, who had been a regular correspondent, telling him all the news about the old places and people, had sent him word nearly three months ago that Adam Bede was not to marry Mary Burge, as he had thought, but pretty Hetty Sorrel. Martin Poyser and Adam himself had both told Mr. Irwine all about it--that Adam had been deeply in love with Hetty these two years, and that now it was agreed they were to be married in March. That stalwart rogue Adam was more susceptible than the rector had thought; it was really quite an idyllic love affair; and if it had not been too long to tell in a letter, he would have liked to describe to Arthur the blushing looks and the simple strong words with which the fine honest fellow told his secret. He knew Arthur would like to hear that Adam had this sort of happiness in prospect. Yes, indeed! Arthur felt there was not air enough in the room to satisfy his renovated life, when he had read that passage in the letter. He threw up the windows, he rushed out of doors into the December air, and greeted every one who spoke to him with an eager gaiety, as if there had been news of a fresh Nelson victory. For the first time that day since he had come to Windsor, he was in true boyish spirits. The load that had been pressing upon him was gone, the haunting fear had vanished. He thought he could conquer his bitterness towards Adam now--could offer him his hand, and ask to be his friend again, in spite of that painful memory which would still make his ears burn. He had been knocked down, and he had been forced to tell a lie: such things make a scar, do what we will. But if Adam were the same again as in the old days, Arthur wished to be the same too, and to have Adam mixed up with his business and his future, as he had always desired before the accursed meeting in August. Nay, he would do a great deal more for Adam than he should otherwise have done, when he came into the estate; Hetty's husband had a special claim on him--Hetty herself should feel that any pain she had suffered through Arthur in the past was compensated to her a hundredfold. For really she could not have felt much, since she had so soon made up her mind to marry Adam. You perceive clearly what sort of picture Adam and Hetty made in the panorama of Arthur's thoughts on his journey homeward. It was March now; they were soon to be married: perhaps they were already married. And now it was actually in his power to do a great deal for them. Sweet--sweet little Hetty! The little puss hadn't cared for him half as much as he cared for her; for he was a great fool about her still--was almost afraid of seeing her--indeed, had not cared much to look at any other woman since he parted from her. That little figure coming towards him in the Grove, those dark-fringed childish eyes, the lovely lips put up to kiss him--that picture had got no fainter with the lapse of months. And she would look just the same. It was impossible to think how he could meet her: he should certainly tremble. Strange, how long this sort of influence lasts, for he was certainly not in love with Hetty now. He had been earnestly desiring, for months, that she should marry Adam, and there was nothing that contributed more to his happiness in these moments than the thought of their marriage. It was the exaggerating effect of imagination that made his heart still beat a little more quickly at the thought of her. When he saw the little thing again as she really was, as Adam's wife, at work quite prosaically in her new home, he should perhaps wonder at the possibility of his past feelings. Thank heaven it had turned out so well! He should have plenty of affairs and interests to fill his life now, and not be in danger of playing the fool again. Pleasant the crack of the post-boy's whip! Pleasant the sense of being hurried along in swift ease through English scenes, so like those round his own home, only not quite so charming. Here was a market-town--very much like Treddleston--where the arms of the neighbouring lord of the manor were borne on the sign of the principal inn; then mere fields and hedges, their vicinity to a market-town carrying an agreeable suggestion of high rent, till the land began to assume a trimmer look, the woods were more frequent, and at length a white or red mansion looked down from a moderate eminence, or allowed him to be aware of its parapet and chimneys among the dense-looking masses of oaks and elms--masses reddened now with early buds. And close at hand came the village: the small church, with its red-tiled roof, looking humble even among the faded half-timbered houses; the old green gravestones with nettles round them; nothing fresh and bright but the children, opening round eyes at the swift post-chaise; nothing noisy and busy but the gaping curs of mysterious pedigree. What a much prettier village Hayslope was! And it should not be neglected like this place: vigorous repairs should go on everywhere among farm-buildings and cottages, and travellers in post-chaises, coming along the Rosseter road, should do nothing but admire as they went. And Adam Bede should superintend all the repairs, for he had a share in Burge's business now, and, if he liked, Arthur would put some money into the concern and buy the old man out in another year or two. That was an ugly fault in Arthur's life, that affair last summer, but the future should make amends. Many men would have retained a feeling of vindictiveness towards Adam, but he would not--he would resolutely overcome all littleness of that kind, for he had certainly been very much in the wrong; and though Adam had been harsh and violent, and had thrust on him a painful dilemma, the poor fellow was in love, and had real provocation. No, Arthur had not an evil feeling in his mind towards any human being: he was happy, and would make every one else happy that came within his reach. And here was dear old Hayslope at last, sleeping, on the hill, like a quiet old place as it was, in the late afternoon sunlight, and opposite to it the great shoulders of the Binton Hills, below them the purplish blackness of the hanging woods, and at last the pale front of the Abbey, looking out from among the oaks of the Chase, as if anxious for the heir's return. "Poor Grandfather! And he lies dead there. He was a young fellow once, coming into the estate and making his plans. So the world goes round! Aunt Lydia must feel very desolate, poor thing; but she shall be indulged as much as she indulges her fat Fido." The wheels of Arthur's chaise had been anxiously listened for at the Chase, for to-day was Friday, and the funeral had already been deferred two days. Before it drew up on the gravel of the courtyard, all the servants in the house were assembled to receive him with a grave, decent welcome, befitting a house of death. A month ago, perhaps, it would have been difficult for them to have maintained a suitable sadness in their faces, when Mr. Arthur was come to take possession; but the hearts of the head-servants were heavy that day for another cause than the death of the old squire, and more than one of them was longing to be twenty miles away, as Mr. Craig was, knowing what was to become of Hetty Sorrel--pretty Hetty Sorrel--whom they used to see every week. They had the partisanship of household servants who like their places, and were not inclined to go the full length of the severe indignation felt against him by the farming tenants, but rather to make excuses for him; nevertheless, the upper servants, who had been on terms of neighbourly intercourse with the Poysers for many years, could not help feeling that the longed-for event of the young squire's coming into the estate had been robbed of all its pleasantness. To Arthur it was nothing surprising that the servants looked grave and sad: he himself was very much touched on seeing them all again, and feeling that he was in a new relation to them. It was that sort of pathetic emotion which has more pleasure than pain in it--which is perhaps one of the most delicious of all states to a good-natured man, conscious of the power to satisfy his good nature. His heart swelled agreeably as he said, "Well, Mills, how is my aunt?" But now Mr. Bygate, the lawyer, who had been in the house ever since the death, came forward to give deferential greetings and answer all questions, and Arthur walked with him towards the library, where his Aunt Lydia was expecting him. Aunt Lydia was the only person in the house who knew nothing about Hetty. Her sorrow as a maiden daughter was unmixed with any other thoughts than those of anxiety about funeral arrangements and her own future lot; and, after the manner of women, she mourned for the father who had made her life important, all the more because she had a secret sense that there was little mourning for him in other hearts. But Arthur kissed her tearful face more tenderly than he had ever done in his life before. "Dear Aunt," he said affectionately, as he held her hand, "YOUR loss is the greatest of all, but you must tell me how to try and make it up to you all the rest of your life." "It was so sudden and so dreadful, Arthur," poor Miss Lydia began, pouring out her little plaints, and Arthur sat down to listen with impatient patience. When a pause came, he said: "Now, Aunt, I'll leave you for a quarter of an hour just to go to my own room, and then I shall come and give full attention to everything." "My room is all ready for me, I suppose, Mills?" he said to the butler, who seemed to be lingering uneasily about the entrance-hall. "Yes, sir, and there are letters for you; they are all laid on the writing-table in your dressing-room." On entering the small anteroom which was called a dressing-room, but which Arthur really used only to lounge and write in, he just cast his eyes on the writing-table, and saw that there were several letters and packets lying there; but he was in the uncomfortable dusty condition of a man who has had a long hurried journey, and he must really refresh himself by attending to his toilette a little, before he read his letters. Pym was there, making everything ready for him, and soon, with a delightful freshness about him, as if he were prepared to begin a new day, he went back into his dressing-room to open his letters. The level rays of the low afternoon sun entered directly at the window, and as Arthur seated himself in his velvet chair with their pleasant warmth upon him, he was conscious of that quiet well-being which perhaps you and I have felt on a sunny afternoon when, in our brightest youth and health, life has opened a new vista for us, and long to-morrows of activity have stretched before us like a lovely plain which there was no need for hurrying to look at, because it was all our own. The top letter was placed with its address upwards: it was in Mr. Irwine's handwriting, Arthur saw at once; and below the address was written, "To be delivered as soon as he arrives." Nothing could have been less surprising to him than a letter from Mr. Irwine at that moment: of course, there was something he wished Arthur to know earlier than it was possible for them to see each other. At such a time as that it was quite natural that Irwine should have something pressing to say. Arthur broke the seal with an agreeable anticipation of soon seeing the writer. "I send this letter to meet you on your arrival, Arthur, because I may then be at Stoniton, whither I am called by the most painful duty it has ever been given me to perform, and it is right that you should know what I have to tell you without delay. "I will not attempt to add by one word of reproach to the retribution that is now falling on you: any other words that I could write at this moment must be weak and unmeaning by the side of those in which I must tell you the simple fact. "Hetty Sorrel is in prison, and will be tried on Friday for the crime of child-murder."... Arthur read no more. He started up from his chair and stood for a single minute with a sense of violent convulsion in his whole frame, as if the life were going out of him with horrible throbs; but the next minute he had rushed out of the room, still clutching the letter--he was hurrying along the corridor, and down the stairs into the hall. Mills was still there, but Arthur did not see him, as he passed like a hunted man across the hall and out along the gravel. The butler hurried out after him as fast as his elderly limbs could run: he guessed, he knew, where the young squire was going. When Mills got to the stables, a horse was being saddled, and Arthur was forcing himself to read the remaining words of the letter. He thrust it into his pocket as the horse was led up to him, and at that moment caught sight of Mills' anxious face in front of him. "Tell them I'm gone--gone to Stoniton," he said in a muffled tone of agitation--sprang into the saddle, and set off at a gallop.

Chapter 44

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter44

Arthur's Return Arthur's thoughts on returning to England are all about his grandfather whom he pities and thinks of kindly, and his new position. He is happy and on top of the world thinking that now he has come into his own. He thinks on all the benevolent acts he will accomplish, starting with the Irwines and the Bedes. He has no worry about Hetty, for he had heard she was engaged to Adam. He wants to do something handsome for the couple and is glad he has left behind the mistakes of last summer. Although he is not in love with Hetty, she still causes his heart to beat faster when he thinks of her. When he returns home, the servants are all silent and downcast, but he thinks it is for his grandfather. Mr. Irwine's letter is waiting for him, and he reads it first. It says that Hetty is being tried for child murder in Stoniton. He rushes out of the house, gets his horse and gallops to Stoniton.

Commentary on Chapter 44 As Arthur returns home, he seems to be stuck in the same mode as before. He thinks he just scraped by in the affair with Hetty, and he won't do it again. He vows to be better in the future. The fact that he rushes out of the house to Stoniton as soon as he hears the news confirms Mr. Irwine's better thoughts of Arthur's character. He does not slink away or try to reason himself out of culpability. He rushes to help. Like Adam, Arthur will be baptized anew by Hetty's suffering.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/45.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_45_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 45

chapter 45

{"name": "Chapter 45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter45", "summary": "In the Prison Dinah Morris speaks to an older gentleman outside the prison. He is Colonel Townley, the gentleman on horseback who heard Dinah speak on Hayslope Green. He is a magistrate and gets Dinah in to Hetty's cell. She wants to stay with Hetty till the end. Colonel Townley thinks she is brave to stay in a jail cell all night without any light, but Dinah is calm. Townley tells her where Adam is staying. Hetty at first is sullen and withdrawn but finally responds to Dinah's love and is enfolded in her arms. She clings to Dinah, who gently leads her to a full confession of the crime. She tells Hetty that she cannot be forgiven by God until she lets go of her sin, so Hetty tells how she half buried the baby in the wood, hoping someone would find it. She didn't kill it directly. She could only think that if the baby was gone, she could go home. She didn't feel anything for the baby, though its crying went all through her, and that is why she couldn't leave it. She could always hear it crying even after she went away. Then she went back, and it was gone. She sat and waited till they took her. She asks Dinah if now she has confessed, God will make the crying go away. Dinah tells her to kneel down and pray.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 45 Dinah's sure and skillful handling of Hetty, her compassion and lack of fear, gain the reader's admiration. She does not talk down to Hetty, but she tries to put religious precepts into thoughts Hetty can understand. She makes God a friend who will be there at the moment Hetty has to meet death. Dinah makes Hetty understand she is suffering because of her hard heart that shuts out God and human sympathy. She emphasizes God's love and forgiveness, rather than sin and punishment. Once Hetty tells the truth, there is a release and a softening. She accepts Dinah's love, and through that love, she is able to conceive of a divine love. In some ways it is hard to believe that Eliot had given up her Christian faith, because she can so convincingly portray a saint like Dinah. Eliot had immense love and compassion for others, but she herself had ceased to cloak these feelings in religion. What she loved was the humanity of religion, its higher values. She gives her best characters a spiritual and universal outlook. In earlier chapters Hetty and Dinah were contrasted, but here, sympathy has melted all differences. Dinah does not pretend to be superior to Hetty; she just stays with her and gives her comfort."}

NEAR sunset that evening an elderly gentleman was standing with his back against the smaller entrance-door of Stoniton jail, saying a few last words to the departing chaplain. The chaplain walked away, but the elderly gentleman stood still, looking down on the pavement and stroking his chin with a ruminating air, when he was roused by a sweet clear woman's voice, saying, "Can I get into the prison, if you please?" He turned his head and looked fixedly at the speaker for a few moments without answering. "I have seen you before," he said at last. "Do you remember preaching on the village green at Hayslope in Loamshire?" "Yes, sir, surely. Are you the gentleman that stayed to listen on horseback?" "Yes. Why do you want to go into the prison?" "I want to go to Hetty Sorrel, the young woman who has been condemned to death--and to stay with her, if I may be permitted. Have you power in the prison, sir?" "Yes; I am a magistrate, and can get admittance for you. But did you know this criminal, Hetty Sorrel?" "Yes, we are kin. My own aunt married her uncle, Martin Poyser. But I was away at Leeds, and didn't know of this great trouble in time to get here before to-day. I entreat you, sir, for the love of our heavenly Father, to let me go to her and stay with her." "How did you know she was condemned to death, if you are only just come from Leeds?" "I have seen my uncle since the trial, sir. He is gone back to his home now, and the poor sinner is forsaken of all. I beseech you to get leave for me to be with her." "What! Have you courage to stay all night in the prison? She is very sullen, and will scarcely make answer when she is spoken to." "Oh, sir, it may please God to open her heart still. Don't let us delay." "Come, then," said the elderly gentleman, ringing and gaining admission, "I know you have a key to unlock hearts." Dinah mechanically took off her bonnet and shawl as soon as they were within the prison court, from the habit she had of throwing them off when she preached or prayed, or visited the sick; and when they entered the jailer's room, she laid them down on a chair unthinkingly. There was no agitation visible in her, but a deep concentrated calmness, as if, even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support. After speaking to the jailer, the magistrate turned to her and said, "The turnkey will take you to the prisoner's cell and leave you there for the night, if you desire it, but you can't have a light during the night--it is contrary to rules. My name is Colonel Townley: if I can help you in anything, ask the jailer for my address and come to me. I take some interest in this Hetty Sorrel, for the sake of that fine fellow, Adam Bede. I happened to see him at Hayslope the same evening I heard you preach, and recognized him in court to-day, ill as he looked." "Ah, sir, can you tell me anything about him? Can you tell me where he lodges? For my poor uncle was too much weighed down with trouble to remember." "Close by here. I inquired all about him of Mr. Irwine. He lodges over a tinman's shop, in the street on the right hand as you entered the prison. There is an old school-master with him. Now, good-bye: I wish you success." "Farewell, sir. I am grateful to you." As Dinah crossed the prison court with the turnkey, the solemn evening light seemed to make the walls higher than they were by day, and the sweet pale face in the cap was more than ever like a white flower on this background of gloom. The turnkey looked askance at her all the while, but never spoke. He somehow felt that the sound of his own rude voice would be grating just then. He struck a light as they entered the dark corridor leading to the condemned cell, and then said in his most civil tone, "It'll be pretty nigh dark in the cell a'ready, but I can stop with my light a bit, if you like." "Nay, friend, thank you," said Dinah. "I wish to go in alone." "As you like," said the jailer, turning the harsh key in the lock and opening the door wide enough to admit Dinah. A jet of light from his lantern fell on the opposite corner of the cell, where Hetty was sitting on her straw pallet with her face buried in her knees. It seemed as if she were asleep, and yet the grating of the lock would have been likely to waken her. The door closed again, and the only light in the cell was that of the evening sky, through the small high grating--enough to discern human faces by. Dinah stood still for a minute, hesitating to speak because Hetty might be asleep, and looking at the motionless heap with a yearning heart. Then she said, softly, "Hetty!" There was a slight movement perceptible in Hetty's frame--a start such as might have been produced by a feeble electrical shock--but she did not look up. Dinah spoke again, in a tone made stronger by irrepressible emotion, "Hetty...it's Dinah." Again there was a slight startled movement through Hetty's frame, and without uncovering her face, she raised her head a little, as if listening. "Hetty...Dinah is come to you." After a moment's pause, Hetty lifted her head slowly and timidly from her knees and raised her eyes. The two pale faces were looking at each other: one with a wild hard despair in it, the other full of sad yearning love. Dinah unconsciously opened her arms and stretched them out. "Don't you know me, Hetty? Don't you remember Dinah? Did you think I wouldn't come to you in trouble?" Hetty kept her eyes fixed on Dinah's face--at first like an animal that gazes, and gazes, and keeps aloof. "I'm come to be with you, Hetty--not to leave you--to stay with you--to be your sister to the last." Slowly, while Dinah was speaking, Hetty rose, took a step forward, and was clasped in Dinah's arms. They stood so a long while, for neither of them felt the impulse to move apart again. Hetty, without any distinct thought of it, hung on this something that was come to clasp her now, while she was sinking helpless in a dark gulf; and Dinah felt a deep joy in the first sign that her love was welcomed by the wretched lost one. The light got fainter as they stood, and when at last they sat down on the straw pallet together, their faces had become indistinct. Not a word was spoken. Dinah waited, hoping for a spontaneous word from Hetty, but she sat in the same dull despair, only clutching the hand that held hers and leaning her cheek against Dinah's. It was the human contact she clung to, but she was not the less sinking into the dark gulf. Dinah began to doubt whether Hetty was conscious who it was that sat beside her. She thought suffering and fear might have driven the poor sinner out of her mind. But it was borne in upon her, as she afterwards said, that she must not hurry God's work: we are overhasty to speak--as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours. She did not know how long they sat in that way, but it got darker and darker, till there was only a pale patch of light on the opposite wall: all the rest was darkness. But she felt the Divine presence more and more--nay, as if she herself were a part of it, and it was the Divine pity that was beating in her heart and was willing the rescue of this helpless one. At last she was prompted to speak and find out how far Hetty was conscious of the present. "Hetty," she said gently, "do you know who it is that sits by your side?" "Yes," Hetty answered slowly, "it's Dinah." "And do you remember the time when we were at the Hall Farm together, and that night when I told you to be sure and think of me as a friend in trouble?" "Yes," said Hetty. Then, after a pause, she added, "But you can do nothing for me. You can't make 'em do anything. They'll hang me o' Monday--it's Friday now." As Hetty said the last words, she clung closer to Dinah, shuddering. "No, Hetty, I can't save you from that death. But isn't the suffering less hard when you have somebody with you, that feels for you--that you can speak to, and say what's in your heart?...Yes, Hetty: you lean on me: you are glad to have me with you." "You won't leave me, Dinah? You'll keep close to me?" "No, Hetty, I won't leave you. I'll stay with you to the last....But, Hetty, there is some one else in this cell besides me, some one close to you." Hetty said, in a frightened whisper, "Who?" "Some one who has been with you through all your hours of sin and trouble--who has known every thought you have had--has seen where you went, where you lay down and rose up again, and all the deeds you have tried to hide in darkness. And on Monday, when I can't follow you--when my arms can't reach you--when death has parted us--He who is with us now, and knows all, will be with you then. It makes no difference--whether we live or die, we are in the presence of God." "Oh, Dinah, won't nobody do anything for me? Will they hang me for certain?...I wouldn't mind if they'd let me live." "My poor Hetty, death is very dreadful to you. I know it's dreadful. But if you had a friend to take care of you after death--in that other world--some one whose love is greater than mine--who can do everything?...If God our Father was your friend, and was willing to save you from sin and suffering, so as you should neither know wicked feelings nor pain again? If you could believe he loved you and would help you, as you believe I love you and will help you, it wouldn't be so hard to die on Monday, would it?" "But I can't know anything about it," Hetty said, with sullen sadness. "Because, Hetty, you are shutting up your soul against him, by trying to hide the truth. God's love and mercy can overcome all things--our ignorance, and weakness, and all the burden of our past wickedness--all things but our wilful sin, sin that we cling to, and will not give up. You believe in my love and pity for you, Hetty, but if you had not let me come near you, if you wouldn't have looked at me or spoken to me, you'd have shut me out from helping you. I couldn't have made you feel my love; I couldn't have told you what I felt for you. Don't shut God's love out in that way, by clinging to sin....He can't bless you while you have one falsehood in your soul; his pardoning mercy can't reach you until you open your heart to him, and say, 'I have done this great wickedness; O God, save me, make me pure from sin.' While you cling to one sin and will not part with it, it must drag you down to misery after death, as it has dragged you to misery here in this world, my poor, poor Hetty. It is sin that brings dread, and darkness, and despair: there is light and blessedness for us as soon as we cast it off. God enters our souls then, and teaches us, and brings us strength and peace. Cast it off now, Hetty--now: confess the wickedness you have done--the sin you have been guilty of against your Heavenly Father. Let us kneel down together, for we are in the presence of God." Hetty obeyed Dinah's movement, and sank on her knees. They still held each other's hands, and there was long silence. Then Dinah said, "Hetty, we are before God. He is waiting for you to tell the truth." Still there was silence. At last Hetty spoke, in a tone of beseeching-- "Dinah...help me...I can't feel anything like you...my heart is hard." Dinah held the clinging hand, and all her soul went forth in her voice: "Jesus, thou present Saviour! Thou hast known the depths of all sorrow: thou hast entered that black darkness where God is not, and hast uttered the cry of the forsaken. Come Lord, and gather of the fruits of thy travail and thy pleading. Stretch forth thy hand, thou who art mighty to save to the uttermost, and rescue this lost one. She is clothed round with thick darkness. The fetters of her sin are upon her, and she cannot stir to come to thee. She can only feel her heart is hard, and she is helpless. She cries to me, thy weak creature....Saviour! It is a blind cry to thee. Hear it! Pierce the darkness! Look upon her with thy face of love and sorrow that thou didst turn on him who denied thee, and melt her hard heart. "See, Lord, I bring her, as they of old brought the sick and helpless, and thou didst heal them. I bear her on my arms and carry her before thee. Fear and trembling have taken hold on her, but she trembles only at the pain and death of the body. Breathe upon her thy life-giving Spirit, and put a new fear within her--the fear of her sin. Make her dread to keep the accursed thing within her soul. Make her feel the presence of the living God, who beholds all the past, to whom the darkness is as noonday; who is waiting now, at the eleventh hour, for her to turn to him, and confess her sin, and cry for mercy--now, before the night of death comes, and the moment of pardon is for ever fled, like yesterday that returneth not. "Saviour! It is yet time--time to snatch this poor soul from everlasting darkness. I believe--I believe in thy infinite love. What is my love or my pleading? It is quenched in thine. I can only clasp her in my weak arms and urge her with my weak pity. Thou--thou wilt breathe on the dead soul, and it shall arise from the unanswering sleep of death. "Yea, Lord, I see thee, coming through the darkness coming, like the morning, with healing on thy wings. The marks of thy agony are upon thee--I see, I see thou art able and willing to save--thou wilt not let her perish for ever. Come, mighty Saviour! Let the dead hear thy voice. Let the eyes of the blind be opened. Let her see that God encompasses her. Let her tremble at nothing but at the sin that cuts her off from him. Melt the hard heart. Unseal the closed lips: make her cry with her whole soul, 'Father, I have sinned.'..." "Dinah," Hetty sobbed out, throwing her arms round Dinah's neck, "I will speak...I will tell...I won't hide it any more." But the tears and sobs were too violent. Dinah raised her gently from her knees and seated her on the pallet again, sitting down by her side. It was a long time before the convulsed throat was quiet, and even then they sat some time in stillness and darkness, holding each other's hands. At last Hetty whispered, "I did do it, Dinah...I buried it in the wood...the little baby...and it cried...I heard it cry...ever such a way off...all night...and I went back because it cried." She paused, and then spoke hurriedly in a louder, pleading tone. "But I thought perhaps it wouldn't die--there might somebody find it. I didn't kill it--I didn't kill it myself. I put it down there and covered it up, and when I came back it was gone....It was because I was so very miserable, Dinah...I didn't know where to go...and I tried to kill myself before, and I couldn't. Oh, I tried so to drown myself in the pool, and I couldn't. I went to Windsor--I ran away--did you know? I went to find him, as he might take care of me; and he was gone; and then I didn't know what to do. I daredn't go back home again--I couldn't bear it. I couldn't have bore to look at anybody, for they'd have scorned me. I thought o' you sometimes, and thought I'd come to you, for I didn't think you'd be cross with me, and cry shame on me. I thought I could tell you. But then the other folks 'ud come to know it at last, and I couldn't bear that. It was partly thinking o' you made me come toward Stoniton; and, besides, I was so frightened at going wandering about till I was a beggar-woman, and had nothing; and sometimes it seemed as if I must go back to the farm sooner than that. Oh, it was so dreadful, Dinah...I was so miserable...I wished I'd never been born into this world. I should never like to go into the green fields again--I hated 'em so in my misery." Hetty paused again, as if the sense of the past were too strong upon her for words. "And then I got to Stoniton, and I began to feel frightened that night, because I was so near home. And then the little baby was born, when I didn't expect it; and the thought came into my mind that I might get rid of it and go home again. The thought came all of a sudden, as I was lying in the bed, and it got stronger and stronger...I longed so to go back again...I couldn't bear being so lonely and coming to beg for want. And it gave me strength and resolution to get up and dress myself. I felt I must do it...I didn't know how...I thought I'd find a pool, if I could, like that other, in the corner of the field, in the dark. And when the woman went out, I felt as if I was strong enough to do anything...I thought I should get rid of all my misery, and go back home, and never let 'em know why I ran away. I put on my bonnet and shawl, and went out into the dark street, with the baby under my cloak; and I walked fast till I got into a street a good way off, and there was a public, and I got some warm stuff to drink and some bread. And I walked on and on, and I hardly felt the ground I trod on; and it got lighter, for there came the moon--oh, Dinah, it frightened me when it first looked at me out o' the clouds--it never looked so before; and I turned out of the road into the fields, for I was afraid o' meeting anybody with the moon shining on me. And I came to a haystack, where I thought I could lie down and keep myself warm all night. There was a place cut into it, where I could make me a bed, and I lay comfortable, and the baby was warm against me; and I must have gone to sleep for a good while, for when I woke it was morning, but not very light, and the baby was crying. And I saw a wood a little way off...I thought there'd perhaps be a ditch or a pond there...and it was so early I thought I could hide the child there, and get a long way off before folks was up. And then I thought I'd go home--I'd get rides in carts and go home and tell 'em I'd been to try and see for a place, and couldn't get one. I longed so for it, Dinah, I longed so to be safe at home. I don't know how I felt about the baby. I seemed to hate it--it was like a heavy weight hanging round my neck; and yet its crying went through me, and I daredn't look at its little hands and face. But I went on to the wood, and I walked about, but there was no water...." Hetty shuddered. She was silent for some moments, and when she began again, it was in a whisper. "I came to a place where there was lots of chips and turf, and I sat down on the trunk of a tree to think what I should do. And all of a sudden I saw a hole under the nut-tree, like a little grave. And it darted into me like lightning--I'd lay the baby there and cover it with the grass and the chips. I couldn't kill it any other way. And I'd done it in a minute; and, oh, it cried so, Dinah--I couldn't cover it quite up--I thought perhaps somebody 'ud come and take care of it, and then it wouldn't die. And I made haste out of the wood, but I could hear it crying all the while; and when I got out into the fields, it was as if I was held fast--I couldn't go away, for all I wanted so to go. And I sat against the haystack to watch if anybody 'ud come. I was very hungry, and I'd only a bit of bread left, but I couldn't go away. And after ever such a while--hours and hours--the man came--him in a smock-frock, and he looked at me so, I was frightened, and I made haste and went on. I thought he was going to the wood and would perhaps find the baby. And I went right on, till I came to a village, a long way off from the wood, and I was very sick, and faint, and hungry. I got something to eat there, and bought a loaf. But I was frightened to stay. I heard the baby crying, and thought the other folks heard it too--and I went on. But I was so tired, and it was getting towards dark. And at last, by the roadside there was a barn--ever such a way off any house--like the barn in Abbot's Close, and I thought I could go in there and hide myself among the hay and straw, and nobody 'ud be likely to come. I went in, and it was half full o' trusses of straw, and there was some hay too. And I made myself a bed, ever so far behind, where nobody could find me; and I was so tired and weak, I went to sleep....But oh, the baby's crying kept waking me, and I thought that man as looked at me so was come and laying hold of me. But I must have slept a long while at last, though I didn't know, for when I got up and went out of the barn, I didn't know whether it was night or morning. But it was morning, for it kept getting lighter, and I turned back the way I'd come. I couldn't help it, Dinah; it was the baby's crying made me go--and yet I was frightened to death. I thought that man in the smock-frock 'ud see me and know I put the baby there. But I went on, for all that. I'd left off thinking about going home--it had gone out o' my mind. I saw nothing but that place in the wood where I'd buried the baby...I see it now. Oh Dinah! shall I allays see it?" Hetty clung round Dinah and shuddered again. The silence seemed long before she went on. "I met nobody, for it was very early, and I got into the wood....I knew the way to the place...the place against the nut-tree; and I could hear it crying at every step....I thought it was alive....I don't know whether I was frightened or glad...I don't know what I felt. I only know I was in the wood and heard the cry. I don't know what I felt till I saw the baby was gone. And when I'd put it there, I thought I should like somebody to find it and save it from dying; but when I saw it was gone, I was struck like a stone, with fear. I never thought o' stirring, I felt so weak. I knew I couldn't run away, and everybody as saw me 'ud know about the baby. My heart went like a stone. I couldn't wish or try for anything; it seemed like as if I should stay there for ever, and nothing 'ud ever change. But they came and took me away." Hetty was silent, but she shuddered again, as if there was still something behind; and Dinah waited, for her heart was so full that tears must come before words. At last Hetty burst out, with a sob, "Dinah, do you think God will take away that crying and the place in the wood, now I've told everything?" "Let us pray, poor sinner. Let us fall on our knees again, and pray to the God of all mercy."

Chapter 45

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter45

In the Prison Dinah Morris speaks to an older gentleman outside the prison. He is Colonel Townley, the gentleman on horseback who heard Dinah speak on Hayslope Green. He is a magistrate and gets Dinah in to Hetty's cell. She wants to stay with Hetty till the end. Colonel Townley thinks she is brave to stay in a jail cell all night without any light, but Dinah is calm. Townley tells her where Adam is staying. Hetty at first is sullen and withdrawn but finally responds to Dinah's love and is enfolded in her arms. She clings to Dinah, who gently leads her to a full confession of the crime. She tells Hetty that she cannot be forgiven by God until she lets go of her sin, so Hetty tells how she half buried the baby in the wood, hoping someone would find it. She didn't kill it directly. She could only think that if the baby was gone, she could go home. She didn't feel anything for the baby, though its crying went all through her, and that is why she couldn't leave it. She could always hear it crying even after she went away. Then she went back, and it was gone. She sat and waited till they took her. She asks Dinah if now she has confessed, God will make the crying go away. Dinah tells her to kneel down and pray.

Commentary on Chapter 45 Dinah's sure and skillful handling of Hetty, her compassion and lack of fear, gain the reader's admiration. She does not talk down to Hetty, but she tries to put religious precepts into thoughts Hetty can understand. She makes God a friend who will be there at the moment Hetty has to meet death. Dinah makes Hetty understand she is suffering because of her hard heart that shuts out God and human sympathy. She emphasizes God's love and forgiveness, rather than sin and punishment. Once Hetty tells the truth, there is a release and a softening. She accepts Dinah's love, and through that love, she is able to conceive of a divine love. In some ways it is hard to believe that Eliot had given up her Christian faith, because she can so convincingly portray a saint like Dinah. Eliot had immense love and compassion for others, but she herself had ceased to cloak these feelings in religion. What she loved was the humanity of religion, its higher values. She gives her best characters a spiritual and universal outlook. In earlier chapters Hetty and Dinah were contrasted, but here, sympathy has melted all differences. Dinah does not pretend to be superior to Hetty; she just stays with her and gives her comfort.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/46.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_46_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 46

chapter 46

{"name": "Chapter 46", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter46", "summary": "The Hours of Suspense Bartle Massey announces a visitor to Adam in his Stoniton room where he awaits Hetty's execution. Dinah Morris comes to tell him that Hetty has repented and wants to see Adam, to ask his forgiveness before she dies. Adam, very haggard, says he cannot believe she has to die like that; he believes a pardon will come. He will wait till the last minute before seeing her. He sends his forgiveness through Dinah and says he will come. Bartle, though disliking women, pronounces Dinah to be one woman he approves of. Adam cannot sleep the night before the execution. He bursts out in sorrow, thinking of what Hetty could have been if not for Arthur. Bartle reminds him that Hetty could not have gotten so hard in just a few months. It was in her nature. He says that perhaps some good will come of it all. Adam does not like this philosophy that good can come of evil; her life is ruined, and she is being hanged on the day they would have been married. In the morning, he goes to the prison to talk to Hetty. He cannot bear to see Hetty's eyes; they are so sad, and they are the eyes of the woman he loves. Dinah holds Hetty up as she asks forgiveness. Adam says he forgave her long ago. He feels a release and begins crying. Hetty is shocked by the signs of Adam's suffering and moves towards him, asking if he will kiss her good by. Adam gives her a kiss and will never see her again. Hetty asks Adam to tell Arthur she forgives him, so that God will forgive her.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 46 This is a very emotional chapter, handled with a touching beauty that is one of Eliot's finest storytelling gifts. She is able to understand very subtle and refined human feeling and portray it convincingly. Even Hetty melts a little and is able to contemplate the suffering of another. She is sympathetic in her last hour, able to admit error and to reach out. The reader also believes in the nobility of Adam's love. In the beginning, he seemed to love his idea of Hetty, her beauty and youth. Now, his love is mature and real. He loves Hetty despite what she has done. He is able to forgive and give comfort."}

ON Sunday morning, when the church bells in Stoniton were ringing for morning service, Bartle Massey re-entered Adam's room, after a short absence, and said, "Adam, here's a visitor wants to see you." Adam was seated with his back towards the door, but he started up and turned round instantly, with a flushed face and an eager look. His face was even thinner and more worn than we have seen it before, but he was washed and shaven this Sunday morning. "Is it any news?" he said. "Keep yourself quiet, my lad," said Bartle; "keep quiet. It's not what you're thinking of. It's the young Methodist woman come from the prison. She's at the bottom o' the stairs, and wants to know if you think well to see her, for she has something to say to you about that poor castaway; but she wouldn't come in without your leave, she said. She thought you'd perhaps like to go out and speak to her. These preaching women are not so back'ard commonly," Bartle muttered to himself. "Ask her to come in," said Adam. He was standing with his face towards the door, and as Dinah entered, lifting up her mild grey eyes towards him, she saw at once the great change that had come since the day when she had looked up at the tall man in the cottage. There was a trembling in her clear voice as she put her hand into his and said, "Be comforted, Adam Bede, the Lord has not forsaken her." "Bless you for coming to her," Adam said. "Mr. Massey brought me word yesterday as you was come." They could neither of them say any more just yet, but stood before each other in silence; and Bartle Massey, too, who had put on his spectacles, seemed transfixed, examining Dinah's face. But he recovered himself first, and said, "Sit down, young woman, sit down," placing the chair for her and retiring to his old seat on the bed. "Thank you, friend; I won't sit down," said Dinah, "for I must hasten back. She entreated me not to stay long away. What I came for, Adam Bede, was to pray you to go and see the poor sinner and bid her farewell. She desires to ask your forgiveness, and it is meet you should see her to-day, rather than in the early morning, when the time will be short." Adam stood trembling, and at last sank down on his chair again. "It won't be," he said, "it'll be put off--there'll perhaps come a pardon. Mr. Irwine said there was hope. He said, I needn't quite give it up." "That's a blessed thought to me," said Dinah, her eyes filling with tears. "It's a fearful thing hurrying her soul away so fast." "But let what will be," she added presently. "You will surely come, and let her speak the words that are in her heart. Although her poor soul is very dark and discerns little beyond the things of the flesh, she is no longer hard. She is contrite, she has confessed all to me. The pride of her heart has given way, and she leans on me for help and desires to be taught. This fills me with trust, for I cannot but think that the brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner's knowledge. She is going to write a letter to the friends at the Hall Farm for me to give them when she is gone, and when I told her you were here, she said, 'I should like to say good-bye to Adam and ask him to forgive me.' You will come, Adam? Perhaps you will even now come back with me." "I can't," Adam said. "I can't say good-bye while there's any hope. I'm listening, and listening--I can't think o' nothing but that. It can't be as she'll die that shameful death--I can't bring my mind to it." He got up from his chair again and looked away out of the window, while Dinah stood with compassionate patience. In a minute or two he turned round and said, "I will come, Dinah...to-morrow morning...if it must be. I may have more strength to bear it, if I know it must be. Tell her, I forgive her; tell her I will come--at the very last." "I will not urge you against the voice of your own heart," said Dinah. "I must hasten back to her, for it is wonderful how she clings now, and was not willing to let me out of her sight. She used never to make any return to my affection before, but now tribulation has opened her heart. Farewell, Adam. Our heavenly Father comfort you and strengthen you to bear all things." Dinah put out her hand, and Adam pressed it in silence. Bartle Massey was getting up to lift the stiff latch of the door for her, but before he could reach it, she had said gently, "Farewell, friend," and was gone, with her light step down the stairs. "Well," said Bartle, taking off his spectacles and putting them into his pocket, "if there must be women to make trouble in the world, it's but fair there should be women to be comforters under it; and she's one--she's one. It's a pity she's a Methodist; but there's no getting a woman without some foolishness or other." Adam never went to bed that night. The excitement of suspense, heightening with every hour that brought him nearer the fatal moment, was too great, and in spite of his entreaties, in spite of his promises that he would be perfectly quiet, the schoolmaster watched too. "What does it matter to me, lad?" Bartle said: "a night's sleep more or less? I shall sleep long enough, by and by, underground. Let me keep thee company in trouble while I can." It was a long and dreary night in that small chamber. Adam would sometimes get up and tread backwards and forwards along the short space from wall to wall; then he would sit down and hide his face, and no sound would be heard but the ticking of the watch on the table, or the falling of a cinder from the fire which the schoolmaster carefully tended. Sometimes he would burst out into vehement speech, "If I could ha' done anything to save her--if my bearing anything would ha' done any good...but t' have to sit still, and know it, and do nothing...it's hard for a man to bear...and to think o' what might ha' been now, if it hadn't been for HIM....O God, it's the very day we should ha' been married." "Aye, my lad," said Bartle tenderly, "it's heavy--it's heavy. But you must remember this: when you thought of marrying her, you'd a notion she'd got another sort of a nature inside her. You didn't think she could have got hardened in that little while to do what she's done." "I know--I know that," said Adam. "I thought she was loving and tender-hearted, and wouldn't tell a lie, or act deceitful. How could I think any other way? And if he'd never come near her, and I'd married her, and been loving to her, and took care of her, she might never ha' done anything bad. What would it ha' signified--my having a bit o' trouble with her? It 'ud ha' been nothing to this." "There's no knowing, my lad--there's no knowing what might have come. The smart's bad for you to bear now: you must have time--you must have time. But I've that opinion of you, that you'll rise above it all and be a man again, and there may good come out of this that we don't see." "Good come out of it!" said Adam passionately. "That doesn't alter th' evil: HER ruin can't be undone. I hate that talk o' people, as if there was a way o' making amends for everything. They'd more need be brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man's spoiled his fellow-creatur's life, he's no right to comfort himself with thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else's good doesn't alter her shame and misery." "Well, lad, well," said Bartle, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, "it's likely enough I talk foolishness. I'm an old fellow, and it's a good many years since I was in trouble myself. It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient." "Mr. Massey," said Adam penitently, "I'm very hot and hasty. I owe you something different; but you mustn't take it ill of me." "Not I, lad--not I." So the night wore on in agitation till the chill dawn and the growing light brought the tremulous quiet that comes on the brink of despair. There would soon be no more suspense. "Let us go to the prison now, Mr. Massey," said Adam, when he saw the hand of his watch at six. "If there's any news come, we shall hear about it." The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction, through the streets. Adam tried not to think where they were going, as they hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the prison gates. He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing those eager people. No; there was no news come--no pardon--no reprieve. Adam lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself to send word to Dinah that he was come. But a voice caught his ear: he could not shut out the words. "The cart is to set off at half-past seven." It must be said--the last good-bye: there was no help. In ten minutes from that time, Adam was at the door of the cell. Dinah had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave Hetty one moment; but Hetty was prepared for the meeting. He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his senses, and the dim cell was almost dark to him. He stood a moment after the door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied. But he began to see through the dimness--to see the dark eyes lifted up to him once more, but with no smile in them. O God, how sad they looked! The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with his heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a tearful smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face. The face was marble now; the sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the dimples were all gone--all but one, that never went; and the eyes--O, the worst of all was the likeness they had to Hetty's. They were Hetty's eyes looking at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to him from the dead to tell him of her misery. She was clinging close to Dinah; her cheek was against Dinah's. It seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and the pitying love that shone out from Dinah's face looked like a visible pledge of the Invisible Mercy. When the sad eyes met--when Hetty and Adam looked at each other--she felt the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh fear. It was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect the change in herself: Adam was a new image of the dreadful past and the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at him. "Speak to him, Hetty," Dinah said; "tell him what is in your heart." Hetty obeyed her, like a little child. "Adam...I'm very sorry...I behaved very wrong to you...will you forgive me...before I die?" Adam answered with a half-sob, "Yes, I forgive thee Hetty. I forgave thee long ago." It had seemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the anguish of meeting Hetty's eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less strained. There was a sense of relief from what was becoming unbearable, and the rare tears came--they had never come before, since he had hung on Seth's neck in the beginning of his sorrow. Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again. She kept hold of Dinah's hand, but she went up to Adam and said timidly, "Will you kiss me again, Adam, for all I've been so wicked?" Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting. "And tell him," Hetty said, in rather a stronger voice, "tell him...for there's nobody else to tell him...as I went after him and couldn't find him...and I hated him and cursed him once...but Dinah says I should forgive him...and I try...for else God won't forgive me." There was a noise at the door of the cell now--the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more--even to see that Mr. Irwine's face was one of them. He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room was silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in loneliness, leaving Bartle Massey to watch and see the end.

Chapter 46

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter46

The Hours of Suspense Bartle Massey announces a visitor to Adam in his Stoniton room where he awaits Hetty's execution. Dinah Morris comes to tell him that Hetty has repented and wants to see Adam, to ask his forgiveness before she dies. Adam, very haggard, says he cannot believe she has to die like that; he believes a pardon will come. He will wait till the last minute before seeing her. He sends his forgiveness through Dinah and says he will come. Bartle, though disliking women, pronounces Dinah to be one woman he approves of. Adam cannot sleep the night before the execution. He bursts out in sorrow, thinking of what Hetty could have been if not for Arthur. Bartle reminds him that Hetty could not have gotten so hard in just a few months. It was in her nature. He says that perhaps some good will come of it all. Adam does not like this philosophy that good can come of evil; her life is ruined, and she is being hanged on the day they would have been married. In the morning, he goes to the prison to talk to Hetty. He cannot bear to see Hetty's eyes; they are so sad, and they are the eyes of the woman he loves. Dinah holds Hetty up as she asks forgiveness. Adam says he forgave her long ago. He feels a release and begins crying. Hetty is shocked by the signs of Adam's suffering and moves towards him, asking if he will kiss her good by. Adam gives her a kiss and will never see her again. Hetty asks Adam to tell Arthur she forgives him, so that God will forgive her.

Commentary on Chapter 46 This is a very emotional chapter, handled with a touching beauty that is one of Eliot's finest storytelling gifts. She is able to understand very subtle and refined human feeling and portray it convincingly. Even Hetty melts a little and is able to contemplate the suffering of another. She is sympathetic in her last hour, able to admit error and to reach out. The reader also believes in the nobility of Adam's love. In the beginning, he seemed to love his idea of Hetty, her beauty and youth. Now, his love is mature and real. He loves Hetty despite what she has done. He is able to forgive and give comfort.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/47.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_47_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 47

chapter 47

{"name": "Chapter 47", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter47", "summary": "The Last Moment There is a crowd on the street waiting to see the hanging. They are there to watch the now legendary Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who made Hetty confess, as much as to see the criminal. Dinah stands beside Hetty in the cart as it moves through the streets to the gallows. Dinah tells Hetty to close her eyes, and she begins to pray aloud to keep her thoughts on God and not on the crowd. Suddenly there is a shout. A horseman gallops up with a paper in his hand. It is Arthur Donnithorne with a stay of execution.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 47 Most readers will not mind this sentimental last-minute reprieve with the romantic image of Arthur riding in on his horse to save the day. Equally romantic is the picture of Dinah and Hetty in the cart on the way to the gallows. The crowd is hushed with awe watching them. It is like an old ballad."}

IT was a sight that some people remembered better even than their own sorrows--the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart with the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a deliberately inflicted sudden death. All Stoniton had heard of Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who had brought the obstinate criminal to confess, and there was as much eagerness to see her as to see the wretched Hetty. But Dinah was hardly conscious of the multitude. When Hetty had caught sight of the vast crowd in the distance, she had clutched Dinah convulsively. "Close your eyes, Hetty," Dinah said, "and let us pray without ceasing to God." And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling intensity of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to her and clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity. Dinah did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort of awe--she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to her ear, like a vast yell of demons. Hetty's shriek mingled with the sound, and they clasped each other in mutual horror. But it was not a shout of execration--not a yell of exultant cruelty. It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop. The horse is hot and distressed, but answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others. See, he has something in his hand--he is holding it up as if it were a signal. The Sheriff knows him: it is Arthur Donnithorne, carrying in his hand a hard-won release from death.

Chapter 47

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter47

The Last Moment There is a crowd on the street waiting to see the hanging. They are there to watch the now legendary Dinah Morris, the young Methodist woman who made Hetty confess, as much as to see the criminal. Dinah stands beside Hetty in the cart as it moves through the streets to the gallows. Dinah tells Hetty to close her eyes, and she begins to pray aloud to keep her thoughts on God and not on the crowd. Suddenly there is a shout. A horseman gallops up with a paper in his hand. It is Arthur Donnithorne with a stay of execution.

Commentary on Chapter 47 Most readers will not mind this sentimental last-minute reprieve with the romantic image of Arthur riding in on his horse to save the day. Equally romantic is the picture of Dinah and Hetty in the cart on the way to the gallows. The crowd is hushed with awe watching them. It is like an old ballad.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/48.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_48_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 5.chapter 48

chapter 48

{"name": "Chapter 48", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter48", "summary": "Another Meeting in the Wood This is an important chapter winding up the consequences of the love triangle of Arthur, Adam, and Hetty. It is the day after Hetty escapes hanging. Adam has just been to see the Poysers to tell them all that they don't know about the case. He agrees to leave Hayslope with the Poysers and to live near them. Arthur and Adam both walk that evening in the Grove, each thinking of the events that took place there. They meet and see each other's suffering. Arthur asks to speak with Adam, and they go to the Hermitage. Arthur says he is doing what is most painful to him--leaving his home and cherished plans and going to the army. He is leaving the estate in Mr. Irwine's hands, and he begs that Adam will persuade the Poysers to stay. He will not be there, so their honor will not be stained, for he won't be their landlord. Adam says there is pride to consider, but Arthur says he wants to lessen the evil by helping them to stay on the land they have been on for generations. Adam agrees to stay and continue managing the woods. Arthur tells Adam it is worse for him because he caused the tragedy. If he had known Adam loved Hetty, he would have stayed away. He explains that he loved Hetty too, and he will always remember the pain of speaking with her yesterday in prison, and how he wishes he could have gotten her off completely. As it is she will be transported as a criminal and may die an early death. He mentions that he had told Hetty in the letter he would help her, and he would give his life to undo the misery. Adam says he has no right to be hard on someone who is repentant, and he offers to shake Arthur's hand. They feel affection for one another as they had when boys. Arthur says the only consolation he has is that Dinah Morris stayed with Hetty, and for that, he wants to give her his watch and chain as a token of thanks. Adam will give it to her.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 48 This is another moving chapter as the men who loved Hetty make up and shake hands. They will both bear the mark of the tragedy all their lives, but both have been changed and softened into better men. Adam says he will stay \"to do my work well and make the world a bit better place\" . In the end, Adam realizes this is a better ending than revenge: \"sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone\" . Hetty's fate, however, is not so pretty. Transportation to Australia or some other English colony for hard labor was a sentence to a short and miserable life. Hetty, as we know, is not used to hardship, but on the other hand, she has longer to live, to make use of the time for repentance, if she can continue to seek forgiveness. Eliot demonstrates two principles in this reconciliation. First, the theme is repeated that things cannot be undone. Even Arthur's pardon was only partial, and Hetty's life is shattered. On the other hand, Bartle had announced the idea that good can come out of evil. He is shown to be right in the sense that if all the parties, as in this case, come together to make the best emerge out of the wreck, then some growth and progress are possible. Eliot believed in the hallowing of the human heart through sorrow. Bearing some suffering could make one understand the common kinship of all people and bring humility and unselfishness. Even Lisbeth Bede loses her peevishness and surrenders to the greatness of the trouble and to Adam's wishes. The Bedes, the Poysers, the Irwines, Bartle, Dinah, and even Arthur have all done what they could to ensure the smoothest continuance of life for all. This chapter ends the fifth book and the tragic story of Hetty, but the next book brings news of what happened afterwards."}

THE next day, at evening, two men were walking from opposite points towards the same scene, drawn thither by a common memory. The scene was the Grove by Donnithorne Chase: you know who the men were. The old squire's funeral had taken place that morning, the will had been read, and now in the first breathing-space, Arthur Donnithorne had come out for a lonely walk, that he might look fixedly at the new future before him and confirm himself in a sad resolution. He thought he could do that best in the Grove. Adam too had come from Stontion on Monday evening, and to-day he had not left home, except to go to the family at the Hall Farm and tell them everything that Mr. Irwine had left untold. He had agreed with the Poysers that he would follow them to their new neighbourhood, wherever that might be, for he meant to give up the management of the woods, and, as soon as it was practicable, he would wind up his business with Jonathan Burge and settle with his mother and Seth in a home within reach of the friends to whom he felt bound by a mutual sorrow. "Seth and me are sure to find work," he said. "A man that's got our trade at his finger-ends is at home everywhere; and we must make a new start. My mother won't stand in the way, for she's told me, since I came home, she'd made up her mind to being buried in another parish, if I wished it, and if I'd be more comfortable elsewhere. It's wonderful how quiet she's been ever since I came back. It seems as if the very greatness o' the trouble had quieted and calmed her. We shall all be better in a new country, though there's some I shall be loath to leave behind. But I won't part from you and yours, if I can help it, Mr. Poyser. Trouble's made us kin." "Aye, lad," said Martin. "We'll go out o' hearing o' that man's name. But I doubt we shall ne'er go far enough for folks not to find out as we've got them belonging to us as are transported o'er the seas, and were like to be hanged. We shall have that flyin' up in our faces, and our children's after us." That was a long visit to the Hall Farm, and drew too strongly on Adam's energies for him to think of seeing others, or re-entering on his old occupations till the morrow. "But to-morrow," he said to himself, "I'll go to work again. I shall learn to like it again some time, maybe; and it's right whether I like it or not." This evening was the last he would allow to be absorbed by sorrow: suspense was gone now, and he must bear the unalterable. He was resolved not to see Arthur Donnithorne again, if it were possible to avoid him. He had no message to deliver from Hetty now, for Hetty had seen Arthur. And Adam distrusted himself--he had learned to dread the violence of his own feeling. That word of Mr. Irwine's--that he must remember what he had felt after giving the last blow to Arthur in the Grove--had remained with him. These thoughts about Arthur, like all thoughts that are charged with strong feeling, were continually recurring, and they always called up the image of the Grove--of that spot under the overarching boughs where he had caught sight of the two bending figures, and had been possessed by sudden rage. "I'll go and see it again to-night for the last time," he said; "it'll do me good; it'll make me feel over again what I felt when I'd knocked him down. I felt what poor empty work it was, as soon as I'd done it, before I began to think he might be dead." In this way it happened that Arthur and Adam were walking towards the same spot at the same time. Adam had on his working-dress again, now, for he had thrown off the other with a sense of relief as soon as he came home; and if he had had the basket of tools over his shoulder, he might have been taken, with his pale wasted face, for the spectre of the Adam Bede who entered the Grove on that August evening eight months ago. But he had no basket of tools, and he was not walking with the old erectness, looking keenly round him; his hands were thrust in his side pockets, and his eyes rested chiefly on the ground. He had not long entered the Grove, and now he paused before a beech. He knew that tree well; it was the boundary mark of his youth--the sign, to him, of the time when some of his earliest, strongest feelings had left him. He felt sure they would never return. And yet, at this moment, there was a stirring of affection at the remembrance of that Arthur Donnithorne whom he had believed in before he had come up to this beech eight months ago. It was affection for the dead: THAT Arthur existed no longer. He was disturbed by the sound of approaching footsteps, but the beech stood at a turning in the road, and he could not see who was coming until the tall slim figure in deep mourning suddenly stood before him at only two yards' distance. They both started, and looked at each other in silence. Often, in the last fortnight, Adam had imagined himself as close to Arthur as this, assailing him with words that should be as harrowing as the voice of remorse, forcing upon him a just share in the misery he had caused; and often, too, he had told himself that such a meeting had better not be. But in imagining the meeting he had always seen Arthur, as he had met him on that evening in the Grove, florid, careless, light of speech; and the figure before him touched him with the signs of suffering. Adam knew what suffering was--he could not lay a cruel finger on a bruised man. He felt no impulse that he needed to resist. Silence was more just than reproach. Arthur was the first to speak. "Adam," he said, quietly, "it may be a good thing that we have met here, for I wished to see you. I should have asked to see you to-morrow." He paused, but Adam said nothing. "I know it is painful to you to meet me," Arthur went on, "but it is not likely to happen again for years to come." "No, sir," said Adam, coldly, "that was what I meant to write to you to-morrow, as it would be better all dealings should be at an end between us, and somebody else put in my place." Arthur felt the answer keenly, and it was not without an effort that he spoke again. "It was partly on that subject I wished to speak to you. I don't want to lessen your indignation against me, or ask you to do anything for my sake. I only wish to ask you if you will help me to lessen the evil consequences of the past, which is unchangeable. I don't mean consequences to myself, but to others. It is but little I can do, I know. I know the worst consequences will remain; but something may be done, and you can help me. Will you listen to me patiently?" "Yes, sir," said Adam, after some hesitation; "I'll hear what it is. If I can help to mend anything, I will. Anger 'ull mend nothing, I know. We've had enough o' that." "I was going to the Hermitage," said Arthur. "Will you go there with me and sit down? We can talk better there." The Hermitage had never been entered since they left it together, for Arthur had locked up the key in his desk. And now, when he opened the door, there was the candle burnt out in the socket; there was the chair in the same place where Adam remembered sitting; there was the waste-paper basket full of scraps, and deep down in it, Arthur felt in an instant, there was the little pink silk handkerchief. It would have been painful to enter this place if their previous thoughts had been less painful. They sat down opposite each other in the old places, and Arthur said, "I'm going away, Adam; I'm going into the army." Poor Arthur felt that Adam ought to be affected by this announcement--ought to have a movement of sympathy towards him. But Adam's lips remained firmly closed, and the expression of his face unchanged. "What I want to say to you," Arthur continued, "is this: one of my reasons for going away is that no one else may leave Hayslope--may leave their home on my account. I would do anything, there is no sacrifice I would not make, to prevent any further injury to others through my--through what has happened." Arthur's words had precisely the opposite effect to that he had anticipated. Adam thought he perceived in them that notion of compensation for irretrievable wrong, that self-soothing attempt to make evil bear the same fruits as good, which most of all roused his indignation. He was as strongly impelled to look painful facts right in the face as Arthur was to turn away his eyes from them. Moreover, he had the wakeful suspicious pride of a poor man in the presence of a rich man. He felt his old severity returning as he said, "The time's past for that, sir. A man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing a wrong; sacrifices won't undo it when it's done. When people's feelings have got a deadly wound, they can't be cured with favours." "Favours!" said Arthur, passionately; "no; how can you suppose I meant that? But the Poysers--Mr. Irwine tells me the Poysers mean to leave the place where they have lived so many years--for generations. Don't you see, as Mr. Irwine does, that if they could be persuaded to overcome the feeling that drives them away, it would be much better for them in the end to remain on the old spot, among the friends and neighbours who know them?" "That's true," said Adam coldly. "But then, sir, folks's feelings are not so easily overcome. It'll be hard for Martin Poyser to go to a strange place, among strange faces, when he's been bred up on the Hall Farm, and his father before him; but then it 'ud be harder for a man with his feelings to stay. I don't see how the thing's to be made any other than hard. There's a sort o' damage, sir, that can't be made up for." Arthur was silent some moments. In spite of other feelings dominant in him this evening, his pride winced under Adam's mode of treating him. Wasn't he himself suffering? Was not he too obliged to renounce his most cherished hopes? It was now as it had been eight months ago--Adam was forcing Arthur to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing. He was presenting the sort of resistance that was the most irritating to Arthur's eager ardent nature. But his anger was subdued by the same influence that had subdued Adam's when they first confronted each other--by the marks of suffering in a long familiar face. The momentary struggle ended in the feeling that he could bear a great deal from Adam, to whom he had been the occasion of bearing so much; but there was a touch of pleading, boyish vexation in his tone as he said, "But people may make injuries worse by unreasonable conduct--by giving way to anger and satisfying that for the moment, instead of thinking what will be the effect in the future. "If I were going to stay here and act as landlord," he added presently, with still more eagerness--"if I were careless about what I've done--what I've been the cause of, you would have some excuse, Adam, for going away and encouraging others to go. You would have some excuse then for trying to make the evil worse. But when I tell you I'm going away for years--when you know what that means for me, how it cuts off every plan of happiness I've ever formed--it is impossible for a sensible man like you to believe that there is any real ground for the Poysers refusing to remain. I know their feeling about disgrace--Mr. Irwine has told me all; but he is of opinion that they might be persuaded out of this idea that they are disgraced in the eyes of their neighbours, and that they can't remain on my estate, if you would join him in his efforts--if you would stay yourself and go on managing the old woods." Arthur paused a moment and then added, pleadingly, "You know that's a good work to do for the sake of other people, besides the owner. And you don't know but that they may have a better owner soon, whom you will like to work for. If I die, my cousin Tradgett will have the estate and take my name. He is a good fellow." Adam could not help being moved: it was impossible for him not to feel that this was the voice of the honest warm-hearted Arthur whom he had loved and been proud of in old days; but nearer memories would not be thrust away. He was silent; yet Arthur saw an answer in his face that induced him to go on, with growing earnestness. "And then, if you would talk to the Poysers--if you would talk the matter over with Mr. Irwine--he means to see you to-morrow--and then if you would join your arguments to his to prevail on them not to go....I know, of course, that they would not accept any favour from me--I mean nothing of that kind--but I'm sure they would suffer less in the end. Irwine thinks so too. And Mr. Irwine is to have the chief authority on the estate--he has consented to undertake that. They will really be under no man but one whom they respect and like. It would be the same with you, Adam, and it could be nothing but a desire to give me worse pain that could incline you to go." Arthur was silent again for a little while, and then said, with some agitation in his voice, "I wouldn't act so towards you, I know. If you were in my place and I in yours, I should try to help you to do the best." Adam made a hasty movement on his chair and looked on the ground. Arthur went on, "Perhaps you've never done anything you've had bitterly to repent of in your life, Adam; if you had, you would be more generous. You would know then that it's worse for me than for you." Arthur rose from his seat with the last words, and went to one of the windows, looking out and turning his back on Adam, as he continued, passionately, "Haven't I loved her too? Didn't I see her yesterday? Shan't I carry the thought of her about with me as much as you will? And don't you think you would suffer more if you'd been in fault?" There was silence for several minutes, for the struggle in Adam's mind was not easily decided. Facile natures, whose emotions have little permanence, can hardly understand how much inward resistance he overcame before he rose from his seat and turned towards Arthur. Arthur heard the movement, and turning round, met the sad but softened look with which Adam said, "It's true what you say, sir. I'm hard--it's in my nature. I was too hard with my father, for doing wrong. I've been a bit hard t' everybody but her. I felt as if nobody pitied her enough--her suffering cut into me so; and when I thought the folks at the farm were too hard with her, I said I'd never be hard to anybody myself again. But feeling overmuch about her has perhaps made me unfair to you. I've known what it is in my life to repent and feel it's too late. I felt I'd been too harsh to my father when he was gone from me--I feel it now, when I think of him. I've no right to be hard towards them as have done wrong and repent." Adam spoke these words with the firm distinctness of a man who is resolved to leave nothing unsaid that he is bound to say; but he went on with more hesitation. "I wouldn't shake hands with you once, sir, when you asked me--but if you're willing to do it now, for all I refused then..." Arthur's white hand was in Adam's large grasp in an instant, and with that action there was a strong rush, on both sides, of the old, boyish affection. "Adam," Arthur said, impelled to full confession now, "it would never have happened if I'd known you loved her. That would have helped to save me from it. And I did struggle. I never meant to injure her. I deceived you afterwards--and that led on to worse; but I thought it was forced upon me, I thought it was the best thing I could do. And in that letter I told her to let me know if she were in any trouble: don't think I would not have done everything I could. But I was all wrong from the very first, and horrible wrong has come of it. God knows, I'd give my life if I could undo it." They sat down again opposite each other, and Adam said, tremulously, "How did she seem when you left her, sir?" "Don't ask me, Adam," Arthur said; "I feel sometimes as if I should go mad with thinking of her looks and what she said to me, and then, that I couldn't get a full pardon--that I couldn't save her from that wretched fate of being transported--that I can do nothing for her all those years; and she may die under it, and never know comfort any more." "Ah, sir," said Adam, for the first time feeling his own pain merged in sympathy for Arthur, "you and me'll often be thinking o' the same thing, when we're a long way off one another. I'll pray God to help you, as I pray him to help me." "But there's that sweet woman--that Dinah Morris," Arthur said, pursuing his own thoughts and not knowing what had been the sense of Adam's words, "she says she shall stay with her to the very last moment--till she goes; and the poor thing clings to her as if she found some comfort in her. I could worship that woman; I don't know what I should do if she were not there. Adam, you will see her when she comes back. I could say nothing to her yesterday--nothing of what I felt towards her. Tell her," Arthur went on hurriedly, as if he wanted to hide the emotion with which he spoke, while he took off his chain and watch, "tell her I asked you to give her this in remembrance of me--of the man to whom she is the one source of comfort, when he thinks of...I know she doesn't care about such things--or anything else I can give her for its own sake. But she will use the watch--I shall like to think of her using it." "I'll give it to her, sir," Adam said, "and tell her your words. She told me she should come back to the people at the Hall Farm." "And you will persuade the Poysers to stay, Adam?" said Arthur, reminded of the subject which both of them had forgotten in the first interchange of revived friendship. "You will stay yourself, and help Mr. Irwine to carry out the repairs and improvements on the estate?" "There's one thing, sir, that perhaps you don't take account of," said Adam, with hesitating gentleness, "and that was what made me hang back longer. You see, it's the same with both me and the Poysers: if we stay, it's for our own worldly interest, and it looks as if we'd put up with anything for the sake o' that. I know that's what they'll feel, and I can't help feeling a little of it myself. When folks have got an honourable independent spirit, they don't like to do anything that might make 'em seem base-minded." "But no one who knows you will think that, Adam. That is not a reason strong enough against a course that is really more generous, more unselfish than the other. And it will be known--it shall be made known, that both you and the Poysers stayed at my entreaty. Adam, don't try to make things worse for me; I'm punished enough without that." "No, sir, no," Adam said, looking at Arthur with mournful affection. "God forbid I should make things worse for you. I used to wish I could do it, in my passion--but that was when I thought you didn't feel enough. I'll stay, sir, I'll do the best I can. It's all I've got to think of now--to do my work well and make the world a bit better place for them as can enjoy it." "Then we'll part now, Adam. You will see Mr. Irwine to-morrow, and consult with him about everything." "Are you going soon, sir?" said Adam. "As soon as possible--after I've made the necessary arrangements. Good-bye, Adam. I shall think of you going about the old place." "Good-bye, sir. God bless you." The hands were clasped once more, and Adam left the Hermitage, feeling that sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone. As soon as the door was closed behind him, Arthur went to the waste-paper basket and took out the little pink silk handkerchief. Book Six

Chapter 48

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter48

Another Meeting in the Wood This is an important chapter winding up the consequences of the love triangle of Arthur, Adam, and Hetty. It is the day after Hetty escapes hanging. Adam has just been to see the Poysers to tell them all that they don't know about the case. He agrees to leave Hayslope with the Poysers and to live near them. Arthur and Adam both walk that evening in the Grove, each thinking of the events that took place there. They meet and see each other's suffering. Arthur asks to speak with Adam, and they go to the Hermitage. Arthur says he is doing what is most painful to him--leaving his home and cherished plans and going to the army. He is leaving the estate in Mr. Irwine's hands, and he begs that Adam will persuade the Poysers to stay. He will not be there, so their honor will not be stained, for he won't be their landlord. Adam says there is pride to consider, but Arthur says he wants to lessen the evil by helping them to stay on the land they have been on for generations. Adam agrees to stay and continue managing the woods. Arthur tells Adam it is worse for him because he caused the tragedy. If he had known Adam loved Hetty, he would have stayed away. He explains that he loved Hetty too, and he will always remember the pain of speaking with her yesterday in prison, and how he wishes he could have gotten her off completely. As it is she will be transported as a criminal and may die an early death. He mentions that he had told Hetty in the letter he would help her, and he would give his life to undo the misery. Adam says he has no right to be hard on someone who is repentant, and he offers to shake Arthur's hand. They feel affection for one another as they had when boys. Arthur says the only consolation he has is that Dinah Morris stayed with Hetty, and for that, he wants to give her his watch and chain as a token of thanks. Adam will give it to her.

Commentary on Chapter 48 This is another moving chapter as the men who loved Hetty make up and shake hands. They will both bear the mark of the tragedy all their lives, but both have been changed and softened into better men. Adam says he will stay "to do my work well and make the world a bit better place" . In the end, Adam realizes this is a better ending than revenge: "sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone" . Hetty's fate, however, is not so pretty. Transportation to Australia or some other English colony for hard labor was a sentence to a short and miserable life. Hetty, as we know, is not used to hardship, but on the other hand, she has longer to live, to make use of the time for repentance, if she can continue to seek forgiveness. Eliot demonstrates two principles in this reconciliation. First, the theme is repeated that things cannot be undone. Even Arthur's pardon was only partial, and Hetty's life is shattered. On the other hand, Bartle had announced the idea that good can come out of evil. He is shown to be right in the sense that if all the parties, as in this case, come together to make the best emerge out of the wreck, then some growth and progress are possible. Eliot believed in the hallowing of the human heart through sorrow. Bearing some suffering could make one understand the common kinship of all people and bring humility and unselfishness. Even Lisbeth Bede loses her peevishness and surrenders to the greatness of the trouble and to Adam's wishes. The Bedes, the Poysers, the Irwines, Bartle, Dinah, and even Arthur have all done what they could to ensure the smoothest continuance of life for all. This chapter ends the fifth book and the tragic story of Hetty, but the next book brings news of what happened afterwards.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/49.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_49_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 49

chapter 49

{"name": "Chapter 49", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter49", "summary": "At the Hall Farm Eighteen months later, Mrs. Poyser is trying to talk Dinah out of leaving for Snowfield. She has been staying with the Poysers to help them through the tragedy. Mrs. Poyser tries to convince her she can minister to the poor in Hayslope; there are many people who depend on her. Dinah says she must avoid the temptation of luxury and go back to the mill where she is needed more. Dinah reminds her aunt that she has stayed to see them all back on their feet, and they are well and prosperous. It is mentioned that old Mr. Poyser died the previous year, the reason for Mrs. Poyser wearing black. When Adam Bede comes to the farm, Dinah blushes. Adam has come to fetch her for his mother, who is ailing. He explains his mother is working too hard but will not let him hire a girl to help her. Mrs. Poyser announces to the family at tea that Dinah is leaving, and she looks disturbed and rushes from the room crying. Everyone had counted on Dinah staying, even Mr. Irwine who treats her like a lady. Adam speaks of his great success with the woods and new building. Mr. Poyser mentions that Burge will no doubt want Adam to take more part in the business, and Adam says he would like to buy the business for himself so he can do as he likes. He gets along with the new Donnithorne steward and Mr. Irwine's management but prefers to be on his own.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 49 The argument between Dinah and her aunt fill the reader in with what has happened since the trial. Dinah has been a peacemaker, helping the Poysers re-integrate with the community. Dinah mentions their friends and neighbors being supportive, something that the Poysers had feared would never happen. They are not the outcasts they had imagined themselves but once more installed in their old position. Dinah seems a bit mysterious about why she has to leave. She is blushing and crying. Adam has never seen her look upset before, but he cannot read her behavior. She seems to be running away to Snowfield and covering up something. All this is highly uncharacteristic of Dinah. If readers remember how she blushed in Adam's presence before, they may surmise she is in love with him."}

THE first autumnal afternoon sunshine of 1801--more than eighteen months after that parting of Adam and Arthur in the Hermitage--was on the yard at the Hall Farm; and the bull-dog was in one of his most excited moments, for it was that hour of the day when the cows were being driven into the yard for their afternoon milking. No wonder the patient beasts ran confusedly into the wrong places, for the alarming din of the bull-dog was mingled with more distant sounds which the timid feminine creatures, with pardonable superstition, imagined also to have some relation to their own movements--with the tremendous crack of the waggoner's whip, the roar of his voice, and the booming thunder of the waggon, as it left the rick-yard empty of its golden load. The milking of the cows was a sight Mrs. Poyser loved, and at this hour on mild days she was usually standing at the house door, with her knitting in her hands, in quiet contemplation, only heightened to a keener interest when the vicious yellow cow, who had once kicked over a pailful of precious milk, was about to undergo the preventive punishment of having her hinder-legs strapped. To-day, however, Mrs. Poyser gave but a divided attention to the arrival of the cows, for she was in eager discussion with Dinah, who was stitching Mr. Poyser's shirt-collars, and had borne patiently to have her thread broken three times by Totty pulling at her arm with a sudden insistence that she should look at "Baby," that is, at a large wooden doll with no legs and a long skirt, whose bald head Totty, seated in her small chair at Dinah's side, was caressing and pressing to her fat cheek with much fervour. Totty is larger by more than two years' growth than when you first saw her, and she has on a black frock under her pinafore. Mrs. Poyser too has on a black gown, which seems to heighten the family likeness between her and Dinah. In other respects there is little outward change now discernible in our old friends, or in the pleasant house-place, bright with polished oak and pewter. "I never saw the like to you, Dinah," Mrs. Poyser was saying, "when you've once took anything into your head: there's no more moving you than the rooted tree. You may say what you like, but I don't believe that's religion; for what's the Sermon on the Mount about, as you're so fond o' reading to the boys, but doing what other folks 'ud have you do? But if it was anything unreasonable they wanted you to do, like taking your cloak off and giving it to 'em, or letting 'em slap you i' the face, I daresay you'd be ready enough. It's only when one 'ud have you do what's plain common sense and good for yourself, as you're obstinate th' other way." "Nay, dear Aunt," said Dinah, smiling slightly as she went on with her work, "I'm sure your wish 'ud be a reason for me to do anything that I didn't feel it was wrong to do." "Wrong! You drive me past bearing. What is there wrong, I should like to know, i' staying along wi' your own friends, as are th' happier for having you with 'em an' are willing to provide for you, even if your work didn't more nor pay 'em for the bit o' sparrow's victual y' eat and the bit o' rag you put on? An' who is it, I should like to know, as you're bound t' help and comfort i' the world more nor your own flesh and blood--an' me th' only aunt you've got above-ground, an' am brought to the brink o' the grave welly every winter as comes, an' there's the child as sits beside you 'ull break her little heart when you go, an' the grandfather not been dead a twelvemonth, an' your uncle 'ull miss you so as never was--a-lighting his pipe an' waiting on him, an' now I can trust you wi' the butter, an' have had all the trouble o' teaching you, and there's all the sewing to be done, an' I must have a strange gell out o' Treddles'on to do it--an' all because you must go back to that bare heap o' stones as the very crows fly over an' won't stop at." "Dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah, looking up in Mrs. Poyser's face, "it's your kindness makes you say I'm useful to you. You don't really want me now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you're in good health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few--some of them come to sit with my uncle almost daily. Indeed, you will not miss me; and at Snowfield there are brethren and sisters in great need, who have none of those comforts you have around you. I feel that I am called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast. I feel drawn again towards the hills where I used to be blessed in carrying the word of life to the sinful and desolate." "You feel! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, returning from a parenthetic glance at the cows, "that's allays the reason I'm to sit down wi', when you've a mind to do anything contrairy. What do you want to be preaching for more than you're preaching now? Don't you go off, the Lord knows where, every Sunday a-preaching and praying? An' haven't you got Methodists enow at Treddles'on to go and look at, if church-folks's faces are too handsome to please you? An' isn't there them i' this parish as you've got under hand, and they're like enough to make friends wi' Old Harry again as soon as your back's turned? There's that Bessy Cranage--she'll be flaunting i' new finery three weeks after you're gone, I'll be bound. She'll no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog 'ull stand on its hind-legs when there's nobody looking. But I suppose it doesna matter so much about folks's souls i' this country, else you'd be for staying with your own aunt, for she's none so good but what you might help her to be better." There was a certain something in Mrs. Poyser's voice just then, which she did not wish to be noticed, so she turned round hastily to look at the clock, and said: "See there! It's tea-time; an' if Martin's i' the rick-yard, he'll like a cup. Here, Totty, my chicken, let mother put your bonnet on, and then you go out into the rick-yard and see if Father's there, and tell him he mustn't go away again without coming t' have a cup o' tea; and tell your brothers to come in too." Totty trotted off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Poyser set out the bright oak table and reached down the tea-cups. "You talk o' them gells Nancy and Molly being clever i' their work," she began again; "it's fine talking. They're all the same, clever or stupid--one can't trust 'em out o' one's sight a minute. They want somebody's eye on 'em constant if they're to be kept to their work. An' suppose I'm ill again this winter, as I was the winter before last? Who's to look after 'em then, if you're gone? An' there's that blessed child--something's sure t' happen to her--they'll let her tumble into the fire, or get at the kettle wi' the boiling lard in't, or some mischief as 'ull lame her for life; an' it'll be all your fault, Dinah." "Aunt," said Dinah, "I promise to come back to you in the winter if you're ill. Don't think I will ever stay away from you if you're in real want of me. But, indeed, it is needful for my own soul that I should go away from this life of ease and luxury in which I have all things too richly to enjoy--at least that I should go away for a short space. No one can know but myself what are my inward needs, and the besetments I am most in danger from. Your wish for me to stay is not a call of duty which I refuse to hearken to because it is against my own desires; it is a temptation that I must resist, lest the love of the creature should become like a mist in my soul shutting out the heavenly light." "It passes my cunning to know what you mean by ease and luxury," said Mrs. Poyser, as she cut the bread and butter. "It's true there's good victual enough about you, as nobody shall ever say I don't provide enough and to spare, but if there's ever a bit o' odds an' ends as nobody else 'ud eat, you're sure to pick it out...but look there! There's Adam Bede a-carrying the little un in. I wonder how it is he's come so early." Mrs. Poyser hastened to the door for the pleasure of looking at her darling in a new position, with love in her eyes but reproof on her tongue. "Oh for shame, Totty! Little gells o' five year old should be ashamed to be carried. Why, Adam, she'll break your arm, such a big gell as that; set her down--for shame!" "Nay, nay," said Adam, "I can lift her with my hand--I've no need to take my arm to it." Totty, looking as serenely unconscious of remark as a fat white puppy, was set down at the door-place, and the mother enforced her reproof with a shower of kisses. "You're surprised to see me at this hour o' the day," said Adam. "Yes, but come in," said Mrs. Poyser, making way for him; "there's no bad news, I hope?" "No, nothing bad," Adam answered, as he went up to Dinah and put out his hand to her. She had laid down her work and stood up, instinctively, as he approached her. A faint blush died away from her pale cheek as she put her hand in his and looked up at him timidly. "It's an errand to you brought me, Dinah," said Adam, apparently unconscious that he was holding her hand all the while; "mother's a bit ailing, and she's set her heart on your coming to stay the night with her, if you'll be so kind. I told her I'd call and ask you as I came from the village. She overworks herself, and I can't persuade her to have a little girl t' help her. I don't know what's to be done." Adam released Dinah's hand as he ceased speaking, and was expecting an answer, but before she had opened her lips Mrs. Poyser said, "Look there now! I told you there was folks enow t' help i' this parish, wi'out going further off. There's Mrs. Bede getting as old and cas'alty as can be, and she won't let anybody but you go a-nigh her hardly. The folks at Snowfield have learnt by this time to do better wi'out you nor she can." "I'll put my bonnet on and set off directly, if you don't want anything done first, Aunt," said Dinah, folding up her work. "Yes, I do want something done. I want you t' have your tea, child; it's all ready--and you'll have a cup, Adam, if y' arena in too big a hurry." "Yes, I'll have a cup, please; and then I'll walk with Dinah. I'm going straight home, for I've got a lot o' timber valuations to write out." "Why, Adam, lad, are you here?" said Mr. Poyser, entering warm and coatless, with the two black-eyed boys behind him, still looking as much like him as two small elephants are like a large one. "How is it we've got sight o' you so long before foddering-time?" "I came on an errand for Mother," said Adam. "She's got a touch of her old complaint, and she wants Dinah to go and stay with her a bit." "Well, we'll spare her for your mother a little while," said Mr. Poyser. "But we wonna spare her for anybody else, on'y her husband." "Husband!" said Marty, who was at the most prosaic and literal period of the boyish mind. "Why, Dinah hasn't got a husband." "Spare her?" said Mrs. Poyser, placing a seed-cake on the table and then seating herself to pour out the tea. "But we must spare her, it seems, and not for a husband neither, but for her own megrims. Tommy, what are you doing to your little sister's doll? Making the child naughty, when she'd be good if you'd let her. You shanna have a morsel o' cake if you behave so." Tommy, with true brotherly sympathy, was amusing himself by turning Dolly's skirt over her bald head and exhibiting her truncated body to the general scorn--an indignity which cut Totty to the heart. "What do you think Dinah's been a-telling me since dinner-time?" Mrs. Poyser continued, looking at her husband. "Eh! I'm a poor un at guessing," said Mr. Poyser. "Why, she means to go back to Snowfield again, and work i' the mill, and starve herself, as she used to do, like a creatur as has got no friends." Mr. Poyser did not readily find words to express his unpleasant astonishment; he only looked from his wife to Dinah, who had now seated herself beside Totty, as a bulwark against brotherly playfulness, and was busying herself with the children's tea. If he had been given to making general reflections, it would have occurred to him that there was certainly a change come over Dinah, for she never used to change colour; but, as it was, he merely observed that her face was flushed at that moment. Mr. Poyser thought she looked the prettier for it: it was a flush no deeper than the petal of a monthly rose. Perhaps it came because her uncle was looking at her so fixedly; but there is no knowing, for just then Adam was saying, with quiet surprise, "Why, I hoped Dinah was settled among us for life. I thought she'd given up the notion o' going back to her old country." "Thought! Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, "and so would anybody else ha' thought, as had got their right end up'ards. But I suppose you must be a Methodist to know what a Methodist 'ull do. It's ill guessing what the bats are flying after." "Why, what have we done to you. Dinah, as you must go away from us?" said Mr. Poyser, still pausing over his tea-cup. "It's like breaking your word, welly, for your aunt never had no thought but you'd make this your home." "Nay, Uncle," said Dinah, trying to be quite calm. "When I first came, I said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to my aunt." "Well, an' who said you'd ever left off being a comfort to me?" said Mrs. Poyser. "If you didna mean to stay wi' me, you'd better never ha' come. Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it." "Nay, nay," said Mr. Poyser, who objected to exaggerated views. "Thee mustna say so; we should ha' been ill off wi'out her, Lady day was a twelvemont'. We mun be thankful for that, whether she stays or no. But I canna think what she mun leave a good home for, to go back int' a country where the land, most on't, isna worth ten shillings an acre, rent and profits." "Why, that's just the reason she wants to go, as fur as she can give a reason," said Mrs. Poyser. "She says this country's too comfortable, an' there's too much t' eat, an' folks arena miserable enough. And she's going next week. I canna turn her, say what I will. It's allays the way wi' them meek-faced people; you may's well pelt a bag o' feathers as talk to 'em. But I say it isna religion, to be so obstinate--is it now, Adam?" Adam saw that Dinah was more disturbed than he had ever seen her by any matter relating to herself, and, anxious to relieve her, if possible, he said, looking at her affectionately, "Nay, I can't find fault with anything Dinah does. I believe her thoughts are better than our guesses, let 'em be what they may. I should ha' been thankful for her to stay among us, but if she thinks well to go, I wouldn't cross her, or make it hard to her by objecting. We owe her something different to that." As it often happens, the words intended to relieve her were just too much for Dinah's susceptible feelings at this moment. The tears came into the grey eyes too fast to be hidden and she got up hurriedly, meaning it to be understood that she was going to put on her bonnet. "Mother, what's Dinah crying for?" said Totty. "She isn't a naughty dell." "Thee'st gone a bit too fur," said Mr. Poyser. "We've no right t' interfere with her doing as she likes. An' thee'dst be as angry as could be wi' me, if I said a word against anything she did." "Because you'd very like be finding fault wi'out reason," said Mrs. Poyser. "But there's reason i' what I say, else I shouldna say it. It's easy talking for them as can't love her so well as her own aunt does. An' me got so used to her! I shall feel as uneasy as a new sheared sheep when she's gone from me. An' to think of her leaving a parish where she's so looked on. There's Mr. Irwine makes as much of her as if she was a lady, for all her being a Methodist, an' wi' that maggot o' preaching in her head--God forgi'e me if I'm i' the wrong to call it so." "Aye," said Mr. Poyser, looking jocose; "but thee dostna tell Adam what he said to thee about it one day. The missis was saying, Adam, as the preaching was the only fault to be found wi' Dinah, and Mr. Irwine says, 'But you mustn't find fault with her for that, Mrs. Poyser; you forget she's got no husband to preach to. I'll answer for it, you give Poyser many a good sermon.' The parson had thee there," Mr. Poyser added, laughing unctuously. "I told Bartle Massey on it, an' he laughed too." "Yes, it's a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at one another with a pipe i' their mouths," said Mrs. Poyser. "Give Bartle Massey his way and he'd have all the sharpness to himself. If the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon. Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Dinah, and see what she's doing, and give her a pretty kiss." This errand was devised for Totty as a means of checking certain threatening symptoms about the corners of the mouth; for Tommy, no longer expectant of cake, was lifting up his eyelids with his forefingers and turning his eyeballs towards Totty in a way that she felt to be disagreeably personal. "You're rare and busy now--eh, Adam?" said Mr. Poyser. "Burge's getting so bad wi' his asthmy, it's well if he'll ever do much riding about again." "Yes, we've got a pretty bit o' building on hand now," said Adam, "what with the repairs on th' estate, and the new houses at Treddles'on." "I'll bet a penny that new house Burge is building on his own bit o' land is for him and Mary to go to," said Mr. Poyser. "He'll be for laying by business soon, I'll warrant, and be wanting you to take to it all and pay him so much by th' 'ear. We shall see you living on th' hill before another twelvemont's over." "Well," said Adam, "I should like t' have the business in my own hands. It isn't as I mind much about getting any more money. We've enough and to spare now, with only our two selves and mother; but I should like t' have my own way about things--I could try plans then, as I can't do now." "You get on pretty well wi' the new steward, I reckon?" said Mr. Poyser. "Yes, yes; he's a sensible man enough; understands farming--he's carrying on the draining, and all that, capital. You must go some day towards the Stonyshire side and see what alterations they're making. But he's got no notion about buildings. You can so seldom get hold of a man as can turn his brains to more nor one thing; it's just as if they wore blinkers like th' horses and could see nothing o' one side of 'em. Now, there's Mr. Irwine has got notions o' building more nor most architects; for as for th' architects, they set up to be fine fellows, but the most of 'em don't know where to set a chimney so as it shan't be quarrelling with a door. My notion is, a practical builder that's got a bit o' taste makes the best architect for common things; and I've ten times the pleasure i' seeing after the work when I've made the plan myself." Mr. Poyser listened with an admiring interest to Adam's discourse on building, but perhaps it suggested to him that the building of his corn-rick had been proceeding a little too long without the control of the master's eye, for when Adam had done speaking, he got up and said, "Well, lad, I'll bid you good-bye now, for I'm off to the rick-yard again." Adam rose too, for he saw Dinah entering, with her bonnet on and a little basket in her hand, preceded by Totty. "You're ready, I see, Dinah," Adam said; "so we'll set off, for the sooner I'm at home the better." "Mother," said Totty, with her treble pipe, "Dinah was saying her prayers and crying ever so." "Hush, hush," said the mother, "little gells mustn't chatter." Whereupon the father, shaking with silent laughter, set Totty on the white deal table and desired her to kiss him. Mr. and Mrs. Poyser, you perceive, had no correct principles of education. "Come back to-morrow if Mrs. Bede doesn't want you, Dinah," said Mrs. Poyser: "but you can stay, you know, if she's ill." So, when the good-byes had been said, Dinah and Adam left the Hall Farm together.

Chapter 49

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter49

At the Hall Farm Eighteen months later, Mrs. Poyser is trying to talk Dinah out of leaving for Snowfield. She has been staying with the Poysers to help them through the tragedy. Mrs. Poyser tries to convince her she can minister to the poor in Hayslope; there are many people who depend on her. Dinah says she must avoid the temptation of luxury and go back to the mill where she is needed more. Dinah reminds her aunt that she has stayed to see them all back on their feet, and they are well and prosperous. It is mentioned that old Mr. Poyser died the previous year, the reason for Mrs. Poyser wearing black. When Adam Bede comes to the farm, Dinah blushes. Adam has come to fetch her for his mother, who is ailing. He explains his mother is working too hard but will not let him hire a girl to help her. Mrs. Poyser announces to the family at tea that Dinah is leaving, and she looks disturbed and rushes from the room crying. Everyone had counted on Dinah staying, even Mr. Irwine who treats her like a lady. Adam speaks of his great success with the woods and new building. Mr. Poyser mentions that Burge will no doubt want Adam to take more part in the business, and Adam says he would like to buy the business for himself so he can do as he likes. He gets along with the new Donnithorne steward and Mr. Irwine's management but prefers to be on his own.

Commentary on Chapter 49 The argument between Dinah and her aunt fill the reader in with what has happened since the trial. Dinah has been a peacemaker, helping the Poysers re-integrate with the community. Dinah mentions their friends and neighbors being supportive, something that the Poysers had feared would never happen. They are not the outcasts they had imagined themselves but once more installed in their old position. Dinah seems a bit mysterious about why she has to leave. She is blushing and crying. Adam has never seen her look upset before, but he cannot read her behavior. She seems to be running away to Snowfield and covering up something. All this is highly uncharacteristic of Dinah. If readers remember how she blushed in Adam's presence before, they may surmise she is in love with him.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/50.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_50_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 50

chapter 50

{"name": "Chapter 50", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter50", "summary": "In the Cottage Dinah and Adam walk together to the Bede cottage, and Adam tells her the Poysers will miss her. She answers that the Poysers' sorrow is healed, and she is called back to her old work. Adam says he puts her above all his other friends and regards her as a sister. He does not understand her agitation at his words. They change topics and speak of Arthur, \"the poor young man,\" as Dinah calls him . Arthur is off fighting Napoleon and the French. The war will soon be over, but Arthur does not feel ready to come home. Dinah mentions his warm-hearted nature, and how our trial is to see good in the midst of evil. At the cottage, Seth sees Dinah's tears that Adam does not see. Lisbeth also sees Dinah's upset and asks her what is wrong. The two women spend the evening together, and Dinah tells her she is leaving. The narrator switches to Adam, mentioning that his great sorrow was still with him but it was quietly transforming him to a greater love and sympathy for others. He is more tolerant of Seth and his mother. His work has also been part of his religion, his way of doing good in the world. His work is his life now, and he does not see that romance will ever touch him again. He is surprised Dinah does not love Seth, who seems cut out for her. Dinah is up early and cleaning the house. Adam surprises her and tries to joke with her, but she is embarrassed. Adam asks her if she is displeased with him and says he doesn't like parting with her. The narrator breaks in to tell us that this is courting, the way two souls gently approach one another by degrees.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 50 The narrator is quite joyful in describing the growing love between Adam and Dinah in the closing chapters, waxing rhapsodic in places. The relationship has been foreshadowed in earlier chapters. Adam is the only man that has made Dinah feel like a woman rather than a saint. Some critics feel that Dinah's attraction to Adam seems out of character, but she has always seen him as noble and unlike other men. He is not a Methodist, but he is sincerely religious and lives his religion. He is generous and not restrictive to Dinah's wishes. She is the only woman he has ever looked up to or thought better than himself. Like Mr. Irwine, he respects her and shows it in regarding her as an equal. In this part of the novel, Eliot wants to show how someone could rebound from tragedy, how the mind knits itself back together in the mystery of love. It is not always possible to predict where love will put people together, as Adam has said before. Neither he nor Arthur could resist Hetty, and Dinah prefers Adam to Seth, the one who seems made for her. Adam's and Dinah's is not a violent love, but a gentle, healing love that grows out of the tragedy they both witnessed. They have found strength in each other. Adam is taking some time to get over his sorrow and so cannot ever imagine being in love again, though he admits Dinah is his best friend. She already knows that she feels love, but as will become apparent, she is afraid the earthly love conflicts with her divine duty. Both have to grow from the events they have been through in order to be together. Adam himself will realize that he was not ready for Dinah until he went through the agony with Hetty and purified himself. Eliot mentions that it is natural for lovers to delicately approach one another for a while. Love is subtle like music. Readers might see the last book as a bit sentimental compared to the rest of the story, but for Eliot, it is as important to see the principles of healing as it is to observe the principles of suffering. She thus wraps up the story in stages, with little mini-essays on love and healing. This part of the novel contrasts with the tragedy of the main action. Once again, we get idyllic pastoral scenes as in the beginning of the story, along with humor, and local color. Each character finds his or her own place, so that society can begin anew in Hayslope."}

ADAM did not ask Dinah to take his arm when they got out into the lane. He had never yet done so, often as they had walked together, for he had observed that she never walked arm-in-arm with Seth, and he thought, perhaps, that kind of support was not agreeable to her. So they walked apart, though side by side, and the close poke of her little black bonnet hid her face from him. "You can't be happy, then, to make the Hall Farm your home, Dinah?" Adam said, with the quiet interest of a brother, who has no anxiety for himself in the matter. "It's a pity, seeing they're so fond of you." "You know, Adam, my heart is as their heart, so far as love for them and care for their welfare goes, but they are in no present need. Their sorrows are healed, and I feel that I am called back to my old work, in which I found a blessing that I have missed of late in the midst of too abundant worldly good. I know it is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the fulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found, in loving obedience. But now, I believe, I have a clear showing that my work lies elsewhere--at least for a time. In the years to come, if my aunt's health should fail, or she should otherwise need me, I shall return." "You know best, Dinah," said Adam. "I don't believe you'd go against the wishes of them that love you, and are akin to you, without a good and sufficient reason in your own conscience. I've no right to say anything about my being sorry: you know well enough what cause I have to put you above every other friend I've got; and if it had been ordered so that you could ha' been my sister, and lived with us all our lives, I should ha' counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to us now. But Seth tells me there's no hope o' that: your feelings are different, and perhaps I'm taking too much upon me to speak about it." Dinah made no answer, and they walked on in silence for some yards, till they came to the stone stile, where, as Adam had passed through first and turned round to give her his hand while she mounted the unusually high step, she could not prevent him from seeing her face. It struck him with surprise, for the grey eyes, usually so mild and grave, had the bright uneasy glance which accompanies suppressed agitation, and the slight flush in her cheeks, with which she had come downstairs, was heightened to a deep rose-colour. She looked as if she were only sister to Dinah. Adam was silent with surprise and conjecture for some moments, and then he said, "I hope I've not hurt or displeased you by what I've said, Dinah. Perhaps I was making too free. I've no wish different from what you see to be best, and I'm satisfied for you to live thirty mile off, if you think it right. I shall think of you just as much as I do now, for you're bound up with what I can no more help remembering than I can help my heart beating." Poor Adam! Thus do men blunder. Dinah made no answer, but she presently said, "Have you heard any news from that poor young man, since we last spoke of him?" Dinah always called Arthur so; she had never lost the image of him as she had seen him in the prison. "Yes," said Adam. "Mr. Irwine read me part of a letter from him yesterday. It's pretty certain, they say, that there'll be a peace soon, though nobody believes it'll last long; but he says he doesn't mean to come home. He's no heart for it yet, and it's better for others that he should keep away. Mr. Irwine thinks he's in the right not to come. It's a sorrowful letter. He asks about you and the Poysers, as he always does. There's one thing in the letter cut me a good deal: 'You can't think what an old fellow I feel,' he says; 'I make no schemes now. I'm the best when I've a good day's march or fighting before me.'" "He's of a rash, warm-hearted nature, like Esau, for whom I have always felt great pity," said Dinah. "That meeting between the brothers, where Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful, notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of a mean spirit. But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in the midst of much that is unlovely." "Ah," said Adam, "I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at his life so, and think what'll come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solid bit o' work lasts: if it's only laying a floor down, somebody's the better for it being done well, besides the man as does it." They were both glad to talk of subjects that were not personal, and in this way they went on till they passed the bridge across the Willow Brook, when Adam turned round and said, "Ah, here's Seth. I thought he'd be home soon. Does he know of you're going, Dinah?" "Yes, I told him last Sabbath." Adam remembered now that Seth had come home much depressed on Sunday evening, a circumstance which had been very unusual with him of late, for the happiness he had in seeing Dinah every week seemed long to have outweighed the pain of knowing she would never marry him. This evening he had his habitual air of dreamy benignant contentment, until he came quite close to Dinah and saw the traces of tears on her delicate eyelids and eyelashes. He gave one rapid glance at his brother, but Adam was evidently quite outside the current of emotion that had shaken Dinah: he wore his everyday look of unexpectant calm. Seth tried not to let Dinah see that he had noticed her face, and only said, "I'm thankful you're come, Dinah, for Mother's been hungering after the sight of you all day. She began to talk of you the first thing in the morning." When they entered the cottage, Lisbeth was seated in her arm-chair, too tired with setting out the evening meal, a task she always performed a long time beforehand, to go and meet them at the door as usual, when she heard the approaching footsteps. "Coom, child, thee't coom at last," she said, when Dinah went towards her. "What dost mane by lavin' me a week an' ne'er coomin' a-nigh me?" "Dear friend," said Dinah, taking her hand, "you're not well. If I'd known it sooner, I'd have come." "An' how's thee t' know if thee dostna coom? Th' lads on'y know what I tell 'em. As long as ye can stir hand and foot the men think ye're hearty. But I'm none so bad, on'y a bit of a cold sets me achin'. An' th' lads tease me so t' ha' somebody wi' me t' do the work--they make me ache worse wi' talkin'. If thee'dst come and stay wi' me, they'd let me alone. The Poysers canna want thee so bad as I do. But take thy bonnet off, an' let me look at thee." Dinah was moving away, but Lisbeth held her fast, while she was taking off her bonnet, and looked at her face as one looks into a newly gathered snowdrop, to renew the old impressions of purity and gentleness. "What's the matter wi' thee?" said Lisbeth, in astonishment; "thee'st been a-cryin'." "It's only a grief that'll pass away," said Dinah, who did not wish just now to call forth Lisbeth's remonstrances by disclosing her intention to leave Hayslope. "You shall know about it shortly--we'll talk of it to-night. I shall stay with you to-night." Lisbeth was pacified by this prospect. And she had the whole evening to talk with Dinah alone; for there was a new room in the cottage, you remember, built nearly two years ago, in the expectation of a new inmate; and here Adam always sat when he had writing to do or plans to make. Seth sat there too this evening, for he knew his mother would like to have Dinah all to herself. There were two pretty pictures on the two sides of the wall in the cottage. On one side there was the broad-shouldered, large-featured, hardy old woman, in her blue jacket and buff kerchief, with her dim-eyed anxious looks turned continually on the lily face and the slight form in the black dress that were either moving lightly about in helpful activity, or seated close by the old woman's arm-chair, holding her withered hand, with eyes lifted up towards her to speak a language which Lisbeth understood far better than the Bible or the hymn-book. She would scarcely listen to reading at all to-night. "Nay, nay, shut the book," she said. "We mun talk. I want t' know what thee was cryin' about. Hast got troubles o' thy own, like other folks?" On the other side of the wall there were the two brothers so like each other in the midst of their unlikeness: Adam with knit brows, shaggy hair, and dark vigorous colour, absorbed in his "figuring"; Seth, with large rugged features, the close copy of his brother's, but with thin, wavy, brown hair and blue dreamy eyes, as often as not looking vaguely out of the window instead of at his book, although it was a newly bought book--Wesley's abridgment of Madame Guyon's life, which was full of wonder and interest for him. Seth had said to Adam, "Can I help thee with anything in here to-night? I don't want to make a noise in the shop." "No, lad," Adam answered, "there's nothing but what I must do myself. Thee'st got thy new book to read." And often, when Seth was quite unconscious, Adam, as he paused after drawing a line with his ruler, looked at his brother with a kind smile dawning in his eyes. He knew "th' lad liked to sit full o' thoughts he could give no account of; they'd never come t' anything, but they made him happy," and in the last year or so, Adam had been getting more and more indulgent to Seth. It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at work within him. For Adam, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place in Adam yet. There was still a great remnant of pain, and this he felt would subsist as long as her pain was not a memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with the light of every new morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations, beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert. That was Adam's state of mind in this second autumn of his sorrow. His work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God's will--was that form of God's will that most immediately concerned him. But now there was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him gently into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up of hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment and intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could never be anything to him but a living memory--a limb lopped off, but not gone from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all the while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought by a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay, necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet he was aware that common affection and friendship were more precious to him than they used to be--that he clung more to his mother and Seth, and had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or imagination of any small addition to their happiness. The Poysers, too--hardly three or four days passed but he felt the need of seeing them and interchanging words and looks of friendliness with them. He would have felt this, probably, even if Dinah had not been with them, but he had only said the simplest truth in telling Dinah that he put her above all other friends in the world. Could anything be more natural? For in the darkest moments of memory the thought of her always came as the first ray of returning comfort. The early days of gloom at the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft moonlight by her presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had come at every spare moment to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had been stricken with a fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight of her darling Adam's grief-worn face. He had become used to watching her light quiet movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when he went to the Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music; to think everything she said and did was just right, and could not have been better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her for her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a little, into a convenient household slave--though Dinah herself was rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her departure from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that might have been better; she might have loved Seth and consented to marry him. He felt a little vexed, for his brother's sake, and he could not help thinking regretfully how Dinah, as Seth's wife, would have made their home as happy as it could be for them all--how she was the one being that would have soothed their mother's last days into peacefulness and rest. "It's wonderful she doesn't love th' lad," Adam had said sometimes to himself, "for anybody 'ud think he was just cut out for her. But her heart's so taken up with other things. She's one o' those women that feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o' their own. She thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she's been used so to living in other folks's cares, she can't bear the thought of her heart being shut up from 'em. I see how it is, well enough. She's cut out o' different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She's never easy but when she's helping somebody, and marriage 'ud interfere with her ways--that's true. I've no right to be contriving and thinking it 'ud be better if she'd have Seth, as if I was wiser than she is--or than God either, for He made her what she is, and that's one o' the greatest blessings I've ever had from His hands, and others besides me." This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Adam's mind when he gathered from Dinah's face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish that she had accepted Seth, and so he had endeavoured to put into the strongest words his confidence in her decision as right--his resignation even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were chosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much he cared to see her continually--to talk to her with the silent consciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible she should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in his assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the right thing--that, somehow, Dinah had not understood him. Dinah must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for she was downstairs about five o'clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth's obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned to make himself, as Adam said, "very handy in the housework," that he might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalid sister. Adam, who had sat up late at his writing, was still asleep, and was not likely, Seth said, to be down till breakfast-time. Often as Dinah had visited Lisbeth during the last eighteen months, she had never slept in the cottage since that night after Thias's death, when, you remember, Lisbeth praised her deft movements and even gave a modified approval to her porridge. But in that long interval Dinah had made great advances in household cleverness, and this morning, since Seth was there to help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch of cleanliness and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Poyser. The cottage was far from that standard at present, for Lisbeth's rheumatism had forced her to give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and polishing. When the kitchen was to her mind, Dinah went into the new room, where Adam had been writing the night before, to see what sweeping and dusting were needed there. She opened the window and let in the fresh morning air, and the smell of the sweet-brier, and the bright low-slanting rays of the early sun, which made a glory about her pale face and pale auburn hair as she held the long brush, and swept, singing to herself in a very low tone--like a sweet summer murmur that you have to listen for very closely--one of Charles Wesley's hymns: Eternal Beam of Light Divine, Fountain of unexhausted love, In whom the Father's glories shine, Through earth beneath and heaven above; Jesus! the weary wanderer's rest, Give me thy easy yoke to bear; With steadfast patience arm my breast, With spotless love and holy fear. Speak to my warring passions, "Peace!" Say to my trembling heart, "Be still!" Thy power my strength and fortress is, For all things serve thy sovereign will. She laid by the brush and took up the duster; and if you had ever lived in Mrs. Poyser's household, you would know how the duster behaved in Dinah's hand--how it went into every small corner, and on every ledge in and out of sight--how it went again and again round every bar of the chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the table, till it came to Adam's papers and rulers and the open desk near them. Dinah dusted up to the very edge of these and then hesitated, looking at them with a longing but timid eye. It was painful to see how much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, she heard Seth's step just outside the open door, towards which her back was turned, and said, raising her clear treble, "Seth, is your brother wrathful when his papers are stirred?" "Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places," said a deep strong voice, not Seth's. It was as if Dinah had put her hands unawares on a vibrating chord. She was shaken with an intense thrill, and for the instant felt nothing else; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round, but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in a friendly way. Adam, finding that she did not look round so as to see the smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about his wrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look at him. "What! You think I'm a cross fellow at home, Dinah?" he said, smilingly. "Nay," said Dinah, looking up with timid eyes, "not so. But you might be put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses, the meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes." "Come, then," said Adam, looking at her affectionately, "I'll help you move the things, and put 'em back again, and then they can't get wrong. You're getting to be your aunt's own niece, I see, for particularness." They began their little task together, but Dinah had not recovered herself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Adam looked at her uneasily. Dinah, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehow lately; she had not been so kind and open to him as she used to be. He wanted her to look at him, and be as pleased as he was himself with doing this bit of playful work. But Dinah did not look at him--it was easy for her to avoid looking at the tall man--and when at last there was no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to linger near her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleading tone, "Dinah, you're not displeased with me for anything, are you? I've not said or done anything to make you think ill of me?" The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course to her feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with the tears coming, and said, "Oh, no, Adam! how could you think so?" "I couldn't bear you not to feel as much a friend to me as I do to you," said Adam. "And you don't know the value I set on the very thought of you, Dinah. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I'd be content for you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of you was worth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and not grumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting with you, Dinah?" "Yes, dear friend," said Dinah, trembling, but trying to speak calmly, "I know you have a brother's heart towards me, and we shall often be with one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness through manifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to leave my kindred for a while; but it is a trial--the flesh is weak." Adam saw that it pained her to be obliged to answer. "I hurt you by talking about it, Dinah," he said. "I'll say no more. Let's see if Seth's ready with breakfast now." That is a simple scene, reader. But it is almost certain that you, too, have been in love--perhaps, even, more than once, though you may not choose to say so to all your feminine friends. If so, you will no more think the slight words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by which two human souls approach each other gradually, like two little quivering rain-streams, before they mingle into one--you will no more think these things trivial than you will think the first-detected signs of coming spring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable something in the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest perceptible budding on the hedge-row branches. Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as "light," "sound," "stars," "music"--words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than "chips" or "sawdust." It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, "light" and "music," stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching your present with your most precious past.

Chapter 50

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter50

In the Cottage Dinah and Adam walk together to the Bede cottage, and Adam tells her the Poysers will miss her. She answers that the Poysers' sorrow is healed, and she is called back to her old work. Adam says he puts her above all his other friends and regards her as a sister. He does not understand her agitation at his words. They change topics and speak of Arthur, "the poor young man," as Dinah calls him . Arthur is off fighting Napoleon and the French. The war will soon be over, but Arthur does not feel ready to come home. Dinah mentions his warm-hearted nature, and how our trial is to see good in the midst of evil. At the cottage, Seth sees Dinah's tears that Adam does not see. Lisbeth also sees Dinah's upset and asks her what is wrong. The two women spend the evening together, and Dinah tells her she is leaving. The narrator switches to Adam, mentioning that his great sorrow was still with him but it was quietly transforming him to a greater love and sympathy for others. He is more tolerant of Seth and his mother. His work has also been part of his religion, his way of doing good in the world. His work is his life now, and he does not see that romance will ever touch him again. He is surprised Dinah does not love Seth, who seems cut out for her. Dinah is up early and cleaning the house. Adam surprises her and tries to joke with her, but she is embarrassed. Adam asks her if she is displeased with him and says he doesn't like parting with her. The narrator breaks in to tell us that this is courting, the way two souls gently approach one another by degrees.

Commentary on Chapter 50 The narrator is quite joyful in describing the growing love between Adam and Dinah in the closing chapters, waxing rhapsodic in places. The relationship has been foreshadowed in earlier chapters. Adam is the only man that has made Dinah feel like a woman rather than a saint. Some critics feel that Dinah's attraction to Adam seems out of character, but she has always seen him as noble and unlike other men. He is not a Methodist, but he is sincerely religious and lives his religion. He is generous and not restrictive to Dinah's wishes. She is the only woman he has ever looked up to or thought better than himself. Like Mr. Irwine, he respects her and shows it in regarding her as an equal. In this part of the novel, Eliot wants to show how someone could rebound from tragedy, how the mind knits itself back together in the mystery of love. It is not always possible to predict where love will put people together, as Adam has said before. Neither he nor Arthur could resist Hetty, and Dinah prefers Adam to Seth, the one who seems made for her. Adam's and Dinah's is not a violent love, but a gentle, healing love that grows out of the tragedy they both witnessed. They have found strength in each other. Adam is taking some time to get over his sorrow and so cannot ever imagine being in love again, though he admits Dinah is his best friend. She already knows that she feels love, but as will become apparent, she is afraid the earthly love conflicts with her divine duty. Both have to grow from the events they have been through in order to be together. Adam himself will realize that he was not ready for Dinah until he went through the agony with Hetty and purified himself. Eliot mentions that it is natural for lovers to delicately approach one another for a while. Love is subtle like music. Readers might see the last book as a bit sentimental compared to the rest of the story, but for Eliot, it is as important to see the principles of healing as it is to observe the principles of suffering. She thus wraps up the story in stages, with little mini-essays on love and healing. This part of the novel contrasts with the tragedy of the main action. Once again, we get idyllic pastoral scenes as in the beginning of the story, along with humor, and local color. Each character finds his or her own place, so that society can begin anew in Hayslope.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/51.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_51_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 51

chapter 51

{"name": "Chapter 51", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter51", "summary": "Sunday Morning Dinah is questioned by Lisbeth about her leaving. Lisbeth complains that she hasn't long to live and will never see Dinah again. Then she launches into a topic embarrassing to Dinah: a husband. Lisbeth admits Seth is not the right husband, but asks her what she thinks of Adam? He would be a proper husband. Dinah escapes as soon as she can for the Hall Farm. When Seth comes in, Lisbeth says to him that Dinah would stay if Adam would marry her. Seth is surprised and asks Lisbeth if Dinah has said so. Lisbeth says it is written all over her. Sunday mornings are the happiest for Lisbeth, because Adam stays home and reads his Bible in the same room with her. She makes up her mind to speak to Adam about Dinah, but doesn't know how to begin. When she sees in Adam's Bible the picture of the angel on Christ's tomb, she blurts out, \"That's her--that's Dinah\" . Lisbeth uses this to start the conversation where she tells Adam he should marry Dinah; they were meant for each other, and Dinah loves him. He is struck by this idea and feels \"a resurrection of his dead joy\" . He decides to talk to Seth about it since he was the one who wanted to marry Dinah. Seth is unselfish and says he will not stand in the way, but he is sure Dinah doesn't want to marry because of her calling.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 51 Lisbeth has been a secondary character, but here she takes a part in shaping the outcome of the story. Though she is afraid of displeasing Adam, she sees right through Dinah's feelings, and she decides to take a chance to tell Adam about it. She, like Mrs. Poyser, does not want to part with Dinah, and has always dreamed of having her for a daughter-in-law. She is very particular whom she will let in the house, not even allowing a hired servant. Dinah is Lisbeth's own best insurance for a happy old age, but more than that, finally she has grown to the point where she wants happiness for her son. Opposed to her sons' marriage in the beginning, she knows she hasn't long to live, and wants to see Adam settled with a good wife. The narrator mentions that the tragedy had affected her too, that it had quieted down her selfish demands. For once, Adam listens to his mother because she is wise in this matter. His sudden conversion from being blind to love to completely open to the suggestion may strain the belief of some, but it is not uncommon in grief to be unable to imagine loving again. He was so used to Dinah as a sister that the other suggestion never directly entered his mind. Adam is a man of action, however, and does not waste time as soon as he gets the point. Seth may seem too good to be true as the completely unselfish brother without the slightest trace of jealousy, but it is in keeping with his character and religion. He has made it plain he would like to be around Dinah in any way possible."}

LISBETH'S touch of rheumatism could not be made to appear serious enough to detain Dinah another night from the Hall Farm, now she had made up her mind to leave her aunt so soon, and at evening the friends must part. "For a long while," Dinah had said, for she had told Lisbeth of her resolve. "Then it'll be for all my life, an' I shall ne'er see thee again," said Lisbeth. "Long while! I'n got no long while t' live. An' I shall be took bad an' die, an' thee canst ne'er come a-nigh me, an' I shall die a-longing for thee." That had been the key-note of her wailing talk all day; for Adam was not in the house, and so she put no restraint on her complaining. She had tried poor Dinah by returning again and again to the question, why she must go away; and refusing to accept reasons, which seemed to her nothing but whim and "contrairiness"; and still more, by regretting that she "couldna' ha' one o' the lads" and be her daughter. "Thee couldstna put up wi' Seth," she said. "He isna cliver enough for thee, happen, but he'd ha' been very good t' thee--he's as handy as can be at doin' things for me when I'm bad, an' he's as fond o' the Bible an' chappellin' as thee art thysen. But happen, thee'dst like a husband better as isna just the cut o' thysen: the runnin' brook isna athirst for th' rain. Adam 'ud ha' done for thee--I know he would--an' he might come t' like thee well enough, if thee'dst stop. But he's as stubborn as th' iron bar--there's no bending him no way but's own. But he'd be a fine husband for anybody, be they who they will, so looked-on an' so cliver as he is. And he'd be rare an' lovin': it does me good on'y a look o' the lad's eye when he means kind tow'rt me." Dinah tried to escape from Lisbeth's closest looks and questions by finding little tasks of housework that kept her moving about, and as soon as Seth came home in the evening she put on her bonnet to go. It touched Dinah keenly to say the last good-bye, and still more to look round on her way across the fields and see the old woman still standing at the door, gazing after her till she must have been the faintest speck in the dim aged eyes. "The God of love and peace be with them," Dinah prayed, as she looked back from the last stile. "Make them glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted them, and the years wherein they have seen evil. It is thy will that I should part from them; let me have no will but thine." Lisbeth turned into the house at last and sat down in the workshop near Seth, who was busying himself there with fitting some bits of turned wood he had brought from the village into a small work-box, which he meant to give to Dinah before she went away. "Thee't see her again o' Sunday afore she goes," were her first words. "If thee wast good for anything, thee'dst make her come in again o' Sunday night wi' thee, and see me once more." "Nay, Mother," said Seth. "Dinah 'ud be sure to come again if she saw right to come. I should have no need to persuade her. She only thinks it 'ud be troubling thee for nought, just to come in to say good-bye over again." "She'd ne'er go away, I know, if Adam 'ud be fond on her an' marry her, but everything's so contrairy," said Lisbeth, with a burst of vexation. Seth paused a moment and looked up, with a slight blush, at his mother's face. "What! Has she said anything o' that sort to thee, Mother?" he said, in a lower tone. "Said? Nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till folks say things afore they find 'em out." "Well, but what makes thee think so, Mother? What's put it into thy head?" "It's no matter what's put it into my head. My head's none so hollow as it must get in, an' nought to put it there. I know she's fond on him, as I know th' wind's comin' in at the door, an' that's anoof. An' he might be willin' to marry her if he know'd she's fond on him, but he'll ne'er think on't if somebody doesna put it into's head." His mother's suggestion about Dinah's feeling towards Adam was not quite a new thought to Seth, but her last words alarmed him, lest she should herself undertake to open Adam's eyes. He was not sure about Dinah's feeling, and he thought he was sure about Adam's. "Nay, Mother, nay," he said, earnestly, "thee mustna think o' speaking o' such things to Adam. Thee'st no right to say what Dinah's feelings are if she hasna told thee, and it 'ud do nothing but mischief to say such things to Adam. He feels very grateful and affectionate toward Dinah, but he's no thoughts towards her that 'ud incline him to make her his wife, and I don't believe Dinah 'ud marry him either. I don't think she'll marry at all." "Eh," said Lisbeth, impatiently. "Thee think'st so 'cause she wouldna ha' thee. She'll ne'er marry thee; thee mightst as well like her t' ha' thy brother." Seth was hurt. "Mother," he said, in a remonstrating tone, "don't think that of me. I should be as thankful t' have her for a sister as thee wouldst t' have her for a daughter. I've no more thoughts about myself in that thing, and I shall take it hard if ever thee say'st it again." "Well, well, then thee shouldstna cross me wi' sayin' things arena as I say they are." "But, Mother," said Seth, "thee'dst be doing Dinah a wrong by telling Adam what thee think'st about her. It 'ud do nothing but mischief, for it 'ud make Adam uneasy if he doesna feel the same to her. And I'm pretty sure he feels nothing o' the sort." "Eh, donna tell me what thee't sure on; thee know'st nought about it. What's he allays goin' to the Poysers' for, if he didna want t' see her? He goes twice where he used t' go once. Happen he knowsna as he wants t' see her; he knowsna as I put salt in's broth, but he'd miss it pretty quick if it warna there. He'll ne'er think o' marrying if it isna put into's head, an' if thee'dst any love for thy mother, thee'dst put him up to't an' not let her go away out o' my sight, when I might ha' her to make a bit o' comfort for me afore I go to bed to my old man under the white thorn." "Nay, Mother," said Seth, "thee mustna think me unkind, but I should be going against my conscience if I took upon me to say what Dinah's feelings are. And besides that, I think I should give offence to Adam by speaking to him at all about marrying; and I counsel thee not to do't. Thee may'st be quite deceived about Dinah. Nay, I'm pretty sure, by words she said to me last Sabbath, as she's no mind to marry." "Eh, thee't as contrairy as the rest on 'em. If it war summat I didna want, it 'ud be done fast enough." Lisbeth rose from the bench at this, and went out of the workshop, leaving Seth in much anxiety lest she should disturb Adam's mind about Dinah. He consoled himself after a time with reflecting that, since Adam's trouble, Lisbeth had been very timid about speaking to him on matters of feeling, and that she would hardly dare to approach this tenderest of all subjects. Even if she did, he hoped Adam would not take much notice of what she said. Seth was right in believing that Lisbeth would be held in restraint by timidity, and during the next three days, the intervals in which she had an opportunity of speaking to Adam were too rare and short to cause her any strong temptation. But in her long solitary hours she brooded over her regretful thoughts about Dinah, till they had grown very near that point of unmanageable strength when thoughts are apt to take wing out of their secret nest in a startling manner. And on Sunday morning, when Seth went away to chapel at Treddleston, the dangerous opportunity came. Sunday morning was the happiest time in all the week to Lisbeth, for as there was no service at Hayslope church till the afternoon, Adam was always at home, doing nothing but reading, an occupation in which she could venture to interrupt him. Moreover, she had always a better dinner than usual to prepare for her sons--very frequently for Adam and herself alone, Seth being often away the entire day--and the smell of the roast meat before the clear fire in the clean kitchen, the clock ticking in a peaceful Sunday manner, her darling Adam seated near her in his best clothes, doing nothing very important, so that she could go and stroke her hand across his hair if she liked, and see him look up at her and smile, while Gyp, rather jealous, poked his muzzle up between them--all these things made poor Lisbeth's earthly paradise. The book Adam most often read on a Sunday morning was his large pictured Bible, and this morning it lay open before him on the round white deal table in the kitchen; for he sat there in spite of the fire, because he knew his mother liked to have him with her, and it was the only day in the week when he could indulge her in that way. You would have liked to see Adam reading his Bible. He never opened it on a weekday, and so he came to it as a holiday book, serving him for history, biography, and poetry. He held one hand thrust between his waistcoat buttons, and the other ready to turn the pages, and in the course of the morning you would have seen many changes in his face. Sometimes his lips moved in semi-articulation--it was when he came to a speech that he could fancy himself uttering, such as Samuel's dying speech to the people; then his eyebrows would be raised, and the corners of his mouth would quiver a little with sad sympathy--something, perhaps old Isaac's meeting with his son, touched him closely; at other times, over the New Testament, a very solemn look would come upon his face, and he would every now and then shake his head in serious assent, or just lift up his hand and let it fall again. And on some mornings, when he read in the Apocrypha, of which he was very fond, the son of Sirach's keen-edged words would bring a delighted smile, though he also enjoyed the freedom of occasionally differing from an Apocryphal writer. For Adam knew the Articles quite well, as became a good churchman. Lisbeth, in the pauses of attending to her dinner, always sat opposite to him and watched him, till she could rest no longer without going up to him and giving him a caress, to call his attention to her. This morning he was reading the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and Lisbeth had been standing close by him for some minutes, stroking his hair, which was smoother than usual this morning, and looking down at the large page with silent wonderment at the mystery of letters. She was encouraged to continue this caress, because when she first went up to him, he had thrown himself back in his chair to look at her affectionately and say, "Why, Mother, thee look'st rare and hearty this morning. Eh, Gyp wants me t' look at him. He can't abide to think I love thee the best." Lisbeth said nothing, because she wanted to say so many things. And now there was a new leaf to be turned over, and it was a picture--that of the angel seated on the great stone that has been rolled away from the sepulchre. This picture had one strong association in Lisbeth's memory, for she had been reminded of it when she first saw Dinah, and Adam had no sooner turned the page, and lifted the book sideways that they might look at the angel, than she said, "That's her--that's Dinah." Adam smiled, and, looking more intently at the angel's face, said, "It is a bit like her; but Dinah's prettier, I think." "Well, then, if thee think'st her so pretty, why arn't fond on her?" Adam looked up in surprise. "Why, Mother, dost think I don't set store by Dinah?" "Nay," said Lisbeth, frightened at her own courage, yet feeling that she had broken the ice, and the waters must flow, whatever mischief they might do. "What's th' use o' settin' store by things as are thirty mile off? If thee wast fond enough on her, thee wouldstna let her go away." "But I've no right t' hinder her, if she thinks well," said Adam, looking at his book as if he wanted to go on reading. He foresaw a series of complaints tending to nothing. Lisbeth sat down again in the chair opposite to him, as she said: "But she wouldna think well if thee wastna so contrairy." Lisbeth dared not venture beyond a vague phrase yet. "Contrairy, mother?" Adam said, looking up again in some anxiety. "What have I done? What dost mean?" "Why, thee't never look at nothin', nor think o' nothin', but thy figurin, an' thy work," said Lisbeth, half-crying. "An' dost think thee canst go on so all thy life, as if thee wast a man cut out o' timber? An' what wut do when thy mother's gone, an' nobody to take care on thee as thee gett'st a bit o' victual comfortable i' the mornin'?" "What hast got i' thy mind, Mother?" said Adam, vexed at this whimpering. "I canna see what thee't driving at. Is there anything I could do for thee as I don't do?" "Aye, an' that there is. Thee might'st do as I should ha' somebody wi' me to comfort me a bit, an' wait on me when I'm bad, an' be good to me." "Well, Mother, whose fault is it there isna some tidy body i' th' house t' help thee? It isna by my wish as thee hast a stroke o' work to do. We can afford it--I've told thee often enough. It 'ud be a deal better for us." "Eh, what's the use o' talking o' tidy bodies, when thee mean'st one o' th' wenches out o' th' village, or somebody from Treddles'on as I ne'er set eyes on i' my life? I'd sooner make a shift an' get into my own coffin afore I die, nor ha' them folks to put me in." Adam was silent, and tried to go on reading. That was the utmost severity he could show towards his mother on a Sunday morning. But Lisbeth had gone too far now to check herself, and after scarcely a minute's quietness she began again. "Thee mightst know well enough who 'tis I'd like t' ha' wi' me. It isna many folks I send for t' come an' see me. I reckon. An' thee'st had the fetchin' on her times enow." "Thee mean'st Dinah, Mother, I know," said Adam. "But it's no use setting thy mind on what can't be. If Dinah 'ud be willing to stay at Hayslope, it isn't likely she can come away from her aunt's house, where they hold her like a daughter, and where she's more bound than she is to us. If it had been so that she could ha' married Seth, that 'ud ha' been a great blessing to us, but we can't have things just as we like in this life. Thee must try and make up thy mind to do without her." "Nay, but I canna ma' up my mind, when she's just cut out for thee; an' nought shall ma' me believe as God didna make her an' send her there o' purpose for thee. What's it sinnify about her bein' a Methody! It 'ud happen wear out on her wi' marryin'." Adam threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He understood now what she had been aiming at from the beginning of the conversation. It was as unreasonable, impracticable a wish as she had ever urged, but he could not help being moved by so entirely new an idea. The chief point, however, was to chase away the notion from his mother's mind as quickly as possible. "Mother," he said, gravely, "thee't talking wild. Don't let me hear thee say such things again. It's no good talking o' what can never be. Dinah's not for marrying; she's fixed her heart on a different sort o' life." "Very like," said Lisbeth, impatiently, "very like she's none for marr'ing, when them as she'd be willin' t' marry wonna ax her. I shouldna ha' been for marr'ing thy feyther if he'd ne'er axed me; an' she's as fond o' thee as e'er I war o' Thias, poor fellow." The blood rushed to Adam's face, and for a few moments he was not quite conscious where he was. His mother and the kitchen had vanished for him, and he saw nothing but Dinah's face turned up towards his. It seemed as if there were a resurrection of his dead joy. But he woke up very speedily from that dream (the waking was chill and sad), for it would have been very foolish in him to believe his mother's words--she could have no ground for them. He was prompted to express his disbelief very strongly--perhaps that he might call forth the proofs, if there were any to be offered. "What dost say such things for, Mother, when thee'st got no foundation for 'em? Thee know'st nothing as gives thee a right to say that." "Then I knowna nought as gi'es me a right to say as the year's turned, for all I feel it fust thing when I get up i' th' morning. She isna fond o' Seth, I reckon, is she? She doesna want to marry HIM? But I can see as she doesna behave tow'rt thee as she daes tow'rt Seth. She makes no more o' Seth's coming a-nigh her nor if he war Gyp, but she's all of a tremble when thee't a-sittin' down by her at breakfast an' a-looking at her. Thee think'st thy mother knows nought, but she war alive afore thee wast born." "But thee canstna be sure as the trembling means love?" said Adam anxiously. "Eh, what else should it mane? It isna hate, I reckon. An' what should she do but love thee? Thee't made to be loved--for where's there a straighter cliverer man? An' what's it sinnify her bein' a Methody? It's on'y the marigold i' th' parridge." Adam had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was looking down at the book on the table, without seeing any of the letters. He was trembling like a gold-seeker who sees the strong promise of gold but sees in the same moment a sickening vision of disappointment. He could not trust his mother's insight; she had seen what she wished to see. And yet--and yet, now the suggestion had been made to him, he remembered so many things, very slight things, like the stirring of the water by an imperceptible breeze, which seemed to him some confirmation of his mother's words. Lisbeth noticed that he was moved. She went on, "An' thee't find out as thee't poorly aff when she's gone. Thee't fonder on her nor thee know'st. Thy eyes follow her about, welly as Gyp's follow thee." Adam could sit still no longer. He rose, took down his hat, and went out into the fields. The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we should know was not summer's, even if there were not the touches of yellow on the lime and chestnut; the Sunday sunshine too, which has more than autumnal calmness for the working man; the morning sunshine, which still leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer webs in the shadow of the bushy hedgerows. Adam needed the calm influence; he was amazed at the way in which this new thought of Dinah's love had taken possession of him, with an overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the impetuous desire to know that the thought was true. Strange, that till that moment the possibility of their ever being lovers had never crossed his mind, and yet now, all his longing suddenly went out towards that possibility. He had no more doubt or hesitation as to his own wishes than the bird that flies towards the opening through which the daylight gleams and the breath of heaven enters. The autumnal Sunday sunshine soothed him, but not by preparing him with resignation to the disappointment if his mother--if he himself--proved to be mistaken about Dinah. It soothed him by gentle encouragement of his hopes. Her love was so like that calm sunshine that they seemed to make one presence to him, and he believed in them both alike. And Dinah was so bound up with the sad memories of his first passion that he was not forsaking them, but rather giving them a new sacredness by loving her. Nay, his love for her had grown out of that past: it was the noon of that morning. But Seth? Would the lad be hurt? Hardly; for he had seemed quite contented of late, and there was no selfish jealousy in him; he had never been jealous of his mother's fondness for Adam. But had he seen anything of what their mother talked about? Adam longed to know this, for he thought he could trust Seth's observation better than his mother's. He must talk to Seth before he went to see Dinah, and, with this intention in his mind, he walked back to the cottage and said to his mother, "Did Seth say anything to thee about when he was coming home? Will he be back to dinner?" "Aye, lad, he'll be back for a wonder. He isna gone to Treddles'on. He's gone somewhere else a-preachin' and a-prayin'." "Hast any notion which way he's gone?" said Adam. "Nay, but he aften goes to th' Common. Thee know'st more o's goings nor I do." Adam wanted to go and meet Seth, but he must content himself with walking about the near fields and getting sight of him as soon as possible. That would not be for more than an hour to come, for Seth would scarcely be at home much before their dinner-time, which was twelve o'clock. But Adam could not sit down to his reading again, and he sauntered along by the brook and stood leaning against the stiles, with eager intense eyes, which looked as if they saw something very vividly; but it was not the brook or the willows, not the fields or the sky. Again and again his vision was interrupted by wonder at the strength of his own feeling, at the strength and sweetness of this new love--almost like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in himself for an art which he had laid aside for a space. How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flutelike voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper music. At last, there was Seth, visible at the farthest stile, and Adam hastened to meet him. Seth was surprised, and thought something unusual must have happened, but when Adam came up, his face said plainly enough that it was nothing alarming. "Where hast been?" said Adam, when they were side by side. "I've been to the Common," said Seth. "Dinah's been speaking the Word to a little company of hearers at Brimstone's, as they call him. They're folks as never go to church hardly--them on the Common--but they'll go and hear Dinah a bit. She's been speaking with power this forenoon from the words, 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' And there was a little thing happened as was pretty to see. The women mostly bring their children with 'em, but to-day there was one stout curly headed fellow about three or four year old, that I never saw there before. He was as naughty as could be at the beginning while I was praying, and while we was singing, but when we all sat down and Dinah began to speak, th' young un stood stock still all at once, and began to look at her with's mouth open, and presently he ran away from's mother and went to Dinah, and pulled at her, like a little dog, for her to take notice of him. So Dinah lifted him up and held th' lad on her lap, while she went on speaking; and he was as good as could be till he went to sleep--and the mother cried to see him." "It's a pity she shouldna be a mother herself," said Adam, "so fond as the children are of her. Dost think she's quite fixed against marrying, Seth? Dost think nothing 'ud turn her?" There was something peculiar in his brother's tone, which made Seth steal a glance at his face before he answered. "It 'ud be wrong of me to say nothing 'ud turn her," he answered. "But if thee mean'st it about myself, I've given up all thoughts as she can ever be my wife. She calls me her brother, and that's enough." "But dost think she might ever get fond enough of anybody else to be willing to marry 'em?" said Adam rather shyly. "Well," said Seth, after some hesitation, "it's crossed my mind sometimes o' late as she might; but Dinah 'ud let no fondness for the creature draw her out o' the path as she believed God had marked out for her. If she thought the leading was not from Him, she's not one to be brought under the power of it. And she's allays seemed clear about that--as her work was to minister t' others, and make no home for herself i' this world." "But suppose," said Adam, earnestly, "suppose there was a man as 'ud let her do just the same and not interfere with her--she might do a good deal o' what she does now, just as well when she was married as when she was single. Other women of her sort have married--that's to say, not just like her, but women as preached and attended on the sick and needy. There's Mrs. Fletcher as she talks of." A new light had broken in on Seth. He turned round, and laying his hand on Adam's shoulder, said, "Why, wouldst like her to marry THEE, Brother?" Adam looked doubtfully at Seth's inquiring eyes and said, "Wouldst be hurt if she was to be fonder o' me than o' thee?" "Nay," said Seth warmly, "how canst think it? Have I felt thy trouble so little that I shouldna feel thy joy?" There was silence a few moments as they walked on, and then Seth said, "I'd no notion as thee'dst ever think of her for a wife." "But is it o' any use to think of her?" said Adam. "What dost say? Mother's made me as I hardly know where I am, with what she's been saying to me this forenoon. She says she's sure Dinah feels for me more than common, and 'ud be willing t' have me. But I'm afraid she speaks without book. I want to know if thee'st seen anything." "It's a nice point to speak about," said Seth, "and I'm afraid o' being wrong; besides, we've no right t' intermeddle with people's feelings when they wouldn't tell 'em themselves." Seth paused. "But thee mightst ask her," he said presently. "She took no offence at me for asking, and thee'st more right than I had, only thee't not in the Society. But Dinah doesn't hold wi' them as are for keeping the Society so strict to themselves. She doesn't mind about making folks enter the Society, so as they're fit t' enter the kingdom o' God. Some o' the brethren at Treddles'on are displeased with her for that." "Where will she be the rest o' the day?" said Adam. "She said she shouldn't leave the farm again to-day," said Seth, "because it's her last Sabbath there, and she's going t' read out o' the big Bible wi' the children." Adam thought--but did not say--"Then I'll go this afternoon; for if I go to church, my thoughts 'ull be with her all the while. They must sing th' anthem without me to-day."

Chapter 51

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter51

Sunday Morning Dinah is questioned by Lisbeth about her leaving. Lisbeth complains that she hasn't long to live and will never see Dinah again. Then she launches into a topic embarrassing to Dinah: a husband. Lisbeth admits Seth is not the right husband, but asks her what she thinks of Adam? He would be a proper husband. Dinah escapes as soon as she can for the Hall Farm. When Seth comes in, Lisbeth says to him that Dinah would stay if Adam would marry her. Seth is surprised and asks Lisbeth if Dinah has said so. Lisbeth says it is written all over her. Sunday mornings are the happiest for Lisbeth, because Adam stays home and reads his Bible in the same room with her. She makes up her mind to speak to Adam about Dinah, but doesn't know how to begin. When she sees in Adam's Bible the picture of the angel on Christ's tomb, she blurts out, "That's her--that's Dinah" . Lisbeth uses this to start the conversation where she tells Adam he should marry Dinah; they were meant for each other, and Dinah loves him. He is struck by this idea and feels "a resurrection of his dead joy" . He decides to talk to Seth about it since he was the one who wanted to marry Dinah. Seth is unselfish and says he will not stand in the way, but he is sure Dinah doesn't want to marry because of her calling.

Commentary on Chapter 51 Lisbeth has been a secondary character, but here she takes a part in shaping the outcome of the story. Though she is afraid of displeasing Adam, she sees right through Dinah's feelings, and she decides to take a chance to tell Adam about it. She, like Mrs. Poyser, does not want to part with Dinah, and has always dreamed of having her for a daughter-in-law. She is very particular whom she will let in the house, not even allowing a hired servant. Dinah is Lisbeth's own best insurance for a happy old age, but more than that, finally she has grown to the point where she wants happiness for her son. Opposed to her sons' marriage in the beginning, she knows she hasn't long to live, and wants to see Adam settled with a good wife. The narrator mentions that the tragedy had affected her too, that it had quieted down her selfish demands. For once, Adam listens to his mother because she is wise in this matter. His sudden conversion from being blind to love to completely open to the suggestion may strain the belief of some, but it is not uncommon in grief to be unable to imagine loving again. He was so used to Dinah as a sister that the other suggestion never directly entered his mind. Adam is a man of action, however, and does not waste time as soon as he gets the point. Seth may seem too good to be true as the completely unselfish brother without the slightest trace of jealousy, but it is in keeping with his character and religion. He has made it plain he would like to be around Dinah in any way possible.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/52.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_52_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 52

chapter 52

{"name": "Chapter 52", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter52", "summary": "Adam and Dinah Adam walks to Hall Farm while the family is at church. He does not go to church so he can speak to Dinah alone. Dinah blushes as usual when Adam enters. They are both awkward with each other, but finally Adam blurts out that he loves her. She trembles with joy, crying, and returns his love but explains she has to submit to God's will to do his work. She is going away to resist temptation. She has known the perfect joy of having no personal life of her own, and she is afraid she will lose this blessedness of helping others and living in the divine will. If she has doubts about it, their love will not be a blessing. Adam says he will not urge her against her conscience and will resign himself if he has to. She says she would like to test it out by going to Snowfield for a while to see if it is true she is called back. He agrees to the test. They walk out to meet the Poysers coming back from church. The Poysers are surprised to see the couple walking together and wonder if they are courting. The narrator ends the chapter with a long reminiscent essay on how beautiful and slow country life was in the days of Adam Bede.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 52 This courting scene contrasts with the clandestine and violent nature of Arthur's and Hetty's affair. Adam and Dinah are honest about their feelings for one another. Dinah raises the difficulty for her of her faith and work. For Adam, their love is part of God's doing and will, but for Dinah who has known the happiness of a nun's devotion to God, it is a temptation. She has married God, and now she does not know what to do when she is in love with a man. Adam does not fight her doubt but wisely agrees to the test. He could push, but he respects Dinah too much, and it would be the surest way to lose her. She has to wait for a clear conscience. Eliot shows an ideal relationship where a couple work things out together and meet on the soul level, rather than the level of pride and ego. They both want what is best and most unselfish."}

IT was about three o'clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was gone to church "but th' young missis"--so he called Dinah--but this did not disappoint Adam, although the "everybody" was so liberal as to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not unfrequently incompatible with church-going. There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed, and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the water gently dripping from the pump--that was the only sound--and he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that stillness. The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her without any difficulty, "I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were not at home." But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in Mr. Poyser's three-cornered chair. "Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?" Dinah said, recovering herself. "Seth said she was well this morning." "No, she's very hearty to-day," said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah's feeling at the sight of him, but shy. "There's nobody at home, you see," Dinah said; "but you'll wait. You've been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless." "Yes," Adam said, and then paused, before he added, "I was thinking about you: that was the reason." This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, "Do not be careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound at Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in going." "But if things were different, Dinah," said Adam, hesitatingly. "If you knew things that perhaps you don't know now...." Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting. She wondered, and was afraid--and the next moment her thoughts flew to the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she didn't know? Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now a self-forgetful questioning in them--for a moment he forgot that he wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he meant. "Dinah," he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, "I love you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me." Dinah's lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between Adam's. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast. "Don't tell me you can't love me, Dinah. Don't tell me we must part and pass our lives away from one another." The tears were trembling in Dinah's eyes, and they fell before she could answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice. "Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part." "Not if you love me, Dinah--not if you love me," Adam said passionately. "Tell me--tell me if you can love me better than a brother?" Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere eyes as she said, "Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you; and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually. I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours." Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in delicious silence--for the first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself. "Then, Dinah," Adam said at last, "how can there be anything contrary to what's right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good. I'd never think o' putting myself between you and God, and saying you oughtn't to do this and you oughtn't to do that. You'd follow your conscience as much as you do now." "Yes, Adam," Dinah said, "I know marriage is a holy state for those who are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned, when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given me and I had put away from me." "But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you love me so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn't that a sign that it's right for you to change your life? Doesn't the love make it right when nothing else would?" "Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear that I must go away." "But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you love me...it's all different now. You won't think o' going. You'll stay, and be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never thanked him before." "Adam, it's hard to me to turn a deaf ear...you know it's hard; but a great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard, and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer's cross." Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. "Adam," she went on, "you wouldn't desire that we should seek a good through any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn't believe that could be a good. We are of one mind in that." "Yes, Dinah," said Adam sadly, "I'll never be the man t' urge you against your conscience. But I can't give up the hope that you may come to see different. I don't believe your loving me could shut up your heart--it's only adding to what you've been before, not taking away from it. For it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with sorrow--the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to 'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, "And you can do almost as much as you do now. I won't ask you to go to church with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and teach 'em; for though I like church best, I don't put my soul above yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you'll have more means o' making 'em a bit comfortable; and you'll be among all your own friends as love you, and can help 'em and be a blessing to 'em till their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you'd be as near to God as if you was living lonely and away from me." Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands and looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, "Adam there is truth in what you say, and there's many of the brethren and sisters who have greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I have led is like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will. We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the altar." Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked at her. "But you may come to feel satisfied...to feel that you may come to me again, and we may never part, Dinah?" "We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made clear. It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait." "Dinah," said Adam mournfully, "you can't love me so well as I love you, else you'd have no doubts. But it's natural you shouldn't, for I'm not so good as you. I can't doubt it's right for me to love the best thing God's ever given me to know." "Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me--you will not hinder me in seeking to obey to the uttermost." "Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I'll speak no word to disturb you." They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the family coming from church. Adam said, "Take my arm, Dinah," and she took it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going away--in the uncertainty of the issue--could rob the sweetness from Adam's sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could. "Hey-day! There's Adam along wi' Dinah," said Mr. Poyser, as he opened the far gate into the Home Close. "I couldna think how he happened away from church. Why," added good Martin, after a moment's pause, "what dost think has just jumped into my head?" "Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as Adam's fond o' Dinah." "Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?" "To be sure I have," said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. "I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after." "Thee never saidst a word to me about it." "Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking." "But Dinah 'll ha' none o' him. Dost think she will?" "Nay," said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a possible surprise, "she'll never marry anybody, if he isn't a Methodist and a cripple." "It 'ud ha' been a pretty thing though for 'em t' marry," said Martin, turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new idea. "Thee'dst ha' liked it too, wouldstna?" "Ah! I should. I should ha' been sure of her then, as she wouldn't go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an' most of 'em women as I'd be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like their'n. There may well be streaky butter i' the market. An' I should be glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a house of her own over her head; and we'd stock her well wi' linen and feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An' she makes one feel safer when she's i' the house, for she's like the driven snow: anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow." "Dinah," said Tommy, running forward to meet her, "mother says you'll never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!" a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness. "Why, Adam, we missed you i' the singing to-day," said Mr. Poyser. "How was it?" "I wanted to see Dinah--she's going away so soon," said Adam. "Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband somewhere i' the parish. If you'll do that, we'll forgive you for missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper o' Wednesday, and you must come then. There's Bartle Massey comin', an' happen Craig. You'll be sure an' come, now, at seven? The missis wunna have it a bit later." "Aye," said Adam, "I'll come if I can. But I can't often say what I'll do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You'll stay till the end o' the week, Dinah?" "Yes, yes!" said Mr. Poyser. "We'll have no nay." "She's no call to be in a hurry," observed Mrs. Poyser. "Scarceness o' victual 'ull keep: there's no need to be hasty wi' the cooking. An' scarceness is what there's the biggest stock of i' that country." Dinah smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could read little beyond the large letters and the Amens. Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.

Chapter 52

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter52

Adam and Dinah Adam walks to Hall Farm while the family is at church. He does not go to church so he can speak to Dinah alone. Dinah blushes as usual when Adam enters. They are both awkward with each other, but finally Adam blurts out that he loves her. She trembles with joy, crying, and returns his love but explains she has to submit to God's will to do his work. She is going away to resist temptation. She has known the perfect joy of having no personal life of her own, and she is afraid she will lose this blessedness of helping others and living in the divine will. If she has doubts about it, their love will not be a blessing. Adam says he will not urge her against her conscience and will resign himself if he has to. She says she would like to test it out by going to Snowfield for a while to see if it is true she is called back. He agrees to the test. They walk out to meet the Poysers coming back from church. The Poysers are surprised to see the couple walking together and wonder if they are courting. The narrator ends the chapter with a long reminiscent essay on how beautiful and slow country life was in the days of Adam Bede.

Commentary on Chapter 52 This courting scene contrasts with the clandestine and violent nature of Arthur's and Hetty's affair. Adam and Dinah are honest about their feelings for one another. Dinah raises the difficulty for her of her faith and work. For Adam, their love is part of God's doing and will, but for Dinah who has known the happiness of a nun's devotion to God, it is a temptation. She has married God, and now she does not know what to do when she is in love with a man. Adam does not fight her doubt but wisely agrees to the test. He could push, but he respects Dinah too much, and it would be the surest way to lose her. She has to wait for a clear conscience. Eliot shows an ideal relationship where a couple work things out together and meet on the soul level, rather than the level of pride and ego. They both want what is best and most unselfish.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/53.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_53_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 53

chapter 53

{"name": "Chapter 53", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter53", "summary": "The Harvest Supper It is the time of country harvest, with the barley rolling by on the loaded wagons. The beauty of the country strikes Adam \"like a funeral-bell\" for \"there's a parting at the root of all our joys\" . It is the time of thanksgiving, though, and he realizes that out of the sorrow of Hetty came the joy of Dinah, an even greater love. He goes to the harvest supper at the Hall Farm, hoping Dinah has not yet left. He does not see her there but does not learn until later that she is already gone to Snowfield. Meanwhile, the ritual of the feast is presided over by Martin Poyser, who is proud to serve the beer and roast beef to family, friends, and farm hands. There is singing and toasting, as the reader is introduced to various colorful farm workers. A comic political discussion about Bonaparte and the French illustrates the ignorance of the country folk about the greater world affairs. The comic highlight, however, is an exchange of wit between Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser on the difference between men and women, Bartle denouncing women, and Mrs. Poyser denouncing men. Finally Adam and Bartle Massey walk home together, and Adam says that even though Mrs. Poyser has a sharp tongue, she is a woman better than her word, who is there in time of need and trouble.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 53 This is a bit of comedy and local color to round out the novel, serving to bring us back to the pastoral mood of the setting. It was spring in the country in the beginning of the story, a kind of golden world of innocence where there was as yet no hint of tragedy. The bulk of the novel tells the disruption of that ideal life by one event that touches everyone. The novel ends in the autumn, a reaping of fruits, both good and bad. There has been sorrow, but new beginnings as well. The peace and harmony are being re-established, even though there has been a cost, and Adam is now reminded of the funeral bell underneath all joy. For the admirable characters, however, all life is transmuted by experience and suffering into something better, and these are the fruits they now enjoy together. The political talk of the Napoleonic war, a major event in English history, is felt as the faintest echo in Hayslope. The ignorant opinions bandied about over beer show how untouched this remote district is from larger world disturbances. The tragedy of Hetty has been the local event of importance and \"Bony\" is as real to the farmers as Old Harry that Mrs. Poyser keeps referring to . Arthur Donnithorne is the only character in their world to take part in events on both the local level and the national level, for he leaves Hayslope for the war. Eliot's tone towards the Hayslope community is elegiac, looking back to a landscape and a time that is gone forever. It contains her own childhood memories of country life and characters."}

As Adam was going homeward, on Wednesday evening, in the six o'clock sunlight, he saw in the distance the last load of barley winding its way towards the yard-gate of the Hall Farm, and heard the chant of "Harvest Home!" rising and sinking like a wave. Fainter and fainter, and more musical through the growing distance, the falling dying sound still reached him, as he neared the Willow Brook. The low westering sun shone right on the shoulders of the old Binton Hills, turning the unconscious sheep into bright spots of light; shone on the windows of the cottage too, and made them a-flame with a glory beyond that of amber or amethyst. It was enough to make Adam feel that he was in a great temple, and that the distant chant was a sacred song. "It's wonderful," he thought, "how that sound goes to one's heart almost like a funeral bell, for all it tells one o' the joyfullest time o' the year, and the time when men are mostly the thankfullest. I suppose it's a bit hard to us to think anything's over and gone in our lives; and there's a parting at the root of all our joys. It's like what I feel about Dinah. I should never ha' come to know that her love 'ud be the greatest o' blessings to me, if what I counted a blessing hadn't been wrenched and torn away from me, and left me with a greater need, so as I could crave and hunger for a greater and a better comfort." He expected to see Dinah again this evening, and get leave to accompany her as far as Oakbourne; and then he would ask her to fix some time when he might go to Snowfield, and learn whether the last best hope that had been born to him must be resigned like the rest. The work he had to do at home, besides putting on his best clothes, made it seven before he was on his way again to the Hall Farm, and it was questionable whether, with his longest and quickest strides, he should be there in time even for the roast beef, which came after the plum pudding, for Mrs. Poyser's supper would be punctual. Great was the clatter of knives and pewter plates and tin cans when Adam entered the house, but there was no hum of voices to this accompaniment: the eating of excellent roast beef, provided free of expense, was too serious a business to those good farm-labourers to be performed with a divided attention, even if they had had anything to say to each other--which they had not. And Mr. Poyser, at the head of the table, was too busy with his carving to listen to Bartle Massey's or Mr. Craig's ready talk. "Here, Adam," said Mrs. Poyser, who was standing and looking on to see that Molly and Nancy did their duty as waiters, "here's a place kept for you between Mr. Massey and the boys. It's a poor tale you couldn't come to see the pudding when it was whole." Adam looked anxiously round for a fourth woman's figure, but Dinah was not there. He was almost afraid of asking about her; besides, his attention was claimed by greetings, and there remained the hope that Dinah was in the house, though perhaps disinclined to festivities on the eve of her departure. It was a goodly sight--that table, with Martin Poyser's round good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates came again. Martin, though usually blest with a good appetite, really forgot to finish his own beef to-night--it was so pleasant to him to look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles--with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds. Martin Poyser had some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot roast beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one side and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Bartle Massey, and watched half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as "Tom Saft," receiving his second plateful of beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom's face as the plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers. But the delight was too strong to continue smouldering in a grin--it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn "haw, haw!" followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Martin Poyser's large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards Mrs. Poyser to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and wife met in a glance of good-natured amusement. "Tom Saft" was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom's wit should prove to be like that of many other bygone jesters eminent in their day--rather of a temporary nature, not dealing with the deeper and more lasting relations of things. Tom excepted, Martin Poyser had some pride in his servants and labourers, thinking with satisfaction that they were the best worth their pay of any set on the estate. There was Kester Bale, for example (Beale, probably, if the truth were known, but he was called Bale, and was not conscious of any claim to a fifth letter), the old man with the close leather cap and the network of wrinkles on his sun-browned face. Was there any man in Loamshire who knew better the "natur" of all farming work? He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their hand to. It is true Kester's knees were much bent outward by this time, and he walked with a perpetual curtsy, as if he were among the most reverent of men. And so he was; but I am obliged to admit that the object of his reverence was his own skill, towards which he performed some rather affecting acts of worship. He always thatched the ricks--for if anything were his forte more than another, it was thatching--and when the last touch had been put to the last beehive rick, Kester, whose home lay at some distance from the farm, would take a walk to the rick-yard in his best clothes on a Sunday morning and stand in the lane, at a due distance, to contemplate his own thatching, walking about to get each rick from the proper point of view. As he curtsied along, with his eyes upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden globes at the summits of the beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of the best sort, you might have imagined him to be engaged in some pagan act of adoration. Kester was an old bachelor and reputed to have stockings full of coin, concerning which his master cracked a joke with him every pay-night: not a new unseasoned joke, but a good old one, that had been tried many times before and had worn well. "Th' young measter's a merry mon," Kester frequently remarked; for having begun his career by frightening away the crows under the last Martin Poyser but one, he could never cease to account the reigning Martin a young master. I am not ashamed of commemorating old Kester. You and I are indebted to the hard hands of such men--hands that have long ago mingled with the soil they tilled so faithfully, thriftily making the best they could of the earth's fruits, and receiving the smallest share as their own wages. Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick, the shepherd and head-man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not on the best terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was confined to an occasional snarl, for though they probably differed little concerning hedging and ditching and the treatment of ewes, there was a profound difference of opinion between them as to their own respective merits. When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be on the same farm, they are not sentimentally polite to each other. Alick, indeed, was not by any means a honeyed man. His speech had usually something of a snarl in it, and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the bull-dog expression--"Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you." But he was honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather than he would take beyond his acknowledged share, and as "close-fisted" with his master's property as if it had been his own--throwing very small handfuls of damaged barley to the chickens, because a large handful affected his imagination painfully with a sense of profusion. Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had his grudge against Alick in the matter of corn. They rarely spoke to each other, and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes; but then, as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all mankind, it would be an unsafe conclusion that they had more than transient fits of unfriendliness. The bucolic character at Hayslope, you perceive, was not of that entirely genial, merry, broad-grinning sort, apparently observed in most districts visited by artists. The mild radiance of a smile was a rare sight on a field-labourer's face, and there was seldom any gradation between bovine gravity and a laugh. Nor was every labourer so honest as our friend Alick. At this very table, among Mr. Poyser's men, there is that big Ben Tholoway, a very powerful thresher, but detected more than once in carrying away his master's corn in his pockets--an action which, as Ben was not a philosopher, could hardly be ascribed to absence of mind. However, his master had forgiven him, and continued to employ him, for the Tholoways had lived on the Common time out of mind, and had always worked for the Poysers. And on the whole, I daresay, society was not much the worse because Ben had not six months of it at the treadmill, for his views of depredation were narrow, and the House of Correction might have enlarged them. As it was, Ben ate his roast beef to-night with a serene sense of having stolen nothing more than a few peas and beans as seed for his garden since the last harvest supper, and felt warranted in thinking that Alick's suspicious eye, for ever upon him, was an injury to his innocence. But NOW the roast beef was finished and the cloth was drawn, leaving a fair large deal table for the bright drinking-cans, and the foaming brown jugs, and the bright brass candlesticks, pleasant to behold. NOW, the great ceremony of the evening was to begin--the harvest-song, in which every man must join. He might be in tune, if he liked to be singular, but he must not sit with closed lips. The movement was obliged to be in triple time; the rest was ad libitum. As to the origin of this song--whether it came in its actual state from the brain of a single rhapsodist, or was gradually perfected by a school or succession of rhapsodists, I am ignorant. There is a stamp of unity, of individual genius upon it, which inclines me to the former hypothesis, though I am not blind to the consideration that this unity may rather have arisen from that consensus of many minds which was a condition of primitive thought, foreign to our modern consciousness. Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain an indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration. Others, however, may rather maintain that this very iteration is an original felicity, to which none but the most prosaic minds can be insensible. The ceremony connected with the song was a drinking ceremony. (That is perhaps a painful fact, but then, you know, we cannot reform our forefathers.) During the first and second quatrain, sung decidedly forte, no can was filled. Here's a health unto our master, The founder of the feast; Here's a health unto our master And to our mistress! And may his doings prosper, Whate'er he takes in hand, For we are all his servants, And are at his command. But now, immediately before the third quatrain or chorus, sung fortissimo, with emphatic raps of the table, which gave the effect of cymbals and drum together, Alick's can was filled, and he was bound to empty it before the chorus ceased. Then drink, boys, drink! And see ye do not spill, For if ye do, ye shall drink two, For 'tis our master's will. When Alick had gone successfully through this test of steady-handed manliness, it was the turn of old Kester, at his right hand--and so on, till every man had drunk his initiatory pint under the stimulus of the chorus. Tom Saft--the rogue--took care to spill a little by accident; but Mrs. Poyser (too officiously, Tom thought) interfered to prevent the exaction of the penalty. To any listener outside the door it would have been the reverse of obvious why the "Drink, boys, drink!" should have such an immediate and often-repeated encore; but once entered, he would have seen that all faces were at present sober, and most of them serious--it was the regular and respectable thing for those excellent farm-labourers to do, as much as for elegant ladies and gentlemen to smirk and bow over their wine-glasses. Bartle Massey, whose ears were rather sensitive, had gone out to see what sort of evening it was at an early stage in the ceremony, and had not finished his contemplation until a silence of five minutes declared that "Drink, boys, drink!" was not likely to begin again for the next twelvemonth. Much to the regret of the boys and Totty: on them the stillness fell rather flat, after that glorious thumping of the table, towards which Totty, seated on her father's knee, contributed with her small might and small fist. When Bartle re-entered, however, there appeared to be a general desire for solo music after the choral. Nancy declared that Tim the waggoner knew a song and was "allays singing like a lark i' the stable," whereupon Mr. Poyser said encouragingly, "Come, Tim, lad, let's hear it." Tim looked sheepish, tucked down his head, and said he couldn't sing, but this encouraging invitation of the master's was echoed all round the table. It was a conversational opportunity: everybody could say, "Come, Tim," except Alick, who never relaxed into the frivolity of unnecessary speech. At last, Tim's next neighbour, Ben Tholoway, began to give emphasis to his speech by nudges, at which Tim, growing rather savage, said, "Let me alooan, will ye? Else I'll ma' ye sing a toon ye wonna like." A good-tempered waggoner's patience has limits, and Tim was not to be urged further. "Well, then, David, ye're the lad to sing," said Ben, willing to show that he was not discomfited by this check. "Sing 'My loove's a roos wi'out a thorn.'" The amatory David was a young man of an unconscious abstracted expression, which was due probably to a squint of superior intensity rather than to any mental characteristic; for he was not indifferent to Ben's invitation, but blushed and laughed and rubbed his sleeve over his mouth in a way that was regarded as a symptom of yielding. And for some time the company appeared to be much in earnest about the desire to hear David's song. But in vain. The lyricism of the evening was in the cellar at present, and was not to be drawn from that retreat just yet. Meanwhile the conversation at the head of the table had taken a political turn. Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally, though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific information. He saw so far beyond the mere facts of a case that really it was superfluous to know them. "I'm no reader o' the paper myself," he observed to-night, as he filled his pipe, "though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there's Miss Lyddy has 'em and 's done with 'em i' no time. But there's Mills, now, sits i' the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh from morning to night, and when he's got to th' end on't he's more addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He's full o' this peace now, as they talk on; he's been reading and reading, and thinks he's got to the bottom on't. 'Why, Lor' bless you, Mills,' says I, 'you see no more into this thing nor you can see into the middle of a potato. I'll tell you what it is: you think it'll be a fine thing for the country. And I'm not again' it--mark my words--I'm not again' it. But it's my opinion as there's them at the head o' this country as are worse enemies to us nor Bony and all the mounseers he's got at 's back; for as for the mounseers, you may skewer half-a-dozen of 'em at once as if they war frogs.'" "Aye, aye," said Martin Poyser, listening with an air of much intelligence and edification, "they ne'er ate a bit o' beef i' their lives. Mostly sallet, I reckon." "And says I to Mills," continued Mr. Craig, "'Will you try to make me believe as furriners like them can do us half th' harm them ministers do with their bad government? If King George 'ud turn 'em all away and govern by himself, he'd see everything righted. He might take on Billy Pitt again if he liked; but I don't see myself what we want wi' anybody besides King and Parliament. It's that nest o' ministers does the mischief, I tell you.'" "Ah, it's fine talking," observed Mrs. Poyser, who was now seated near her husband, with Totty on her lap--"it's fine talking. It's hard work to tell which is Old Harry when everybody's got boots on." "As for this peace," said Mr. Poyser, turning his head on one side in a dubitative manner and giving a precautionary puff to his pipe between each sentence, "I don't know. Th' war's a fine thing for the country, an' how'll you keep up prices wi'out it? An' them French are a wicked sort o' folks, by what I can make out. What can you do better nor fight 'em?" "Ye're partly right there, Poyser," said Mr. Craig, "but I'm not again' the peace--to make a holiday for a bit. We can break it when we like, an' I'm in no fear o' Bony, for all they talk so much o' his cliverness. That's what I says to Mills this morning. Lor' bless you, he sees no more through Bony!...why, I put him up to more in three minutes than he gets from's paper all the year round. Says I, 'Am I a gardener as knows his business, or arn't I, Mills? Answer me that.' 'To be sure y' are, Craig,' says he--he's not a bad fellow, Mills isn't, for a butler, but weak i' the head. 'Well,' says I, 'you talk o' Bony's cliverness; would it be any use my being a first-rate gardener if I'd got nought but a quagmire to work on?' 'No,' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'that's just what it is wi' Bony. I'll not deny but he may be a bit cliver--he's no Frenchman born, as I understand--but what's he got at's back but mounseers?'" Mr. Craig paused a moment with an emphatic stare after this triumphant specimen of Socratic argument, and then added, thumping the table rather fiercely, "Why, it's a sure thing--and there's them 'ull bear witness to't--as i' one regiment where there was one man a-missing, they put the regimentals on a big monkey, and they fit him as the shell fits the walnut, and you couldn't tell the monkey from the mounseers!" "Ah! Think o' that, now!" said Mr. Poyser, impressed at once with the political bearings of the fact and with its striking interest as an anecdote in natural history. "Come, Craig," said Adam, "that's a little too strong. You don't believe that. It's all nonsense about the French being such poor sticks. Mr. Irwine's seen 'em in their own country, and he says they've plenty o' fine fellows among 'em. And as for knowledge, and contrivances, and manufactures, there's a many things as we're a fine sight behind 'em in. It's poor foolishness to run down your enemies. Why, Nelson and the rest of 'em 'ud have no merit i' beating 'em, if they were such offal as folks pretend." Mr. Poyser looked doubtfully at Mr. Craig, puzzled by this opposition of authorities. Mr. Irwine's testimony was not to be disputed; but, on the other hand, Craig was a knowing fellow, and his view was less startling. Martin had never "heard tell" of the French being good for much. Mr. Craig had found no answer but such as was implied in taking a long draught of ale and then looking down fixedly at the proportions of his own leg, which he turned a little outward for that purpose, when Bartle Massey returned from the fireplace, where he had been smoking his first pipe in quiet, and broke the silence by saying, as he thrust his forefinger into the canister, "Why, Adam, how happened you not to be at church on Sunday? Answer me that, you rascal. The anthem went limping without you. Are you going to disgrace your schoolmaster in his old age?" "No, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "Mr. and Mrs. Poyser can tell you where I was. I was in no bad company." "She's gone, Adam--gone to Snowfield," said Mr. Poyser, reminded of Dinah for the first time this evening. "I thought you'd ha' persuaded her better. Nought 'ud hold her, but she must go yesterday forenoon. The missis has hardly got over it. I thought she'd ha' no sperrit for th' harvest supper." Mrs. Poyser had thought of Dinah several times since Adam had come in, but she had had "no heart" to mention the bad news. "What!" said Bartle, with an air of disgust. "Was there a woman concerned? Then I give you up, Adam." "But it's a woman you'n spoke well on, Bartle," said Mr. Poyser. "Come now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha' been a bad invention if they'd all been like Dinah." "I meant her voice, man--I meant her voice, that was all," said Bartle. "I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As for other things, I daresay she's like the rest o' the women--thinks two and two 'll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it." "Aye, aye!" said Mrs. Poyser; "one 'ud think, an' hear some folks talk, as the men war 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason THEY can see so little o' this side on't." Martin Poyser shook with delighted laughter and winked at Adam, as much as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now. "Ah!" said Bartle sneeringly, "the women are quick enough--they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself." "Like enough," said Mrs. Poyser, "for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men." "Match!" said Bartle. "Aye, as vinegar matches one's teeth. If a man says a word, his wife 'll match it with a contradiction; if he's a mind for hot meat, his wife 'll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she'll match him with whimpering. She's such a match as the horse-fly is to th' horse: she's got the right venom to sting him with--the right venom to sting him with." "Yes," said Mrs. Poyser, "I know what the men like--a poor soft, as 'ud simper at 'em like the picture o' the sun, whether they did right or wrong, an' say thank you for a kick, an' pretend she didna know which end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'ull tell him he's wise. But there's some men can do wi'out that--they think so much o' themselves a'ready. An' that's how it is there's old bachelors." "Come, Craig," said Mr. Poyser jocosely, "you mun get married pretty quick, else you'll be set down for an old bachelor; an' you see what the women 'ull think on you." "Well," said Mr. Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs. Poyser and setting a high value on his own compliments, "I like a cleverish woman--a woman o' sperrit--a managing woman." "You're out there, Craig," said Bartle, dryly; "you're out there. You judge o' your garden-stuff on a better plan than that. You pick the things for what they can excel in--for what they can excel in. You don't value your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers. Now, that's the way you should choose women. Their cleverness 'll never come to much--never come to much--but they make excellent simpletons, ripe and strong-flavoured." "What dost say to that?" said Mr. Poyser, throwing himself back and looking merrily at his wife. "Say!" answered Mrs. Poyser, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye. "Why, I say as some folks' tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside..." Mrs. Poyser would probably have brought her rejoinder to a further climax, if every one's attention had not at this moment been called to the other end of the table, where the lyricism, which had at first only manifested itself by David's sotto voce performance of "My love's a rose without a thorn," had gradually assumed a rather deafening and complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of "Three Merry Mowers," but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble--as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for him to go off. The company at Alick's end of the table took this form of vocal entertainment very much as a matter of course, being free from musical prejudices; but Bartle Massey laid down his pipe and put his fingers in his ears; and Adam, who had been longing to go ever since he had heard Dinah was not in the house, rose and said he must bid good-night. "I'll go with you, lad," said Bartle; "I'll go with you before my ears are split." "I'll go round by the Common and see you home, if you like, Mr. Massey," said Adam. "Aye, aye!" said Bartle; "then we can have a bit o' talk together. I never get hold of you now." "Eh! It's a pity but you'd sit it out," said Martin Poyser. "They'll all go soon, for th' missis niver lets 'em stay past ten." But Adam was resolute, so the good-nights were said, and the two friends turned out on their starlight walk together. "There's that poor fool, Vixen, whimpering for me at home," said Bartle. "I can never bring her here with me for fear she should be struck with Mrs. Poyser's eye, and the poor bitch might go limping for ever after." "I've never any need to drive Gyp back," said Adam, laughing. "He always turns back of his own head when he finds out I'm coming here." "Aye, aye," said Bartle. "A terrible woman!--made of needles, made of needles. But I stick to Martin--I shall always stick to Martin. And he likes the needles, God help him! He's a cushion made on purpose for 'em." "But she's a downright good-natur'd woman, for all that," said Adam, "and as true as the daylight. She's a bit cross wi' the dogs when they offer to come in th' house, but if they depended on her, she'd take care and have 'em well fed. If her tongue's keen, her heart's tender: I've seen that in times o' trouble. She's one o' those women as are better than their word." "Well, well," said Bartle, "I don't say th' apple isn't sound at the core; but it sets my teeth on edge--it sets my teeth on edge."

Chapter 53

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter53

The Harvest Supper It is the time of country harvest, with the barley rolling by on the loaded wagons. The beauty of the country strikes Adam "like a funeral-bell" for "there's a parting at the root of all our joys" . It is the time of thanksgiving, though, and he realizes that out of the sorrow of Hetty came the joy of Dinah, an even greater love. He goes to the harvest supper at the Hall Farm, hoping Dinah has not yet left. He does not see her there but does not learn until later that she is already gone to Snowfield. Meanwhile, the ritual of the feast is presided over by Martin Poyser, who is proud to serve the beer and roast beef to family, friends, and farm hands. There is singing and toasting, as the reader is introduced to various colorful farm workers. A comic political discussion about Bonaparte and the French illustrates the ignorance of the country folk about the greater world affairs. The comic highlight, however, is an exchange of wit between Bartle Massey and Mrs. Poyser on the difference between men and women, Bartle denouncing women, and Mrs. Poyser denouncing men. Finally Adam and Bartle Massey walk home together, and Adam says that even though Mrs. Poyser has a sharp tongue, she is a woman better than her word, who is there in time of need and trouble.

Commentary on Chapter 53 This is a bit of comedy and local color to round out the novel, serving to bring us back to the pastoral mood of the setting. It was spring in the country in the beginning of the story, a kind of golden world of innocence where there was as yet no hint of tragedy. The bulk of the novel tells the disruption of that ideal life by one event that touches everyone. The novel ends in the autumn, a reaping of fruits, both good and bad. There has been sorrow, but new beginnings as well. The peace and harmony are being re-established, even though there has been a cost, and Adam is now reminded of the funeral bell underneath all joy. For the admirable characters, however, all life is transmuted by experience and suffering into something better, and these are the fruits they now enjoy together. The political talk of the Napoleonic war, a major event in English history, is felt as the faintest echo in Hayslope. The ignorant opinions bandied about over beer show how untouched this remote district is from larger world disturbances. The tragedy of Hetty has been the local event of importance and "Bony" is as real to the farmers as Old Harry that Mrs. Poyser keeps referring to . Arthur Donnithorne is the only character in their world to take part in events on both the local level and the national level, for he leaves Hayslope for the war. Eliot's tone towards the Hayslope community is elegiac, looking back to a landscape and a time that is gone forever. It contains her own childhood memories of country life and characters.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/54.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_54_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 54

chapter 54

{"name": "Chapter 54", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter54", "summary": "The Meeting on the Hill Adam is patient with Dinah's absence and silence for six weeks; after that, he feels he must go to Snowfield to get her answer. He borrows Jonathan Burge's horse so he can get there faster. As he travels there, he remembers the sad journey in search of Hetty, but his sorrow and experience have enlarged his perspective and make him appreciate in all humility the love for Dinah. He finds that Dinah is preaching in a small village a few miles off and goes there to wait for her. He chooses a spot on top of a nearby hill where she will pass on the way home so that he may speak to her in private. He waits an hour and then sees her figure winding up the hill. As Adam rises up to greet her, she turns to look at the village she has just left. He calls her name from behind. She does not answer at first, feeling it could be an inward voice, for she believes she is alone. He repeats her name, and she turns around. They move into each other's arms. She cries as they walk in silence. Finally, she tells Adam that she is living a divided life without him. She believes God wants her to be with him, and he says they will never part.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 54 This is an idyllic scene, set in nature, with the lovers harmonizing with the countryside as they declare their love. Earthly love and heavenly love are integrated, and it is done very naturally and peacefully. Their union completes the main action of the story by carrying out the healing of the individuals and their community. The narrator shows that both characters have grown spiritually and thus, deserve this happiness. Sorrow can bring \"enlarged being\" . Adam's love for Dinah springs out of the love for Hetty but is greater and more precious. He feels that Dinah is \"better than I am\" and will look up to her for her wisdom . With such a love he will be more fearlessly free to be himself, because there is someone else to trust. If Adam looks up to Dinah as a heavenly being, Dinah has to learn to come down to earth. She knows with Adam's love and strength she will be able to follow God's will more easily. There is no divided love, only the same love in both hearts."}

ADAM understood Dinah's haste to go away, and drew hope rather than discouragement from it. She was fearful lest the strength of her feeling towards him should hinder her from waiting and listening faithfully for the ultimate guiding voice from within. "I wish I'd asked her to write to me, though," he thought. "And yet even that might disturb her a bit, perhaps. She wants to be quite quiet in her old way for a while. And I've no right to be impatient and interrupting her with my wishes. She's told me what her mind is, and she's not a woman to say one thing and mean another. I'll wait patiently." That was Adam's wise resolution, and it throve excellently for the first two or three weeks on the nourishment it got from the remembrance of Dinah's confession that Sunday afternoon. There is a wonderful amount of sustenance in the first few words of love. But towards the middle of October the resolution began to dwindle perceptibly, and showed dangerous symptoms of exhaustion. The weeks were unusually long: Dinah must surely have had more than enough time to make up her mind. Let a woman say what she will after she has once told a man that she loves him, he is a little too flushed and exalted with that first draught she offers him to care much about the taste of the second. He treads the earth with a very elastic step as he walks away from her, and makes light of all difficulties. But that sort of glow dies out: memory gets sadly diluted with time, and is not strong enough to revive us. Adam was no longer so confident as he had been. He began to fear that perhaps Dinah's old life would have too strong a grasp upon her for any new feeling to triumph. If she had not felt this, she would surely have written to him to give him some comfort; but it appeared that she held it right to discourage him. As Adam's confidence waned, his patience waned with it, and he thought he must write himself. He must ask Dinah not to leave him in painful doubt longer than was needful. He sat up late one night to write her a letter, but the next morning he burnt it, afraid of its effect. It would be worse to have a discouraging answer by letter than from her own lips, for her presence reconciled him to her will. You perceive how it was: Adam was hungering for the sight of Dinah, and when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage, a lover is likely to still it though he may have to put his future in pawn. But what harm could he do by going to Snowfield? Dinah could not be displeased with him for it. She had not forbidden him to go. She must surely expect that he would go before long. By the second Sunday in October this view of the case had become so clear to Adam that he was already on his way to Snowfield, on horseback this time, for his hours were precious now, and he had borrowed Jonathan Burge's good nag for the journey. What keen memories went along the road with him! He had often been to Oakbourne and back since that first journey to Snowfield, but beyond Oakbourne the greystone walls, the broken country, the meagre trees, seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that painful past which he knew so well by heart. But no story is the same to us after a lapse of time--or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters--and Adam this morning brought with him new thoughts through that grey country, thoughts which gave an altered significance to its story of the past. That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which rejoices and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or crushed another, because it has been made a source of unforeseen good to ourselves. Adam could never cease to mourn over that mystery of human sorrow which had been brought so close to him; he could never thank God for another's misery. And if I were capable of that narrow-sighted joy in Adam's behalf, I should still know he was not the man to feel it for himself. He would have shaken his head at such a sentiment and said, "Evil's evil, and sorrow's sorrow, and you can't alter it's natur by wrapping it up in other words. Other folks were not created for my sake, that I should think all square when things turn out well for me." But it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain. Surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it would be possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful process by which his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula. Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Adam's mind this Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past. His feeling towards Dinah, the hope of passing his life with her, had been the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from Snowfield eighteen months ago had been leading him. Tender and deep as his love for Hetty had been--so deep that the roots of it would never be torn away--his love for Dinah was better and more precious to him, for it was the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his acquaintance with deep sorrow. "It's like as if it was a new strength to me," he said to himself, "to love her and know as she loves me. I shall look t' her to help me to see things right. For she's better than I am--there's less o' self in her, and pride. And it's a feeling as gives you a sort o' liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when you've more trust in another than y' have in yourself. I've always been thinking I knew better than them as belonged to me, and that's a poor sort o' life, when you can't look to them nearest to you t' help you with a bit better thought than what you've got inside you a'ready." It was more than two o'clock in the afternoon when Adam came in sight of the grey town on the hill-side and looked searchingly towards the green valley below, for the first glimpse of the old thatched roof near the ugly red mill. The scene looked less harsh in the soft October sunshine than it had in the eager time of early spring, and the one grand charm it possessed in common with all wide-stretching woodless regions--that it filled you with a new consciousness of the overarching sky--had a milder, more soothing influence than usual, on this almost cloudless day. Adam's doubts and fears melted under this influence as the delicate weblike clouds had gradually melted away into the clear blue above him. He seemed to see Dinah's gentle face assuring him, with its looks alone, of all he longed to know. He did not expect Dinah to be at home at this hour, but he got down from his horse and tied it at the little gate, that he might ask where she was gone to-day. He had set his mind on following her and bringing her home. She was gone to Sloman's End, a hamlet about three miles off, over the hill, the old woman told him--had set off directly after morning chapel, to preach in a cottage there, as her habit was. Anybody at the town would tell him the way to Sloman's End. So Adam got on his horse again and rode to the town, putting up at the old inn and taking a hasty dinner there in the company of the too chatty landlord, from whose friendly questions and reminiscences he was glad to escape as soon as possible and set out towards Sloman's End. With all his haste it was nearly four o'clock before he could set off, and he thought that as Dinah had gone so early, she would perhaps already be near returning. The little, grey, desolate-looking hamlet, unscreened by sheltering trees, lay in sight long before he reached it, and as he came near he could hear the sound of voices singing a hymn. "Perhaps that's the last hymn before they come away," Adam thought. "I'll walk back a bit and turn again to meet her, farther off the village." He walked back till he got nearly to the top of the hill again, and seated himself on a loose stone, against the low wall, to watch till he should see the little black figure leaving the hamlet and winding up the hill. He chose this spot, almost at the top of the hill, because it was away from all eyes--no house, no cattle, not even a nibbling sheep near--no presence but the still lights and shadows and the great embracing sky. She was much longer coming than he expected. He waited an hour at least watching for her and thinking of her, while the afternoon shadows lengthened and the light grew softer. At last he saw the little black figure coming from between the grey houses and gradually approaching the foot of the hill. Slowly, Adam thought, but Dinah was really walking at her usual pace, with a light quiet step. Now she was beginning to wind along the path up the hill, but Adam would not move yet; he would not meet her too soon; he had set his heart on meeting her in this assured loneliness. And now he began to fear lest he should startle her too much. "Yet," he thought, "she's not one to be overstartled; she's always so calm and quiet, as if she was prepared for anything." What was she thinking of as she wound up the hill? Perhaps she had found complete repose without him, and had ceased to feel any need of his love. On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with fluttering wings. But now at last she was very near, and Adam rose from the stone wall. It happened that just as he walked forward, Dinah had paused and turned round to look back at the village--who does not pause and look back in mounting a hill? Adam was glad, for, with the fine instinct of a lover, he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she saw him. He came within three paces of her and then said, "Dinah!" She started without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no place. "Dinah!" Adam said again. He knew quite well what was in her mind. She was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual monitions that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the voice. But this second time she looked round. What a look of yearning love it was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed man! She did not start again at the sight of him; she said nothing, but moved towards him so that his arm could clasp her round. And they walked on so in silence, while the warm tears fell. Adam was content, and said nothing. It was Dinah who spoke first. "Adam," she said, "it is the Divine Will. My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love. I have a fulness of strength to bear and do our heavenly Father's Will that I had lost before." Adam paused and looked into her sincere eyes. "Then we'll never part any more, Dinah, till death parts us." And they kissed each other with a deep joy. What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

Chapter 54

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter54

The Meeting on the Hill Adam is patient with Dinah's absence and silence for six weeks; after that, he feels he must go to Snowfield to get her answer. He borrows Jonathan Burge's horse so he can get there faster. As he travels there, he remembers the sad journey in search of Hetty, but his sorrow and experience have enlarged his perspective and make him appreciate in all humility the love for Dinah. He finds that Dinah is preaching in a small village a few miles off and goes there to wait for her. He chooses a spot on top of a nearby hill where she will pass on the way home so that he may speak to her in private. He waits an hour and then sees her figure winding up the hill. As Adam rises up to greet her, she turns to look at the village she has just left. He calls her name from behind. She does not answer at first, feeling it could be an inward voice, for she believes she is alone. He repeats her name, and she turns around. They move into each other's arms. She cries as they walk in silence. Finally, she tells Adam that she is living a divided life without him. She believes God wants her to be with him, and he says they will never part.

Commentary on Chapter 54 This is an idyllic scene, set in nature, with the lovers harmonizing with the countryside as they declare their love. Earthly love and heavenly love are integrated, and it is done very naturally and peacefully. Their union completes the main action of the story by carrying out the healing of the individuals and their community. The narrator shows that both characters have grown spiritually and thus, deserve this happiness. Sorrow can bring "enlarged being" . Adam's love for Dinah springs out of the love for Hetty but is greater and more precious. He feels that Dinah is "better than I am" and will look up to her for her wisdom . With such a love he will be more fearlessly free to be himself, because there is someone else to trust. If Adam looks up to Dinah as a heavenly being, Dinah has to learn to come down to earth. She knows with Adam's love and strength she will be able to follow God's will more easily. There is no divided love, only the same love in both hearts.

novelguide

all_chapterized_books/507-chapters/55.txt

finished_summaries/novelguide/Adam Bede/section_55_part_0.txt

Adam Bede.book 6.chapter 55

chapter 55

{"name": "Chapter 55", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter55", "summary": "Marriage Bells One month later, Adam and Dinah are married. Mr. Burge's workers are given a holiday; Mrs. Irwine and her daughters are in a carriage to shake hands with bride and groom after Mr. Irwine marries them. From the Donnithorne household come Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig. The Poysers are there and Bartle Massey. Mrs. Poyser makes Dinah take off her black dress and gives her a grey Quaker dress. Adam feels a slight sadness underneath his joy, and Dinah understands. In the bridal party are Mary Burge as the bridesmaid, and Seth with Mrs. Poyser; Bartle Massey takes Lisbeth's arm. Mr. Irwine sets off to write the good news to Arthur.", "analysis": "Commentary on Chapter 54 Although some readers do not believe the happy ending makes sense, it is in keeping with what Eliot is trying to show: some good can be harvested from suffering by the wise. It does not mean that Eliot is overly optimistic, for she paints a picture of life as a mixed bag of positive and negative, not always in the control of the individual. Selfless characters, however, do better in the long run by causing as little harm as possible, and by actively turning everything to good account. Adam is a case in point. He does not just ride off into the sunset with another woman, after the catastrophe. The narrator points out that both Adam and Arthur have been scarred for life. Even on Adam's wedding day, he has some sadness, for he won't forget Hetty, and Dinah does not expect him to. Because they shared the time of trouble, Adam feels that Dinah does not rival the first love but completes it. She was the one who stuck by Hetty; she knows how Adam feels and what he suffered. She was the friend who brought him out of his grief. Is Dinah too idealistic a figure to believe in? She was based on Eliot's own fond memories of her preaching Methodist aunt. Dinah also bears many of Eliot's own personality traits, according to contemporary accounts. She is certainly saintly, and perhaps that is why she needs to be brought down to earth as a woman, wife, and mother at the end of the story. Dinah is one of Eliot's many saintly women characters, who strive for a higher life by being selfless in everyday concerns. of Epilogue On a June evening of 1807, Adam Bede's workshop, that used to be Jonathan Burge's, has just closed. It is nine years since the beginning of the story. Dinah appears outside the Bede cottage with her two children. She is more matronly now, and she is waiting for Adam to come home. Uncle Seth has the four year old daughter who looks like Dinah, with pale auburn hair, and the little two year old boy with black hair, who looks like Adam. His greatest happiness is being an uncle. Dinah takes Arthur's watch from her pocket to mark the time."}

IN little more than a month after that meeting on the hill--on a rimy morning in departing November--Adam and Dinah were married. It was an event much thought of in the village. All Mr. Burge's men had a holiday, and all Mr. Poyser's, and most of those who had a holiday appeared in their best clothes at the wedding. I think there was hardly an inhabitant of Hayslope specially mentioned in this history and still resident in the parish on this November morning who was not either in church to see Adam and Dinah married, or near the church door to greet them as they came forth. Mrs. Irwine and her daughters were waiting at the churchyard gates in their carriage (for they had a carriage now) to shake hands with the bride and bridegroom and wish them well; and in the absence of Miss Lydia Donnithorne at Bath, Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig had felt it incumbent on them to represent "the family" at the Chase on the occasion. The churchyard walk was quite lined with familiar faces, many of them faces that had first looked at Dinah when she preached on the Green. And no wonder they showed this eager interest on her marriage morning, for nothing like Dinah and the history which had brought her and Adam Bede together had been known at Hayslope within the memory of man. Bessy Cranage, in her neatest cap and frock, was crying, though she did not exactly know why; for, as her cousin Wiry Ben, who stood near her, judiciously suggested, Dinah was not going away, and if Bessy was in low spirits, the best thing for her to do was to follow Dinah's example and marry an honest fellow who was ready to have her. Next to Bessy, just within the church door, there were the Poyser children, peeping round the corner of the pews to get a sight of the mysterious ceremony; Totty's face wearing an unusual air of anxiety at the idea of seeing cousin Dinah come back looking rather old, for in Totty's experience no married people were young. I envy them all the sight they had when the marriage was fairly ended and Adam led Dinah out of church. She was not in black this morning, for her Aunt Poyser would by no means allow such a risk of incurring bad luck, and had herself made a present of the wedding dress, made all of grey, though in the usual Quaker form, for on this point Dinah could not give way. So the lily face looked out with sweet gravity from under a grey Quaker bonnet, neither smiling nor blushing, but with lips trembling a little under the weight of solemn feelings. Adam, as he pressed her arm to his side, walked with his old erectness and his head thrown rather backward as if to face all the world better. But it was not because he was particularly proud this morning, as is the wont of bridegrooms, for his happiness was of a kind that had little reference to men's opinion of it. There was a tinge of sadness in his deep joy; Dinah knew it, and did not feel aggrieved. There were three other couples, following the bride and bridegroom: first, Martin Poyser, looking as cheery as a bright fire on this rimy morning, led quiet Mary Burge, the bridesmaid; then came Seth serenely happy, with Mrs. Poyser on his arm; and last of all Bartle Massey, with Lisbeth--Lisbeth in a new gown and bonnet, too busy with her pride in her son and her delight in possessing the one daughter she had desired to devise a single pretext for complaint. Bartle Massey had consented to attend the wedding at Adam's earnest request, under protest against marriage in general and the marriage of a sensible man in particular. Nevertheless, Mr. Poyser had a joke against him after the wedding dinner, to the effect that in the vestry he had given the bride one more kiss than was necessary. Behind this last couple came Mr. Irwine, glad at heart over this good morning's work of joining Adam and Dinah. For he had seen Adam in the worst moments of his sorrow; and what better harvest from that painful seed-time could there be than this? The love that had brought hope and comfort in the hour of despair, the love that had found its way to the dark prison cell and to poor Hetty's darker soul--this strong gentle love was to be Adam's companion and helper till death. There was much shaking of hands mingled with "God bless you's" and other good wishes to the four couples, at the churchyard gate, Mr. Poyser answering for the rest with unwonted vivacity of tongue, for he had all the appropriate wedding-day jokes at his command. And the women, he observed, could never do anything but put finger in eye at a wedding. Even Mrs. Poyser could not trust herself to speak as the neighbours shook hands with her, and Lisbeth began to cry in the face of the very first person who told her she was getting young again. Mr. Joshua Rann, having a slight touch of rheumatism, did not join in the ringing of the bells this morning, and, looking on with some contempt at these informal greetings which required no official co-operation from the clerk, began to hum in his musical bass, "Oh what a joyful thing it is," by way of preluding a little to the effect he intended to produce in the wedding psalm next Sunday. "That's a bit of good news to cheer Arthur," said Mr. Irwine to his mother, as they drove off. "I shall write to him the first thing when we get home."

Chapter 55

https://web.archive.org/web/20201022024614/https://www.novelguide.com/adam-bede/summaries/chapter55

Marriage Bells One month later, Adam and Dinah are married. Mr. Burge's workers are given a holiday; Mrs. Irwine and her daughters are in a carriage to shake hands with bride and groom after Mr. Irwine marries them. From the Donnithorne household come Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig. The Poysers are there and Bartle Massey. Mrs. Poyser makes Dinah take off her black dress and gives her a grey Quaker dress. Adam feels a slight sadness underneath his joy, and Dinah understands. In the bridal party are Mary Burge as the bridesmaid, and Seth with Mrs. Poyser; Bartle Massey takes Lisbeth's arm. Mr. Irwine sets off to write the good news to Arthur.

Commentary on Chapter 54 Although some readers do not believe the happy ending makes sense, it is in keeping with what Eliot is trying to show: some good can be harvested from suffering by the wise. It does not mean that Eliot is overly optimistic, for she paints a picture of life as a mixed bag of positive and negative, not always in the control of the individual. Selfless characters, however, do better in the long run by causing as little harm as possible, and by actively turning everything to good account. Adam is a case in point. He does not just ride off into the sunset with another woman, after the catastrophe. The narrator points out that both Adam and Arthur have been scarred for life. Even on Adam's wedding day, he has some sadness, for he won't forget Hetty, and Dinah does not expect him to. Because they shared the time of trouble, Adam feels that Dinah does not rival the first love but completes it. She was the one who stuck by Hetty; she knows how Adam feels and what he suffered. She was the friend who brought him out of his grief. Is Dinah too idealistic a figure to believe in? She was based on Eliot's own fond memories of her preaching Methodist aunt. Dinah also bears many of Eliot's own personality traits, according to contemporary accounts. She is certainly saintly, and perhaps that is why she needs to be brought down to earth as a woman, wife, and mother at the end of the story. Dinah is one of Eliot's many saintly women characters, who strive for a higher life by being selfless in everyday concerns. of Epilogue On a June evening of 1807, Adam Bede's workshop, that used to be Jonathan Burge's, has just closed. It is nine years since the beginning of the story. Dinah appears outside the Bede cottage with her two children. She is more matronly now, and she is waiting for Adam to come home. Uncle Seth has the four year old daughter who looks like Dinah, with pale auburn hair, and the little two year old boy with black hair, who looks like Adam. His greatest happiness is being an uncle. Dinah takes Arthur's watch from her pocket to mark the time.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_2_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter v

chapter v

{"name": "Chapter V", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-v", "summary": "Three Broken Threads After two hours in a museum - Watson remarks on Holmes's unique ability to divert his attention when necessary - they visit the Northumberland Hotel, where Sir Henry Baskerville is staying. Examining the register, Holmes pretends to know two of the hotel's visitors, and fools the clerk into revealing information about them. As they are walking upstairs, they run into Sir Henry, who is angry because another of his boots is missing. He has no explanation for the disappearance. Later, after lunch in the hotel room, Holmes approves of Sir Henry's decision to inhabit Baskerville Hall, since it will allow Holmes to flush out the culprit more easily than he can in crowded London. From Dr. Mortimer, Holmes and Watson learn that the only moor resident with a black beard is Barrymore, Baskerville Hall's butler. Intrigued, Holmes orders a telegram sent to Devonshire, to determine whether Barrymore is there. Mortimer then discusses the contents of Sir Charles's will, in the hopes of sussing out a murder motive. Barrymore and his wife inherited money from Sir Charles's will, and they were aware of that intention. However, Dr. Mortimer adds that several people - himself included - were bequeathed money by the will. Sir Henry was naturally left the most money, and because he has no direct heir, that fortune and the estate would fall to some distant cousins, the Desmonds, if were to die. Holmes then proposes that Watson accompany Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall, as protection. Holmes will join them that Saturday, after completing some business on another case in London. Before the men leave, Sir Henry finds one of his brown boot under a cabinet, which is confusing since Mortimer had thoroughly searched the room before lunch. They surmise a waiter had found and placed it there, but the waiter knows nothing of it when he is called and questioned. That evening, Watson and Holmes receive two telegrams. The first is a return telegram from Barrymore, suggesting that he is indeed at Baskerville Hall. The second reports that Cartwright has been unable to find the cut sheet of the newspaper. At that moment, the cab driver, whom Holmes had sent for earlier, appears at the door. He tells Holmes that the bearded man had claimed to be a detective, and had told him to say nothing to anyone. Strangest of all, the man had claimed to be named \"Mr. Sherlock Holmes\" . Holmes is surprised and amused. He pays the cab driver for details of the day's journey, and then sends the driver away. Noting that \"our third thread\" has snapped, Holmes admires his adversary as \"worthy of our steel\" . He then wishes Watson luck in Devonshire, noting that this case is proving to be an ugly business.", "analysis": "In this section, three \"threads\" lead to dead-ends. On the one hand, this presents obstacles that challenge our detective. However, it is crucial to realize that even dead-ends provide central questions and clues for one as perceptive as Holmes. For instance: Who would steal a boot, then return it? How did this person get into the hotel unbeknownst to Holmes, Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry? Who could be so clever as to pose as Holmes? Does the mystery man in the cab already know who Sherlock Holmes is? The criminal here proves to be as cunning as the detective, as Holmes himself declares that he has been \"checkmated\" . In other words, the wits of the detective and criminal are matched here. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it keeps the story interesting; the story gains momentum only because the adversary can think like the hero, and hence complicate the latter's pursuit of his objective. However, it is also important in context, considering that this was one of the later Holmes novels. Audiences would have been familiar with Holmes's genius by this point, and hence would themselves grow bored if the mystery were not beyond even the hero. And yet the criminal's genius is important for Holmes as well. Notice his response to having been fooled; he laughs. It is a central part of Holmes's character - one that later writers have capitalized on even more than Doyle did - that Holmes is motivated by the game, and not by empathy. In other words, he does not want to solve the case to help someone - if he did, an easy victory would be preferable. Instead, he wants to be tested so that he can triumph. The criminal's trickery complicates his mission, and hence makes his eventual victory all the more satisfying. Another character insight is provided by the museum visit at the top of this chapter. Though only a short paragraph, the incident touches on the elusive nature of genius. Holmes is able to divert his attention when there is no path to follow, again suggesting that he is not at all affected by the human element of his story. He is not worried about people, but only about the case. When the case is momentarily cold, he chooses to spend his time elsewhere. However, the idea that he would study paintings also provides some insight into Doyle's depiction of the mind, which employs both subconscious and conscious faculties to reach its potential. Certainly, there are times when Holmes confronts a problem through deliberate thought, but there are then others when he does not think explicitly on the case, leaving his mind to work in the background while he focuses on something else. Some insight is given into the nature of Watson and Holmes's relationship in this chapter as well. Watson is surprised to hear that Holmes has volunteered him to accompany Sir Henry. What is implied here - and in the first chapter, when Holmes has Watson attempt to interpret Dr. Mortimer's walking stick - is a level of condescension that Holmes employs towards his friend. Watson is so immediately pleased to be of use that we are led to realize that he is not frequently of much use, at least not in a way that Holmes acknowledges. This inconsideration is made more explicit later, when Watson finds that Holmes is merely using him as a pawn in his greater game."}

Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel. "Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you," said the clerk. "He asked me to show you up at once when you came." "Have you any objection to my looking at your register?" said Holmes. "Not in the least." The book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville. One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs. Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton. "Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a limp?" "No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman, not older than yourself." "Surely you are mistaken about his trade?" "No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us." "Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another." "She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town." "Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have established a most important fact by these questions, Watson," he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. "We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact." "What does it suggest?" "It suggests--halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?" As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning. "Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried. "They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they've got a bit over the mark this time." "Still looking for your boot?" "Yes, sir, and mean to find it." "But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?" "So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one." "What! you don't mean to say--?" "That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the world--the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and don't stand staring!" An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene. "No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word of it." "Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel." "It shall be found, sir--I promise you that if you will have a little patience it will be found." "Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you'll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle--" "I think it's well worth troubling about." "Why, you look very serious over it." "How do you explain it?" "I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me." "The queerest perhaps--" said Holmes thoughtfully. "What do you make of it yourself?" "Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right." We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his intentions. "To go to Baskerville Hall." "And when?" "At the end of the week." "On the whole," said Holmes, "I think that your decision is a wise one. I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?" Dr. Mortimer started violently. "Followed! By whom?" "That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full beard?" "No--or, let me see--why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles's butler, is a man with a full, black beard." "Ha! Where is Barrymore?" "He is in charge of the Hall." "We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility he might be in London." "How can you do that?" "Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Henry?' That will do. Address to Mr. Barrymore, Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not." "That's so," said Baskerville. "By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this Barrymore, anyhow?" "He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are as respectable a couple as any in the county." "At the same time," said Baskerville, "it's clear enough that so long as there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine home and nothing to do." "That is true." "Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles's will?" asked Holmes. "He and his wife had five hundred pounds each." "Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?" "Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his will." "That is very interesting." "I hope," said Dr. Mortimer, "that you do not look with suspicious eyes upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a thousand pounds left to me." "Indeed! And anyone else?" "There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry." "And how much was the residue?" "Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds." Holmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I had no idea that so gigantic a sum was involved," said he. "Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total value of the estate was close on to a million." "Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here--you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis!--who would inherit the estate?" "Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland." "Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr. James Desmond?" "Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him." "And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles's thousands." "He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it." "And have you made your will, Sir Henry?" "No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together." "Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone." "Dr. Mortimer returns with me." "But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side." "Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?" "If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor." "Whom would you recommend, then?" Holmes laid his hand upon my arm. "If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I." The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily. "Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson," said he. "You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I'll never forget it." The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the baronet hailed me as a companion. "I will come, with pleasure," said I. "I do not know how I could employ my time better." "And you will report very carefully to me," said Holmes. "When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?" "Would that suit Dr. Watson?" "Perfectly." "Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington." We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry, of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet. "My missing boot!" he cried. "May all our difficulties vanish as easily!" said Sherlock Holmes. "But it is a very singular thing," Dr. Mortimer remarked. "I searched this room carefully before lunch." "And so did I," said Baskerville. "Every inch of it." "There was certainly no boot in it then." "In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching." The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought. Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran: Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall. BASKERVILLE. The second: Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry, to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT. "There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent." "We have still the cabman who drove the spy." "Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question." The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself. "I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had been inquiring for No. 2704," said he. "I've driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me." "I have nothing in the world against you, my good man," said Holmes. "On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions." "Well, I've had a good day and no mistake," said the cabman with a grin. "What was it you wanted to ask, sir?" "First of all your name and address, in case I want you again." "John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's Yard, near Waterloo Station." Sherlock Holmes made a note of it. "Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street." The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. "Why, there's no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already," said he. "The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone." "My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" "His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh. "A touch, Watson--an undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?" "Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name." "Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred." "He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here." "This very door," said Holmes. "Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along--" "I know," said Holmes. "Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' That's how I come to know the name." "I see. And you saw no more of him?" "Not after he went into the station." "And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The cabman scratched his head. "Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that." "Colour of his eyes?" "No, I can't say that." "Nothing more that you can remember?" "No, sir; nothing." "Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!" "Good-night, sir, and thank you!" John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and a rueful smile. "Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began," said he. "The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my mind about it." "About what?" "About sending you. It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more."

Chapter V

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-v

Three Broken Threads After two hours in a museum - Watson remarks on Holmes's unique ability to divert his attention when necessary - they visit the Northumberland Hotel, where Sir Henry Baskerville is staying. Examining the register, Holmes pretends to know two of the hotel's visitors, and fools the clerk into revealing information about them. As they are walking upstairs, they run into Sir Henry, who is angry because another of his boots is missing. He has no explanation for the disappearance. Later, after lunch in the hotel room, Holmes approves of Sir Henry's decision to inhabit Baskerville Hall, since it will allow Holmes to flush out the culprit more easily than he can in crowded London. From Dr. Mortimer, Holmes and Watson learn that the only moor resident with a black beard is Barrymore, Baskerville Hall's butler. Intrigued, Holmes orders a telegram sent to Devonshire, to determine whether Barrymore is there. Mortimer then discusses the contents of Sir Charles's will, in the hopes of sussing out a murder motive. Barrymore and his wife inherited money from Sir Charles's will, and they were aware of that intention. However, Dr. Mortimer adds that several people - himself included - were bequeathed money by the will. Sir Henry was naturally left the most money, and because he has no direct heir, that fortune and the estate would fall to some distant cousins, the Desmonds, if were to die. Holmes then proposes that Watson accompany Sir Henry to Baskerville Hall, as protection. Holmes will join them that Saturday, after completing some business on another case in London. Before the men leave, Sir Henry finds one of his brown boot under a cabinet, which is confusing since Mortimer had thoroughly searched the room before lunch. They surmise a waiter had found and placed it there, but the waiter knows nothing of it when he is called and questioned. That evening, Watson and Holmes receive two telegrams. The first is a return telegram from Barrymore, suggesting that he is indeed at Baskerville Hall. The second reports that Cartwright has been unable to find the cut sheet of the newspaper. At that moment, the cab driver, whom Holmes had sent for earlier, appears at the door. He tells Holmes that the bearded man had claimed to be a detective, and had told him to say nothing to anyone. Strangest of all, the man had claimed to be named "Mr. Sherlock Holmes" . Holmes is surprised and amused. He pays the cab driver for details of the day's journey, and then sends the driver away. Noting that "our third thread" has snapped, Holmes admires his adversary as "worthy of our steel" . He then wishes Watson luck in Devonshire, noting that this case is proving to be an ugly business.

In this section, three "threads" lead to dead-ends. On the one hand, this presents obstacles that challenge our detective. However, it is crucial to realize that even dead-ends provide central questions and clues for one as perceptive as Holmes. For instance: Who would steal a boot, then return it? How did this person get into the hotel unbeknownst to Holmes, Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry? Who could be so clever as to pose as Holmes? Does the mystery man in the cab already know who Sherlock Holmes is? The criminal here proves to be as cunning as the detective, as Holmes himself declares that he has been "checkmated" . In other words, the wits of the detective and criminal are matched here. This is important for two reasons. The first is that it keeps the story interesting; the story gains momentum only because the adversary can think like the hero, and hence complicate the latter's pursuit of his objective. However, it is also important in context, considering that this was one of the later Holmes novels. Audiences would have been familiar with Holmes's genius by this point, and hence would themselves grow bored if the mystery were not beyond even the hero. And yet the criminal's genius is important for Holmes as well. Notice his response to having been fooled; he laughs. It is a central part of Holmes's character - one that later writers have capitalized on even more than Doyle did - that Holmes is motivated by the game, and not by empathy. In other words, he does not want to solve the case to help someone - if he did, an easy victory would be preferable. Instead, he wants to be tested so that he can triumph. The criminal's trickery complicates his mission, and hence makes his eventual victory all the more satisfying. Another character insight is provided by the museum visit at the top of this chapter. Though only a short paragraph, the incident touches on the elusive nature of genius. Holmes is able to divert his attention when there is no path to follow, again suggesting that he is not at all affected by the human element of his story. He is not worried about people, but only about the case. When the case is momentarily cold, he chooses to spend his time elsewhere. However, the idea that he would study paintings also provides some insight into Doyle's depiction of the mind, which employs both subconscious and conscious faculties to reach its potential. Certainly, there are times when Holmes confronts a problem through deliberate thought, but there are then others when he does not think explicitly on the case, leaving his mind to work in the background while he focuses on something else. Some insight is given into the nature of Watson and Holmes's relationship in this chapter as well. Watson is surprised to hear that Holmes has volunteered him to accompany Sir Henry. What is implied here - and in the first chapter, when Holmes has Watson attempt to interpret Dr. Mortimer's walking stick - is a level of condescension that Holmes employs towards his friend. Watson is so immediately pleased to be of use that we are led to realize that he is not frequently of much use, at least not in a way that Holmes acknowledges. This inconsideration is made more explicit later, when Watson finds that Holmes is merely using him as a pawn in his greater game.

gradesaver

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/gradesaver/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_3_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter vi

chapter vi

{"name": "Chapter VI", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vi", "summary": "Baskerville Hall On the day of Watson, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry's departure, Holmes drives Watson to the station. En route, he instructs Watson to report only the facts to him, leaving his theories out of the letters. He also shares his own theories. He does not believes that the Desmond man - who would inherit Sir Henry's estate - is involved, but he believes that Barrymore and his wife are viable suspects. His other suspects include: a groom at the Hall, two farmers on the moor, Dr. Mortimer himself, Mortimer's wife, Stapleton the naturalist, and Mr. Frankland. Watson has brought his gun, in case he needs it. When they arrive in Devonshire, Sir Henry is impressed by the surroundings, never having seen the moor before. Watson imagines what it must be like for him to see the land where the men of his blood have made their mark. On their way to Baskerville Hall, they meet a man guarding part of the moor. Apparently, a convict had escaped three days earlier from the prison at nearby Princetown. This convict's name is Selden, and he is known as the Notting Hill murderer. Watson recalls Sherlock's interest in that case because of the criminal's brutality, and imagines Selden hiding out on the moor. At Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer shows Sir Henry the yew alley where Sir Charles died, and then departs. Barrymore then tours them around the estate, admitting in the process that he and his wife plan to leave once Sir Henry has hired more staff. Having spent their lives there, they would like to travel with the money Sir Charles bequeathed them. Watson describes the bedrooms as seeming newer the rest of the house, and the dining room as having a somber atmosphere. Feeling the same way, Sir Henry comments that he understands why Sir Charles grew so anxious in such a place. That night, Watson does not sleep well. In the dead of night, he hears a woman's sob, and listens carefully for more. However, no more noise comes.", "analysis": "The chapter begins with Holmes's instructions to Watson to \"report the facts\" . Most immediately, Holmes's instructions touch on why he trusts Watson as a good \"conductor of light\" . Watson inspires Holmes's genius not by collaborating on his interpretations, but rather on relating facts that Holmes can then use to deduce hidden truths. As a doctor, Watson is well-acquainted with the importance of detail, an approach Holmes takes to a singular level. However, these instructions also pose a crucial question: what does a bare fact look like? Can we describe facts without already having some explanation as to how that fact came to be? Put another way, can a fact ever be disclosed without containing some trace of interpretation? For example, in Chapter II, Sir Charles's footprints of Sir Charles are described as \"tiptoe\" footprints . The description contained within it an assumption. Whereas most readers would take this interpretation as fact, Holmes took a step back to consider that the indentations might indicate the opposite: running instead of tip-toeing. By describing something, we naturally put an interpretation on it. In other words, so-called \"facts\" already come pre-interpreted . Holmes's instructions then, are most notable for what he instructs Watson not to do: to theorize. What makes Holmes's approach so unique is that he considers a detail from several possible angles at once, eliminating impossible options to determine the most likely option. His instructions are not only to Watson, but to us: to correctly deduce meaning, one must first see the detail in itself, not with any pre-conceived notion. Watson's description of the house both conforms to and works against those instructions. He makes judgments - the rooms seems newer than the rest of the house - and in fact focuses on atmosphere. His failure to simply 'describe' the rooms are entirely forgivable, especially since they help to relate the atmosphere that would have made Sir Charles so anxious. Watson's description also serve Doyle's purpose of crafting an engaging and spooky tale. One of the novel's most intriguing contrasts - between the supernatural and the rational - is at work here. Clearly, Doyle wants us to view this location as haunted and possessed. The moor was often used as an atmospheric locale in the work of British writers, and Doyle takes great advantage of its natural allure. In fact, he furthers the atmosphere through the incident of the woman's screams. Read out of context, the second half of this chapter could work in a Gothic novel, or even in a children's scary story. The contrast with the rational will be most clearly made through Holmes's interference, but is already present through Sir Henry. His first instinct at noting the house's gloominess is to brighten it with electric lamps. He represents the technological mindset of America, from which he has traveled. He is more like Holmes than he is like Dr. Mortimer; instead of considering the house's haunted potential, he considers how the products of man's rationality might counteract such gloominess. Whether he will remain so aloof to its spooky atmosphere now becomes one of the novel's dramatic questions."}

Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions and advice. "I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions, Watson," said he; "I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing." "What sort of facts?" I asked. "Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles. I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor." "Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore couple?" "By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton, and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions. There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor, and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must be your very special study." "I will do my best." "You have arms, I suppose?" "Yes, I thought it as well to take them." "Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions." Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform. "No, we have no news of any kind," said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my friend's questions. "I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice." "You have always kept together, I presume?" "Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of Surgeons." "And I went to look at the folk in the park," said Baskerville. "But we had no trouble of any kind." "It was imprudent, all the same," said Holmes, shaking his head and looking very grave. "I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other boot?" "No, sir, it is gone forever." "Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye," he added as the train began to glide down the platform. "Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted." I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us. The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features of the Devon scenery. "I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson," said he; "but I have never seen a place to compare with it." "I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county," I remarked. "It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county," said Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?" "I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm as keen as possible to see the moor." "Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor," said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage window. Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it. The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills. The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles. "Halloa!" cried Dr. Mortimer, "what is this?" A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we travelled. "What is this, Perkins?" asked Dr. Mortimer. Our driver half turned in his seat. "There's a convict escaped from Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact." "Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give information." "Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing." "Who is he, then?" "It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer." I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him. We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip. "Baskerville Hall," said he. Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold. Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end. "Was it here?" he asked in a low voice. "No, no, the yew alley is on the other side." The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face. "It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door." The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke. "Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!" A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags. "You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer. "My wife is expecting me." "Surely you will stay and have some dinner?" "No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service." The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp. "It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it." I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features. "Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?" "Is it ready?" "In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff." "What new conditions?" "I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household." "Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?" "Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir." "But your family have been with us for several generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family connection." I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face. "I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall." "But what do you intend to do?" "I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms." A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my mind. But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette. "My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning." I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest. And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.

Chapter VI

https://web.archive.org/web/20200218214318/https://www.gradesaver.com/the-hound-of-the-baskervilles/study-guide/summary-chapter-vi

Baskerville Hall On the day of Watson, Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry's departure, Holmes drives Watson to the station. En route, he instructs Watson to report only the facts to him, leaving his theories out of the letters. He also shares his own theories. He does not believes that the Desmond man - who would inherit Sir Henry's estate - is involved, but he believes that Barrymore and his wife are viable suspects. His other suspects include: a groom at the Hall, two farmers on the moor, Dr. Mortimer himself, Mortimer's wife, Stapleton the naturalist, and Mr. Frankland. Watson has brought his gun, in case he needs it. When they arrive in Devonshire, Sir Henry is impressed by the surroundings, never having seen the moor before. Watson imagines what it must be like for him to see the land where the men of his blood have made their mark. On their way to Baskerville Hall, they meet a man guarding part of the moor. Apparently, a convict had escaped three days earlier from the prison at nearby Princetown. This convict's name is Selden, and he is known as the Notting Hill murderer. Watson recalls Sherlock's interest in that case because of the criminal's brutality, and imagines Selden hiding out on the moor. At Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer shows Sir Henry the yew alley where Sir Charles died, and then departs. Barrymore then tours them around the estate, admitting in the process that he and his wife plan to leave once Sir Henry has hired more staff. Having spent their lives there, they would like to travel with the money Sir Charles bequeathed them. Watson describes the bedrooms as seeming newer the rest of the house, and the dining room as having a somber atmosphere. Feeling the same way, Sir Henry comments that he understands why Sir Charles grew so anxious in such a place. That night, Watson does not sleep well. In the dead of night, he hears a woman's sob, and listens carefully for more. However, no more noise comes.

The chapter begins with Holmes's instructions to Watson to "report the facts" . Most immediately, Holmes's instructions touch on why he trusts Watson as a good "conductor of light" . Watson inspires Holmes's genius not by collaborating on his interpretations, but rather on relating facts that Holmes can then use to deduce hidden truths. As a doctor, Watson is well-acquainted with the importance of detail, an approach Holmes takes to a singular level. However, these instructions also pose a crucial question: what does a bare fact look like? Can we describe facts without already having some explanation as to how that fact came to be? Put another way, can a fact ever be disclosed without containing some trace of interpretation? For example, in Chapter II, Sir Charles's footprints of Sir Charles are described as "tiptoe" footprints . The description contained within it an assumption. Whereas most readers would take this interpretation as fact, Holmes took a step back to consider that the indentations might indicate the opposite: running instead of tip-toeing. By describing something, we naturally put an interpretation on it. In other words, so-called "facts" already come pre-interpreted . Holmes's instructions then, are most notable for what he instructs Watson not to do: to theorize. What makes Holmes's approach so unique is that he considers a detail from several possible angles at once, eliminating impossible options to determine the most likely option. His instructions are not only to Watson, but to us: to correctly deduce meaning, one must first see the detail in itself, not with any pre-conceived notion. Watson's description of the house both conforms to and works against those instructions. He makes judgments - the rooms seems newer than the rest of the house - and in fact focuses on atmosphere. His failure to simply 'describe' the rooms are entirely forgivable, especially since they help to relate the atmosphere that would have made Sir Charles so anxious. Watson's description also serve Doyle's purpose of crafting an engaging and spooky tale. One of the novel's most intriguing contrasts - between the supernatural and the rational - is at work here. Clearly, Doyle wants us to view this location as haunted and possessed. The moor was often used as an atmospheric locale in the work of British writers, and Doyle takes great advantage of its natural allure. In fact, he furthers the atmosphere through the incident of the woman's screams. Read out of context, the second half of this chapter could work in a Gothic novel, or even in a children's scary story. The contrast with the rational will be most clearly made through Holmes's interference, but is already present through Sir Henry. His first instinct at noting the house's gloominess is to brighten it with electric lamps. He represents the technological mindset of America, from which he has traveled. He is more like Holmes than he is like Dr. Mortimer; instead of considering the house's haunted potential, he considers how the products of man's rationality might counteract such gloominess. Whether he will remain so aloof to its spooky atmosphere now becomes one of the novel's dramatic questions.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_0_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-1", "summary": "An unknown visitor has come by the house that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson share, but they weren't home to meet him. Watson inspects a walking stick that the visitor mistakenly left behind. Watson notices that it's made of nice wood and it has a band of silver under the handle dedicated \"To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,\" dated 1884 . Watson guesses that the stick belongs to an older country doctor, and that it was a present from the local hunting organization. Holmes breaks the news to Watson: he's mostly wrong. But his dumb ideas have helped Holmes to get the right idea. Yeah, James Mortimer is a doctor , and he does live in the countryside. But the \"H\" in \"C.C.H.\" probably means hospital rather than hunt. Holmes concludes that Mortimer must be a young man who did his medical residency at the Charing Cross Hospital before moving out to the countryside to start his own practice. Also, Holmes guesses from tooth marks on the stick that Dr. Mortimer owns a smallish dog. According to Holmes' records, there is a Dr. James Mortimer living in Dartmoor, in a town called Grimpen. Just then, Dr. Mortimer appears at their door, and it's all as Holmes says. He's young, he has a smallish dog, he left Charing Cross Hospital some time ago to set up his practice in the countryside . Dr. Mortimer is here because he has a most extraordinary problem .", "analysis": ""}

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry--dignified, solid, and reassuring. "Well, Watson, what do you make of it?" Holmes was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation. "How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head." "I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me," said he. "But, tell me, Watson, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it." "I think," said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, "that Dr. Mortimer is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation." "Good!" said Holmes. "Excellent!" "I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot." "Why so?" "Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it." "Perfectly sound!" said Holmes. "And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return." "Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt." He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens. "Interesting, though elementary," said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. "There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions." "Has anything escaped me?" I asked with some self-importance. "I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?" "I am afraid, my dear Watson, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal." "Then I was right." "To that extent." "But that was all." "No, no, my dear Watson, not all--by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves." "You may be right." "The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor." "Well, then, supposing that 'C.C.H.' does stand for 'Charing Cross Hospital,' what further inferences may we draw?" "Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!" "I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country." "I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Mortimer withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start a practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?" "It certainly seems probable." "Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician--little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago--the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Watson, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff." I laughed incredulously as Sherlock Holmes leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling. "As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you," said I, "but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man's age and professional career." From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Mortimers, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud. "Mortimer, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Jackson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?' Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society. Author of 'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882). 'Do We Progress?' (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883). Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow." "No mention of that local hunt, Watson," said Holmes with a mischievous smile, "but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room." "And the dog?" "Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog's jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been--yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel." He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of conviction in his voice that I glanced up in surprise. "My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?" "For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you, Watson. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Watson, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Mortimer, the man of science, ask of Sherlock Holmes, the specialist in crime? Come in!" The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Holmes's hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy. "I am so very glad," said he. "I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that stick for the world." "A presentation, I see," said Holmes. "Yes, sir." "From Charing Cross Hospital?" "From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage." "Dear, dear, that's bad!" said Holmes, shaking his head. Dr. Mortimer blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment. "Why was it bad?" "Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?" "Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a home of my own." "Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all," said Holmes. "And now, Dr. James Mortimer--" "Mister, sir, Mister--a humble M.R.C.S." "And a man of precise mind, evidently." "A dabbler in science, Mr. Holmes, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Sherlock Holmes whom I am addressing and not--" "No, this is my friend Dr. Watson." "Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Holmes. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull." Sherlock Holmes waved our strange visitor into a chair. "You are an enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in mine," said he. "I observe from your forefinger that you make your own cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one." The man drew out paper and tobacco and twirled the one up in the other with surprising dexterity. He had long, quivering fingers as agile and restless as the antennae of an insect. Holmes was silent, but his little darting glances showed me the interest which he took in our curious companion. "I presume, sir," said he at last, "that it was not merely for the purpose of examining my skull that you have done me the honour to call here last night and again today?" "No, sir, no; though I am happy to have had the opportunity of doing that as well. I came to you, Mr. Holmes, because I recognized that I am myself an unpractical man and because I am suddenly confronted with a most serious and extraordinary problem. Recognizing, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--" "Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?" asked Holmes with some asperity. "To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly." "Then had you not better consult him?" "I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--" "Just a little," said Holmes. "I think, Dr. Mortimer, you would do wisely if without more ado you would kindly tell me plainly what the exact nature of the problem is in which you demand my assistance."

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-1

An unknown visitor has come by the house that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson share, but they weren't home to meet him. Watson inspects a walking stick that the visitor mistakenly left behind. Watson notices that it's made of nice wood and it has a band of silver under the handle dedicated "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," dated 1884 . Watson guesses that the stick belongs to an older country doctor, and that it was a present from the local hunting organization. Holmes breaks the news to Watson: he's mostly wrong. But his dumb ideas have helped Holmes to get the right idea. Yeah, James Mortimer is a doctor , and he does live in the countryside. But the "H" in "C.C.H." probably means hospital rather than hunt. Holmes concludes that Mortimer must be a young man who did his medical residency at the Charing Cross Hospital before moving out to the countryside to start his own practice. Also, Holmes guesses from tooth marks on the stick that Dr. Mortimer owns a smallish dog. According to Holmes' records, there is a Dr. James Mortimer living in Dartmoor, in a town called Grimpen. Just then, Dr. Mortimer appears at their door, and it's all as Holmes says. He's young, he has a smallish dog, he left Charing Cross Hospital some time ago to set up his practice in the countryside . Dr. Mortimer is here because he has a most extraordinary problem .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_1_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-2", "summary": "Dr. Mortimer hands a manuscript to Holmes. It's old--it dates back to 1742, at least a hundred fifty years before the events of Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. Mortimer got the manuscript from his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. And even though the manuscript deals with an old family legend, Dr. Mortimer is here on very contemporary business. The manuscript tells the story of Hugo Baskerville and the family curse This Hugo Baskerville, gets into some bad trouble around the time of the \"Great Rebellion\" . He likes to drink, curse, and rough people up. One night, he kidnaps a neighboring woman with five or six of his friends and locks her up in his mansion while he parties with his buddies. She manages to climb down some ivy to escape his evil clutches. Hugo Baskerville swears that he will sell his soul for the power to catch her. Hugo Baskerville then has the bright idea of riding out after her with his pack of hounds. The drunken partygoers finally realize, hey, if Hugo Baskerville succeeds in catching her, something terrible is going to happen. Really? So they ride out after Hugo Baskerville and his pack of hounds. They find his lifeless body on the ground near the girl's. The girl has died of fear and exhaustion after running from Hugo Baskerville. But Hugo Baskerville's death is much more gruesome: the former partygoers watch a huge, ghostly-looking black hound tear his throat out. Holmes doesn't think much of this whole story--it's just a fairy tale. So Dr. Mortimer continues his story. Sir Charles Baskerville, the descendant of this nasty Hugo, has just died mysteriously. He had heart trouble, so it's not impossible that he died of natural causes. But his body was found lying at the end of his own driveway with such a grotesque expression that Dr. Mortimer had trouble recognizing him. Apparently, Sir Charles had become very afraid of this story of the black dog and Hugo Baskerville. And here's the kicker: near Sir Charles' body, Dr. Mortimer found footprints--the footprints of a giant dog.", "analysis": ""}

"I have in my pocket a manuscript," said Dr. James Mortimer. "I observed it as you entered the room," said Holmes. "It is an old manuscript." "Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery." "How can you say that, sir?" "You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject. I put that at 1730." "The exact date is 1742." Dr. Mortimer drew it from his breast-pocket. "This family paper was committed to my care by Sir Charles Baskerville, whose sudden and tragic death some three months ago created so much excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal friend as well as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd, practical, and as unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this document very seriously, and his mind was prepared for just such an end as did eventually overtake him." Holmes stretched out his hand for the manuscript and flattened it upon his knee. "You will observe, Watson, the alternative use of the long s and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix the date." I looked over his shoulder at the yellow paper and the faded script. At the head was written: "Baskerville Hall," and below in large, scrawling figures: "1742." "It appears to be a statement of some sort." "Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the Baskerville family." "But I understand that it is something more modern and practical upon which you wish to consult me?" "Most modern. A most practical, pressing matter, which must be decided within twenty-four hours. But the manuscript is short and is intimately connected with the affair. With your permission I will read it to you." Holmes leaned back in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, old-world narrative: "Of the origin of the Hound of the Baskervilles there have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct line from Hugo Baskerville, and as I had the story from my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down with all belief that it occurred even as is here set forth. And I would have you believe, my sons, that the same Justice which punishes sin may also most graciously forgive it, and that no ban is so heavy but that by prayer and repentance it may be removed. Learn then from this story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to be circumspect in the future, that those foul passions whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not again be loosed to our undoing. "Know then that in the time of the Great Rebellion (the history of which by the learned Lord Clarendon I most earnestly commend to your attention) this Manor of Baskerville was held by Hugo of that name, nor can it be gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless man. This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a by-word through the West. It chanced that this Hugo came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held lands near the Baskerville estate. But the young maiden, being discreet and of good repute, would ever avoid him, for she feared his evil name. So it came to pass that one Michaelmas this Hugo, with five or six of his idle and wicked companions, stole down upon the farm and carried off the maiden, her father and brothers being from home, as he well knew. When they had brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper chamber, while Hugo and his friends sat down to a long carouse, as was their nightly custom. Now, the poor lass upstairs was like to have her wits turned at the singing and shouting and terrible oaths which came up to her from below, for they say that the words used by Hugo Baskerville, when he was in wine, were such as might blast the man who said them. At last in the stress of her fear she did that which might have daunted the bravest or most active man, for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered (and still covers) the south wall she came down from under the eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues betwixt the Hall and her father's farm. "It chanced that some little time later Hugo left his guests to carry food and drink--with other worse things, perchance--to his captive, and so found the cage empty and the bird escaped. Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for, rushing down the stairs into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the great table, flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench. And while the revellers stood aghast at the fury of the man, one more wicked or, it may be, more drunken than the rest, cried out that they should put the hounds upon her. Whereat Hugo ran from the house, crying to his grooms that they should saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the hounds a kerchief of the maid's, he swung them to the line, and so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor. "Now, for some space the revellers stood agape, unable to understand all that had been done in such haste. But anon their bemused wits awoke to the nature of the deed which was like to be done upon the moorlands. Everything was now in an uproar, some calling for their pistols, some for their horses, and some for another flask of wine. But at length some sense came back to their crazed minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took horse and started in pursuit. The moon shone clear above them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course which the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach her own home. "They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to him to know if he had seen the hunt. And the man, as the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track. 'But I have seen more than that,' said he, 'for Hugo Baskerville passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels.' So the drunken squires cursed the shepherd and rode onward. But soon their skins turned cold, for there came a galloping across the moor, and the black mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing bridle and empty saddle. Then the revellers rode close together, for a great fear was on them, but they still followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone, would have been right glad to have turned his horse's head. Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last upon the hounds. These, though known for their valour and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them. "The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you may guess, than when they started. The most of them would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest, or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal. Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of those great stones, still to be seen there, which were set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue. But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Hugo Baskerville lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Hugo, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon. And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Hugo Baskerville, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor. One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days. "Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since. If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed. Nor can it be denied that many of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious. Yet may we shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence, which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy Writ. To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted. "[This from Hugo Baskerville to his sons Rodger and John, with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their sister Elizabeth.]" When Dr. Mortimer had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Sherlock Holmes. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. "Well?" said he. "Do you not find it interesting?" "To a collector of fairy tales." Dr. Mortimer drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket. "Now, Mr. Holmes, we will give you something a little more recent. This is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Charles Baskerville which occurred a few days before that date." My friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our visitor readjusted his glasses and began: "The recent sudden death of Sir Charles Baskerville, whose name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over the county. Though Sir Charles had resided at Baskerville Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of character and extreme generosity had won the affection and respect of all who had been brought into contact with him. In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing to find a case where the scion of an old county family which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the fallen grandeur of his line. Sir Charles, as is well known, made large sums of money in South African speculation. More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns against them, he realized his gains and returned to England with them. It is only two years since he took up his residence at Baskerville Hall, and it is common talk how large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death. Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end. His generous donations to local and county charities have been frequently chronicled in these columns. "The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Charles cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of those rumours to which local superstition has given rise. There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to imagine that death could be from any but natural causes. Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind. In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Baskerville Hall consisted of a married couple named Barrymore, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Charles's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Mortimer, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect. "The facts of the case are simple. Sir Charles Baskerville was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Baskerville Hall. The evidence of the Barrymores shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Charles had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Barrymore to prepare his luggage. That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar. He never returned. At twelve o'clock Barrymore, finding the hall door still open, became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search of his master. The day had been wet, and Sir Charles's footmarks were easily traced down the alley. Halfway down this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor. There were indications that Sir Charles had stood for some little time here. He then proceeded down the alley, and it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered. One fact which has not been explained is the statement of Barrymore that his master's footprints altered their character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking upon his toes. One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears by his own confession to have been the worse for drink. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came. No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Charles's person, and though the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion--so great that Dr. Mortimer refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him--it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death from cardiac exhaustion. This explanation was borne out by the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing organic disease, and the coroner's jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence. It is well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost importance that Sir Charles's heir should settle at the Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly interrupted. Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been difficult to find a tenant for Baskerville Hall. It is understood that the next of kin is Mr. Henry Baskerville, if he be still alive, the son of Sir Charles Baskerville's younger brother. The young man when last heard of was in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a view to informing him of his good fortune." Dr. Mortimer refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket. "Those are the public facts, Mr. Holmes, in connection with the death of Sir Charles Baskerville." "I must thank you," said Sherlock Holmes, "for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This article, you say, contains all the public facts?" "It does." "Then let me have the private ones." He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression. "In doing so," said Dr. Mortimer, who had begun to show signs of some strong emotion, "I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone. My motive for withholding it from the coroner's inquiry is that a man of science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that Baskerville Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation. For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank. "The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of Sir Charles Baskerville. With the exception of Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, and Mr. Stapleton, the naturalist, there are no other men of education within many miles. Sir Charles was a retiring man, but the chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot. "Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Charles's nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart--so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr. Holmes, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement. "I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening some three weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his excitement had no justification. "It was at my advice that Sir Charles was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Stapleton, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe. "On the night of Sir Charles's death Barrymore the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was sitting up late I was able to reach Baskerville Hall within an hour of the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited, I remarked the change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there were no other footsteps save those of Barrymore on the soft gravel, and finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until my arrival. Sir Charles lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Barrymore at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did--some little distance off, but fresh and clear." "Footprints?" "Footprints." "A man's or a woman's?" Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered. "Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-2

Dr. Mortimer hands a manuscript to Holmes. It's old--it dates back to 1742, at least a hundred fifty years before the events of Hound of the Baskervilles. Dr. Mortimer got the manuscript from his friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. And even though the manuscript deals with an old family legend, Dr. Mortimer is here on very contemporary business. The manuscript tells the story of Hugo Baskerville and the family curse This Hugo Baskerville, gets into some bad trouble around the time of the "Great Rebellion" . He likes to drink, curse, and rough people up. One night, he kidnaps a neighboring woman with five or six of his friends and locks her up in his mansion while he parties with his buddies. She manages to climb down some ivy to escape his evil clutches. Hugo Baskerville swears that he will sell his soul for the power to catch her. Hugo Baskerville then has the bright idea of riding out after her with his pack of hounds. The drunken partygoers finally realize, hey, if Hugo Baskerville succeeds in catching her, something terrible is going to happen. Really? So they ride out after Hugo Baskerville and his pack of hounds. They find his lifeless body on the ground near the girl's. The girl has died of fear and exhaustion after running from Hugo Baskerville. But Hugo Baskerville's death is much more gruesome: the former partygoers watch a huge, ghostly-looking black hound tear his throat out. Holmes doesn't think much of this whole story--it's just a fairy tale. So Dr. Mortimer continues his story. Sir Charles Baskerville, the descendant of this nasty Hugo, has just died mysteriously. He had heart trouble, so it's not impossible that he died of natural causes. But his body was found lying at the end of his own driveway with such a grotesque expression that Dr. Mortimer had trouble recognizing him. Apparently, Sir Charles had become very afraid of this story of the black dog and Hugo Baskerville. And here's the kicker: near Sir Charles' body, Dr. Mortimer found footprints--the footprints of a giant dog.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_2_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-3", "summary": "Dr. Mortimer insists that this strange black dog is no wild or local dog. The ash from Sir Charles' cigar shows that he was standing at the end of the driveway for five or ten minutes before tiptoeing out in the direction of the moor. Holmes is annoyed that he hasn't gotten a look at the scene of the death yet--why didn't Dr. Mortimer call him in earlier?! Dr. Mortimer hems and haws a little, but it's clear what he thinks: can a detective really help in what Mortimer is convinced are supernatural matters? After all, the local people have been spotting a giant, glow-in-the-dark dog on the moors. Holmes is justifiably confused. If Dr. Mortimer doesn't think a detective will be able to track down the Hound of Hell who killed Sir Charles, why has he even come to visit Holmes? Dr. Mortimer says he wants advice from Holmes about Sir Henry Baskerville, the new heir to the estate. Sir Henry Baskerville has been living in Canada but has returned to claim has estate. He has no idea about Hugo Baskerville's horrible crimes three centuries before or about the curse of the demon dog that Hugo unleashed on his descendants. Should Dr. Mortimer tell him that there is \"a diabolical agency\" --a.k.a. a devilish force--making Dartmoor unsafe for Baskervilles? Holmes tells Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry Baskerville back to Baskerville Hall. If the devil's after him, it's not like staying in London will keep him safe. But in the meantime, no one should say anything to Sir Henry about the Hound until Holmes says it's okay. Holmes is a bit of a control freak. Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry around at 10AM the following morning. Watson wants to give Holmes space to think over this new puzzle so he stays at his club the entire day while Holmes sits smoking like a chimney and drinking tons of coffee. When Watson gets back, Holmes shows him a detailed map of the area around Baskerville Hall. It does indeed look grim and bare--there's even a prison nearby. Holmes laughs about Dr. Mortimer's explanation that Sir Charles was tiptoeing home before he keeled over. No, sir, Sir Charles was running flat out--running like his life depended on it. Holmes reasons that Sir Charles saw something that frightened him so badly that he began to run away from his house before his heart gave out. But they still need to figure out what he was waiting for outside, especially since he usually avoided the moors.", "analysis": ""}

I confess at these words a shudder passed through me. There was a thrill in the doctor's voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Holmes leaned forward in his excitement and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested. "You saw this?" "As clearly as I see you." "And you said nothing?" "What was the use?" "How was it that no one else saw it?" "The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don't suppose I should have done so had I not known this legend." "There are many sheep-dogs on the moor?" "No doubt, but this was no sheep-dog." "You say it was large?" "Enormous." "But it had not approached the body?" "No." "What sort of night was it?' "Damp and raw." "But not actually raining?" "No." "What is the alley like?" "There are two lines of old yew hedge, twelve feet high and impenetrable. The walk in the centre is about eight feet across." "Is there anything between the hedges and the walk?" "Yes, there is a strip of grass about six feet broad on either side." "I understand that the yew hedge is penetrated at one point by a gate?" "Yes, the wicket-gate which leads on to the moor." "Is there any other opening?" "None." "So that to reach the yew alley one either has to come down it from the house or else to enter it by the moor-gate?" "There is an exit through a summer-house at the far end." "Had Sir Charles reached this?" "No; he lay about fifty yards from it." "Now, tell me, Dr. Mortimer--and this is important--the marks which you saw were on the path and not on the grass?" "No marks could show on the grass." "Were they on the same side of the path as the moor-gate?" "Yes; they were on the edge of the path on the same side as the moor-gate." "You interest me exceedingly. Another point. Was the wicket-gate closed?" "Closed and padlocked." "How high was it?" "About four feet high." "Then anyone could have got over it?" "Yes." "And what marks did you see by the wicket-gate?" "None in particular." "Good heaven! Did no one examine?" "Yes, I examined, myself." "And found nothing?" "It was all very confused. Sir Charles had evidently stood there for five or ten minutes." "How do you know that?" "Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar." "Excellent! This is a colleague, Watson, after our own heart. But the marks?" "He had left his own marks all over that small patch of gravel. I could discern no others." Sherlock Holmes struck his hand against his knee with an impatient gesture. "If I had only been there!" he cried. "It is evidently a case of extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to the scientific expert. That gravel page upon which I might have read so much has been long ere this smudged by the rain and defaced by the clogs of curious peasants. Oh, Dr. Mortimer, Dr. Mortimer, to think that you should not have called me in! You have indeed much to answer for." "I could not call you in, Mr. Holmes, without disclosing these facts to the world, and I have already given my reasons for not wishing to do so. Besides, besides--" "Why do you hesitate?" "There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless." "You mean that the thing is supernatural?" "I did not positively say so." "No, but you evidently think it." "Since the tragedy, Mr. Holmes, there have come to my ears several incidents which are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature." "For example?" "I find that before the terrible event occurred several people had seen a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Baskerville demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night." "And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?" "I do not know what to believe." Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world," said he. "In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task. Yet you must admit that the footmark is material." "The original hound was material enough to tug a man's throat out, and yet he was diabolical as well." "I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists. But now, Dr. Mortimer, tell me this. If you hold these views, why have you come to consult me at all? You tell me in the same breath that it is useless to investigate Sir Charles's death, and that you desire me to do it." "I did not say that I desired you to do it." "Then, how can I assist you?" "By advising me as to what I should do with Sir Henry Baskerville, who arrives at Waterloo Station"--Dr. Mortimer looked at his watch--"in exactly one hour and a quarter." "He being the heir?" "Yes. On the death of Sir Charles we inquired for this young gentleman and found that he had been farming in Canada. From the accounts which have reached us he is an excellent fellow in every way. I speak now not as a medical man but as a trustee and executor of Sir Charles's will." "There is no other claimant, I presume?" "None. The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger Baskerville, the youngest of three brothers of whom poor Sir Charles was the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad Henry. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of the old masterful Baskerville strain and was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Hugo. He made England too hot to hold him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever. Henry is the last of the Baskervilles. In one hour and five minutes I meet him at Waterloo Station. I have had a wire that he arrived at Southampton this morning. Now, Mr. Holmes, what would you advise me to do with him?" "Why should he not go to the home of his fathers?" "It seems natural, does it not? And yet, consider that every Baskerville who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Charles could have spoken with me before his death he would have warned me against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Charles will crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. I fear lest I should be swayed too much by my own obvious interest in the matter, and that is why I bring the case before you and ask for your advice." Holmes considered for a little time. "Put into plain words, the matter is this," said he. "In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a Baskerville--that is your opinion?" "At least I might go the length of saying that there is some evidence that this may be so." "Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire. A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing." "You put the matter more flippantly, Mr. Holmes, than you would probably do if you were brought into personal contact with these things. Your advice, then, as I understand it, is that the young man will be as safe in Devonshire as in London. He comes in fifty minutes. What would you recommend?" "I recommend, sir, that you take a cab, call off your spaniel who is scratching at my front door, and proceed to Waterloo to meet Sir Henry Baskerville." "And then?" "And then you will say nothing to him at all until I have made up my mind about the matter." "How long will it take you to make up your mind?" "Twenty-four hours. At ten o'clock tomorrow, Dr. Mortimer, I will be much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Henry Baskerville with you." "I will do so, Mr. Holmes." He scribbled the appointment on his shirt-cuff and hurried off in his strange, peering, absent-minded fashion. Holmes stopped him at the head of the stair. "Only one more question, Dr. Mortimer. You say that before Sir Charles Baskerville's death several people saw this apparition upon the moor?" "Three people did." "Did any see it after?" "I have not heard of any." "Thank you. Good-morning." Holmes returned to his seat with that quiet look of inward satisfaction which meant that he had a congenial task before him. "Going out, Watson?" "Unless I can help you." "No, my dear fellow, it is at the hour of action that I turn to you for aid. But this is splendid, really unique from some points of view. When you pass Bradley's, would you ask him to send up a pound of the strongest shag tobacco? Thank you. It would be as well if you could make it convenient not to return before evening. Then I should be very glad to compare impressions as to this most interesting problem which has been submitted to us this morning." I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. I therefore spent the day at my club and did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o'clock when I found myself in the sitting-room once more. My first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Holmes in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him. "Caught cold, Watson?" said he. "No, it's this poisonous atmosphere." "I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it." "Thick! It is intolerable." "Open the window, then! You have been at your club all day, I perceive." "My dear Holmes!" "Am I right?" "Certainly, but how?" He laughed at my bewildered expression. "There is a delightful freshness about you, Watson, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have been? Is it not obvious?" "Well, it is rather obvious." "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?" "A fixture also." "On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire." "In spirit?" "Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about." "A large-scale map, I presume?" "Very large." He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. "Here you have the particular district which concerns us. That is Baskerville Hall in the middle." "With a wood round it?" "Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Mortimer has his headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist--Stapleton, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great convict prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again." "It must be a wild place." "Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men--" "Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation." "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my convictions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?" "Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day." "What do you make of it?" "It is very bewildering." "It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?" "Mortimer said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley." "He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?" "What then?" "He was running, Watson--running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart--and fell dead upon his face." "Running from what?" "There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run." "How can you say that?" "I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the yew alley rather than in his own house?" "You think that he was waiting for someone?" "The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Mortimer, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?" "But he went out every evening." "I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Watson. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry Baskerville in the morning."

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-3

Dr. Mortimer insists that this strange black dog is no wild or local dog. The ash from Sir Charles' cigar shows that he was standing at the end of the driveway for five or ten minutes before tiptoeing out in the direction of the moor. Holmes is annoyed that he hasn't gotten a look at the scene of the death yet--why didn't Dr. Mortimer call him in earlier?! Dr. Mortimer hems and haws a little, but it's clear what he thinks: can a detective really help in what Mortimer is convinced are supernatural matters? After all, the local people have been spotting a giant, glow-in-the-dark dog on the moors. Holmes is justifiably confused. If Dr. Mortimer doesn't think a detective will be able to track down the Hound of Hell who killed Sir Charles, why has he even come to visit Holmes? Dr. Mortimer says he wants advice from Holmes about Sir Henry Baskerville, the new heir to the estate. Sir Henry Baskerville has been living in Canada but has returned to claim has estate. He has no idea about Hugo Baskerville's horrible crimes three centuries before or about the curse of the demon dog that Hugo unleashed on his descendants. Should Dr. Mortimer tell him that there is "a diabolical agency" --a.k.a. a devilish force--making Dartmoor unsafe for Baskervilles? Holmes tells Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry Baskerville back to Baskerville Hall. If the devil's after him, it's not like staying in London will keep him safe. But in the meantime, no one should say anything to Sir Henry about the Hound until Holmes says it's okay. Holmes is a bit of a control freak. Holmes asks Dr. Mortimer to bring Sir Henry around at 10AM the following morning. Watson wants to give Holmes space to think over this new puzzle so he stays at his club the entire day while Holmes sits smoking like a chimney and drinking tons of coffee. When Watson gets back, Holmes shows him a detailed map of the area around Baskerville Hall. It does indeed look grim and bare--there's even a prison nearby. Holmes laughs about Dr. Mortimer's explanation that Sir Charles was tiptoeing home before he keeled over. No, sir, Sir Charles was running flat out--running like his life depended on it. Holmes reasons that Sir Charles saw something that frightened him so badly that he began to run away from his house before his heart gave out. But they still need to figure out what he was waiting for outside, especially since he usually avoided the moors.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_3_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-4", "summary": "At exactly ten the next morning, Dr. Mortimer shows up with Sir Henry Baskerville. Sir Henry is a smart-looking guy of around thirty. He's glad to meet Holmes because he's had a weird experience he wants to discuss. Even though it's not public knowledge where he's staying in London, he received an anonymous note at his hotel that morning. The note says, \"As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor\" . Holmes figures out that the words from the note were cut out of the Times . Holmes also deduces that the person who left the note is an educated person who wanted to appear working-class, and who was in a huge hurry. Sir Henry has one other weird incident to report: one of his shoes has gone missing. He bought a pair of new brown boots yesterday, and one of them has disappeared. Holmes can't think why anyone would steal one brown boot, so he assumes the boot will turn up again. Holmes tells Sir Henry all about the Hound and Sir Charles' sudden and mysterious death. Sir Henry's heard the story of the Hound since he was a kid, but he doesn't buy it. He's not going to let some dog keep him away from the property that is rightfully his. Still, Sir Henry wants some time to think over what Holmes has told him. So he invites Holmes and Watson over to his hotel for lunch. Until then, he's going to wander around and think things over with Dr. Mortimer. Holmes watches Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave the apartment. Then, he grabs Watson and rushes out the door. As Holmes and Watson follow Sir Henry at a distance, they spot another man tailing him in a cab. The man has a thick beard and piercing eyes. But as soon as Holmes sees the man, the man yells at the cabdriver to drive on. Holmes is impressed at the smarts of their opponent. He's also annoyed with himself for making it so obvious that he was following Sir Henry. So Holmes tries a new Clever Plan: he pays a local messenger boy to visit all the major hotels in London. He wants the kid to go through the trash to try to find copy of yesterday's Times with words cut out of the lead article. Holmes and Watson go off to spend a few hours at art galleries before meeting Sir Henry.", "analysis": ""}

Our breakfast table was cleared early, and Holmes waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Mortimer was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman. "This is Sir Henry Baskerville," said Dr. Mortimer. "Why, yes," said he, "and the strange thing is, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own account. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I've had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give it." "Pray take a seat, Sir Henry. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?" "Nothing of much importance, Mr. Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning." He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, grayish in colour. The address, "Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel," was printed in rough characters; the post-mark "Charing Cross," and the date of posting the preceding evening. "Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?" asked Holmes, glancing keenly across at our visitor. "No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Mortimer." "But Dr. Mortimer was no doubt already stopping there?" "No, I had been staying with a friend," said the doctor. "There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel." "Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements." Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran: As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor. The word "moor" only was printed in ink. "Now," said Sir Henry Baskerville, "perhaps you will tell me, Mr. Holmes, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?" "What do you make of it, Dr. Mortimer? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?" "No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural." "What business?" asked Sir Henry sharply. "It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs." "You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Henry. I promise you that," said Sherlock Holmes. "We will confine ourselves for the present with your permission to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday's Times, Watson?" "It is here in the corner." "Might I trouble you for it--the inside page, please, with the leading articles?" He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. "Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an extract from it. 'You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.' "What do you think of that, Watson?" cried Holmes in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. "Don't you think that is an admirable sentiment?" Dr. Mortimer looked at Holmes with an air of professional interest, and Sir Henry Baskerville turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me. "I don't know much about the tariff and things of that kind," said he, "but it seems to me we've got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned." "On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Henry. Watson here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence." "No, I confess that I see no connection." "And yet, my dear Watson, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. 'You,' 'your,' 'your,' 'life,' 'reason,' 'value,' 'keep away,' 'from the.' Don't you see now whence these words have been taken?" "By thunder, you're right! Well, if that isn't smart!" cried Sir Henry. "If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that 'keep away' and 'from the' are cut out in one piece." "Well, now--so it is!" "Really, Mr. Holmes, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined," said Dr. Mortimer, gazing at my friend in amazement. "I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?" "I presume, Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that of an Esquimau?" "Most certainly." "But how?" "Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the--" "But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday's issue." "So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Holmes," said Sir Henry Baskerville, "someone cut out this message with a scissors--" "Nail-scissors," said Holmes. "You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over 'keep away.'" "That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste--" "Gum," said Holmes. "With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word 'moor' should have been written?" "Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and might be found in any issue, but 'moor' would be less common." "Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this message, Mr. Holmes?" "There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe is printed in rough characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. 'Life,' for example is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Henry before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption--and from whom?" "We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork," said Dr. Mortimer. "Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel." "How in the world can you say that?" "If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?" He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes. "Well?" "Nothing," said he, throwing it down. "It is a blank half-sheet of paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Henry, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?" "Why, no, Mr. Holmes. I think not." "You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?" "I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel," said our visitor. "Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?" "We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?" "Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting." "I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting." Sir Henry smiled. "I don't know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here." "You have lost one of your boots?" "My dear sir," cried Dr. Mortimer, "it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr. Holmes with trifles of this kind?" "Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine." "Exactly," said Holmes, "however foolish the incident may seem. You have lost one of your boots, you say?" "Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night, and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on." "If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?" "They were tan boots and had never been varnished. That was why I put them out." "Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out at once and bought a pair of boots?" "I did a good deal of shopping. Dr. Mortimer here went round with me. You see, if I am to be squire down there I must dress the part, and it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among other things I bought these brown boots--gave six dollars for them--and had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet." "It seems a singularly useless thing to steal," said Sherlock Holmes. "I confess that I share Dr. Mortimer's belief that it will not be long before the missing boot is found." "And, now, gentlemen," said the baronet with decision, "it seems to me that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time that you kept your promise and gave me a full account of what we are all driving at." "Your request is a very reasonable one," Holmes answered. "Dr. Mortimer, I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it to us." Thus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before. Sir Henry Baskerville listened with the deepest attention and with an occasional exclamation of surprise. "Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance," said he when the long narrative was finished. "Of course, I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family, though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my uncle's death--well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can't get it clear yet. You don't seem quite to have made up your mind whether it's a case for a policeman or a clergyman." "Precisely." "And now there's this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose that fits into its place." "It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on upon the moor," said Dr. Mortimer. "And also," said Holmes, "that someone is not ill-disposed towards you, since they warn you of danger." "Or it may be that they wish, for their own purposes, to scare me away." "Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you, Dr. Mortimer, for introducing me to a problem which presents several interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to decide, Sir Henry, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to Baskerville Hall." "Why should I not go?" "There seems to be danger." "Do you mean danger from this family fiend or do you mean danger from human beings?" "Well, that is what we have to find out." "Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Holmes, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer." His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Baskervilles was not extinct in this their last representative. "Meanwhile," said he, "I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr. Holmes, it's half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Watson, come round and lunch with us at two. I'll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing strikes me." "Is that convenient to you, Watson?" "Perfectly." "Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?" "I'd prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather." "I'll join you in a walk, with pleasure," said his companion. "Then we meet again at two o'clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!" We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action. "Your hat and boots, Watson, quick! Not a moment to lose!" He rushed into his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds in a frock-coat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the street. Dr. Mortimer and Baskerville were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street. "Shall I run on and stop them?" "Not for the world, my dear Watson. I am perfectly satisfied with your company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is certainly a very fine morning for a walk." He quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Holmes did the same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now proceeding slowly onward again. "There's our man, Watson! Come along! We'll have a good look at him, if we can do no more." At that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab. Instantly the trapdoor at the top flew up, something was screamed to the driver, and the cab flew madly off down Regent Street. Holmes looked eagerly round for another, but no empty one was in sight. Then he dashed in wild pursuit amid the stream of the traffic, but the start was too great, and already the cab was out of sight. "There now!" said Holmes bitterly as he emerged panting and white with vexation from the tide of vehicles. "Was ever such bad luck and such bad management, too? Watson, Watson, if you are an honest man you will record this also and set it against my successes!" "Who was the man?" "I have not an idea." "A spy?" "Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Baskerville has been very closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else could it be known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which he had chosen? If they had followed him the first day I argued that they would follow him also the second. You may have observed that I twice strolled over to the window while Dr. Mortimer was reading his legend." "Yes, I remember." "I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing with a clever man, Watson. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their notice. His method had the additional advantage that if they were to take a cab he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one obvious disadvantage." "It puts him in the power of the cabman." "Exactly." "What a pity we did not get the number!" "My dear Watson, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use to us for the moment." "I fail to see how you could have done more." "On observing the cab I should have instantly turned and walked in the other direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab and followed the first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have driven to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there. When our unknown had followed Baskerville home we should have had the opportunity of playing his own game upon himself and seeing where he made for. As it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was taken advantage of with extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent, we have betrayed ourselves and lost our man." We had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this conversation, and Dr. Mortimer, with his companion, had long vanished in front of us. "There is no object in our following them," said Holmes. "The shadow has departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have in our hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man's face within the cab?" "I could swear only to the beard." "And so could I--from which I gather that in all probability it was a false one. A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features. Come in here, Watson!" He turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was warmly greeted by the manager. "Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had the good fortune to help you?" "No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my life." "My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability during the investigation." "Yes, sir, he is still with us." "Could you ring him up?--thank you! And I should be glad to have change of this five-pound note." A lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons of the manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous detective. "Let me have the Hotel Directory," said Holmes. "Thank you! Now, Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?" "Yes, sir." "You will visit each of these in turn." "Yes, sir." "You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings." "Yes, sir." "You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday. You will say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are looking for it. You understand?" "Yes, sir." "But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times with some holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It is this page. You could easily recognize it, could you not?" "Yes, sir." "In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. Let me have a report by wire at Baker Street before evening. And now, Watson, it only remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the cabman, No. 2704, and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries and fill in the time until we are due at the hotel."

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-4

At exactly ten the next morning, Dr. Mortimer shows up with Sir Henry Baskerville. Sir Henry is a smart-looking guy of around thirty. He's glad to meet Holmes because he's had a weird experience he wants to discuss. Even though it's not public knowledge where he's staying in London, he received an anonymous note at his hotel that morning. The note says, "As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor" . Holmes figures out that the words from the note were cut out of the Times . Holmes also deduces that the person who left the note is an educated person who wanted to appear working-class, and who was in a huge hurry. Sir Henry has one other weird incident to report: one of his shoes has gone missing. He bought a pair of new brown boots yesterday, and one of them has disappeared. Holmes can't think why anyone would steal one brown boot, so he assumes the boot will turn up again. Holmes tells Sir Henry all about the Hound and Sir Charles' sudden and mysterious death. Sir Henry's heard the story of the Hound since he was a kid, but he doesn't buy it. He's not going to let some dog keep him away from the property that is rightfully his. Still, Sir Henry wants some time to think over what Holmes has told him. So he invites Holmes and Watson over to his hotel for lunch. Until then, he's going to wander around and think things over with Dr. Mortimer. Holmes watches Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer leave the apartment. Then, he grabs Watson and rushes out the door. As Holmes and Watson follow Sir Henry at a distance, they spot another man tailing him in a cab. The man has a thick beard and piercing eyes. But as soon as Holmes sees the man, the man yells at the cabdriver to drive on. Holmes is impressed at the smarts of their opponent. He's also annoyed with himself for making it so obvious that he was following Sir Henry. So Holmes tries a new Clever Plan: he pays a local messenger boy to visit all the major hotels in London. He wants the kid to go through the trash to try to find copy of yesterday's Times with words cut out of the lead article. Holmes and Watson go off to spend a few hours at art galleries before meeting Sir Henry.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_4_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-5", "summary": "Holmes and Watson arrive at Sir Henry's hotel. Holmes says that the other people staying at the hotel cannot be connected to the person watching Sir Henry, because that person is keeping his distance. When they arrive at Sir Henry's room, they find out that he is furious. Someone's stolen an old black boot, leaving him a mismatched pair of one brown and one black. Sir Henry apologizes for making such a fuss over such a small thing as two stolen boots. But Holmes looks Very Serious--clearly, this Mystery of the Stolen Boots means a lot more to Holmes than it does to us. Holmes asks if Sir Henry knows anyone with a thick black beard. Yep--apparently Barrymore, the butler at Baskerville Hall, fits that description. It turns out that both Barrymore and his wife received money in Sir Charles' will. Perhaps they could be the culprits! Dr. Mortimer admits that he also received some cash from Sir Charles' will. But the rest of his estate all went to Sir Henry: 740,000 pounds, to be exact. . The real Holmes gives John Clayton some money and then laughs with Watson. He realizes that the spy must have recognized Holmes when he started following Sir Henry.", "analysis": ""}

Sherlock Holmes had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel. "Sir Henry Baskerville is upstairs expecting you," said the clerk. "He asked me to show you up at once when you came." "Have you any objection to my looking at your register?" said Holmes. "Not in the least." The book showed that two names had been added after that of Baskerville. One was Theophilus Johnson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs. Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton. "Surely that must be the same Johnson whom I used to know," said Holmes to the porter. "A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a limp?" "No, sir, this is Mr. Johnson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman, not older than yourself." "Surely you are mistaken about his trade?" "No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us." "Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another." "She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town." "Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have established a most important fact by these questions, Watson," he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. "We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact." "What does it suggest?" "It suggests--halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?" As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Henry Baskerville himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning. "Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel," he cried. "They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Holmes, but they've got a bit over the mark this time." "Still looking for your boot?" "Yes, sir, and mean to find it." "But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?" "So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one." "What! you don't mean to say--?" "That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the world--the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and don't stand staring!" An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene. "No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word of it." "Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel." "It shall be found, sir--I promise you that if you will have a little patience it will be found." "Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Holmes, you'll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle--" "I think it's well worth troubling about." "Why, you look very serious over it." "How do you explain it?" "I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me." "The queerest perhaps--" said Holmes thoughtfully. "What do you make of it yourself?" "Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very complex, Sir Henry. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right." We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to which we afterwards repaired that Holmes asked Baskerville what were his intentions. "To go to Baskerville Hall." "And when?" "At the end of the week." "On the whole," said Holmes, "I think that your decision is a wise one. I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not know, Dr. Mortimer, that you were followed this morning from my house?" Dr. Mortimer started violently. "Followed! By whom?" "That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full beard?" "No--or, let me see--why, yes. Barrymore, Sir Charles's butler, is a man with a full, black beard." "Ha! Where is Barrymore?" "He is in charge of the Hall." "We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility he might be in London." "How can you do that?" "Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Henry?' That will do. Address to Mr. Barrymore, Baskerville Hall. What is the nearest telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Barrymore to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether Barrymore is at his post in Devonshire or not." "That's so," said Baskerville. "By the way, Dr. Mortimer, who is this Barrymore, anyhow?" "He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are as respectable a couple as any in the county." "At the same time," said Baskerville, "it's clear enough that so long as there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine home and nothing to do." "That is true." "Did Barrymore profit at all by Sir Charles's will?" asked Holmes. "He and his wife had five hundred pounds each." "Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?" "Yes; Sir Charles was very fond of talking about the provisions of his will." "That is very interesting." "I hope," said Dr. Mortimer, "that you do not look with suspicious eyes upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Charles, for I also had a thousand pounds left to me." "Indeed! And anyone else?" "There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Henry." "And how much was the residue?" "Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds." Holmes raised his eyebrows in surprise. "I had no idea that so gigantic a sum was involved," said he. "Sir Charles had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total value of the estate was close on to a million." "Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Mortimer. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here--you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis!--who would inherit the estate?" "Since Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles's younger brother died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland." "Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr. James Desmond?" "Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Charles. He is a man of venerable appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any settlement from Sir Charles, though he pressed it upon him." "And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Charles's thousands." "He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it." "And have you made your will, Sir Henry?" "No, Mr. Holmes, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Baskervilles if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together." "Quite so. Well, Sir Henry, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone." "Dr. Mortimer returns with me." "But Dr. Mortimer has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Henry, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side." "Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Holmes?" "If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor." "Whom would you recommend, then?" Holmes laid his hand upon my arm. "If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I." The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer, Baskerville seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily. "Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Watson," said he. "You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Baskerville Hall and see me through I'll never forget it." The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was complimented by the words of Holmes and by the eagerness with which the baronet hailed me as a companion. "I will come, with pleasure," said I. "I do not know how I could employ my time better." "And you will report very carefully to me," said Holmes. "When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?" "Would that suit Dr. Watson?" "Perfectly." "Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington." We had risen to depart when Baskerville gave a cry, of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet. "My missing boot!" he cried. "May all our difficulties vanish as easily!" said Sherlock Holmes. "But it is a very singular thing," Dr. Mortimer remarked. "I searched this room carefully before lunch." "And so did I," said Baskerville. "Every inch of it." "There was certainly no boot in it then." "In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching." The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Charles's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Holmes sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought. Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran: Have just heard that Barrymore is at the Hall. BASKERVILLE. The second: Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry, to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT. "There go two of my threads, Watson. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent." "We have still the cabman who drove the spy." "Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question." The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself. "I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had been inquiring for No. 2704," said he. "I've driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me." "I have nothing in the world against you, my good man," said Holmes. "On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions." "Well, I've had a good day and no mistake," said the cabman with a grin. "What was it you wanted to ask, sir?" "First of all your name and address, in case I want you again." "John Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's Yard, near Waterloo Station." Sherlock Holmes made a note of it. "Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street." The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. "Why, there's no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already," said he. "The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone." "My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" "His name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes." Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh. "A touch, Watson--an undeniable touch!" said he. "I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Sherlock Holmes, was it?" "Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name." "Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred." "He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here." "This very door," said Holmes. "Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along--" "I know," said Holmes. "Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Sherlock Holmes.' That's how I come to know the name." "I see. And you saw no more of him?" "Not after he went into the station." "And how would you describe Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The cabman scratched his head. "Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that." "Colour of his eyes?" "No, I can't say that." "Nothing more that you can remember?" "No, sir; nothing." "Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!" "Good-night, sir, and thank you!" John Clayton departed chuckling, and Holmes turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and a rueful smile. "Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began," said he. "The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Henry Baskerville had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Watson, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my mind about it." "About what?" "About sending you. It's an ugly business, Watson, an ugly dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more."

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-5

Holmes and Watson arrive at Sir Henry's hotel. Holmes says that the other people staying at the hotel cannot be connected to the person watching Sir Henry, because that person is keeping his distance. When they arrive at Sir Henry's room, they find out that he is furious. Someone's stolen an old black boot, leaving him a mismatched pair of one brown and one black. Sir Henry apologizes for making such a fuss over such a small thing as two stolen boots. But Holmes looks Very Serious--clearly, this Mystery of the Stolen Boots means a lot more to Holmes than it does to us. Holmes asks if Sir Henry knows anyone with a thick black beard. Yep--apparently Barrymore, the butler at Baskerville Hall, fits that description. It turns out that both Barrymore and his wife received money in Sir Charles' will. Perhaps they could be the culprits! Dr. Mortimer admits that he also received some cash from Sir Charles' will. But the rest of his estate all went to Sir Henry: 740,000 pounds, to be exact. . The real Holmes gives John Clayton some money and then laughs with Watson. He realizes that the spy must have recognized Holmes when he started following Sir Henry.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_5_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-6", "summary": "That Saturday, Holmes takes Watson to the train station to go to Baskerville Hall. Holmes asks Watson to send him information about Sir Henry's neighbors. Holmes gives Watson a quick list of people in the area:Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ;Dr. Mortimer ;Mrs. Mortimer ;Stapleton ;Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ; Dr. Mortimer ; Mrs. Mortimer ; Stapleton ; Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . When Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive at the train station, Holmes warns Sir Henry that it's not safe for him to go off on his own. Not. Safe. Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry take the train to Devonshire. Watson notices that the landscape is a bleak and a little sad. Plus, there are soldiers watching the road to Sir Henry's property. The driver explains that a prisoner has escaped onto the moors. And he's not just any prisoner--he's an insane murderer named Selden. When they arrive at Baskerville Hall, they see that it's a pretty gloomy place. Barrymore welcomes Sir Henry to his family home. He also suggests that Sir Henry start hiring a full staff of servants to keep the old place up. Sir Henry wonders: is Barrymore planning on quitting? His family has worked for Baskerville Hall for generations. In fact, Barrymore does want to leave: he and his wife were so weirded out by Sir Charles' death that they don't feel comfortable at the Hall any longer. In the middle of the night, Watson hears the sound of a woman sobbing.", "analysis": ""}

Sir Henry Baskerville and Dr. Mortimer were ready upon the appointed day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Sherlock Holmes drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions and advice. "I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions, Watson," said he; "I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing." "What sort of facts?" I asked. "Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the case, and especially the relations between young Baskerville and his neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Charles. I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually surround Sir Henry Baskerville upon the moor." "Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Barrymore couple?" "By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our friend Dr. Mortimer, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Stapleton, and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions. There is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor, and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must be your very special study." "I will do my best." "You have arms, I suppose?" "Yes, I thought it as well to take them." "Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions." Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform. "No, we have no news of any kind," said Dr. Mortimer in answer to my friend's questions. "I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice." "You have always kept together, I presume?" "Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of Surgeons." "And I went to look at the folk in the park," said Baskerville. "But we had no trouble of any kind." "It was imprudent, all the same," said Holmes, shaking his head and looking very grave. "I beg, Sir Henry, that you will not go about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other boot?" "No, sir, it is gone forever." "Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye," he added as the train began to glide down the platform. "Bear in mind, Sir Henry, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Mortimer has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted." I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the tall, austere figure of Holmes standing motionless and gazing after us. The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr. Mortimer's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Baskerville stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features of the Devon scenery. "I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Watson," said he; "but I have never seen a place to compare with it." "I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county," I remarked. "It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county," said Dr. Mortimer. "A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Charles's head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Baskerville Hall, were you not?" "I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Watson, and I'm as keen as possible to see the moor." "Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor," said Dr. Mortimer, pointing out of the carriage window. Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Baskerville sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it. The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Henry Baskerville, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills. The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Baskerville gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Baskervilles. "Halloa!" cried Dr. Mortimer, "what is this?" A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we travelled. "What is this, Perkins?" asked Dr. Mortimer. Our driver half turned in his seat. "There's a convict escaped from Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact." "Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give information." "Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any ordinary convict. This is a man that would stick at nothing." "Who is he, then?" "It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer." I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Holmes had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Baskerville fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him. We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip. "Baskerville Hall," said he. Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold. Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end. "Was it here?" he asked in a low voice. "No, no, the yew alley is on the other side." The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face. "It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door." The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke. "Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!" A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags. "You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer. "My wife is expecting me." "Surely you will stay and have some dinner?" "No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service." The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp. "It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it." I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features. "Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?" "Is it ready?" "In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff." "What new conditions?" "I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household." "Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?" "Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir." "But your family have been with us for several generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family connection." I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face. "I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Charles, and his death gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Baskerville Hall." "But what do you intend to do?" "I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Charles's generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms." A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. My own was in the same wing as Baskerville's and almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my mind. But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette. "My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning." I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest. And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-6

That Saturday, Holmes takes Watson to the train station to go to Baskerville Hall. Holmes asks Watson to send him information about Sir Henry's neighbors. Holmes gives Watson a quick list of people in the area:Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ;Dr. Mortimer ;Mrs. Mortimer ;Stapleton ;Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore ; Dr. Mortimer ; Mrs. Mortimer ; Stapleton ; Stapleton's sister ; and Mr. Frankland . When Dr. Mortimer and Sir Henry arrive at the train station, Holmes warns Sir Henry that it's not safe for him to go off on his own. Not. Safe. Watson, Dr. Mortimer, and Sir Henry take the train to Devonshire. Watson notices that the landscape is a bleak and a little sad. Plus, there are soldiers watching the road to Sir Henry's property. The driver explains that a prisoner has escaped onto the moors. And he's not just any prisoner--he's an insane murderer named Selden. When they arrive at Baskerville Hall, they see that it's a pretty gloomy place. Barrymore welcomes Sir Henry to his family home. He also suggests that Sir Henry start hiring a full staff of servants to keep the old place up. Sir Henry wonders: is Barrymore planning on quitting? His family has worked for Baskerville Hall for generations. In fact, Barrymore does want to leave: he and his wife were so weirded out by Sir Charles' death that they don't feel comfortable at the Hall any longer. In the middle of the night, Watson hears the sound of a woman sobbing.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_6_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 7

chapter 7

{"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-7", "summary": "The next morning, the sun is shining and the house seems less, well, cursed. Even so, both Watson and Sir Henry agree that they heard a woman crying the night before. Watson suspects that the crying woman is Mrs. Barrymore, and that Barrymore's responsible. Watson's suspicions about Barrymore's character only increase when he walks into town and finds out that it wasn't Barrymore, but Barrymore's wife who received the telegram Holmes sent to check out his alibi while Sir Henry was in town. Could Barrymore have been in London spying on Sir Henry after all? A man runs up to Watson in the village and introduces himself: it's Stapleton, from nearby Merripit House. He's carrying a butterfly net. He announces that he is a \"naturalist\" . Stapleton asks if Sherlock Holmes has any theories behind the Hound of the Baskervilles to explain Sir Charles' death. Watson is like, whuh? Holmes? How did you know--? Stapleton promises him that everyone in the neighborhood knows why Watson is here. Stapleton invites Watson to Merripit House to meet his sister. As they walk through the moors, Stapleton tells Watson that the ground in this area is not stable: there are bogs and marshes all over the place. Stapleton warns that, if Watson went into the Mire on his own, he would probably drown in the swamp. The two men hear a long, low howl over the moor. Apparently, the local people believe that this howl belongs to the Hound of the Baskervilles. Stapleton thinks it's a bittern--a kind of bird that's nearly extinct in England. They walk past the remains of a prehistoric town. Stapleton suddenly spots a butterfly and goes running off into the Mire. Watson watches him anxiously, worried that he'll lose his footing and sink. As Watson stares after Stapleton, a woman suddenly approaches him. Watson assumes that she is Stapleton's sister, even though she doesn't look very much like him. She quickly warns him, \"Go straight back to London, instantly\" . When Stapleton returns to the path, she suddenly changes the subject and starts talking about the flowers on the moor. Stapleton addresses her as \"Beryl\" Beryl mentions that she has already introduced herself to \"Sir Henry.\" Watson is like, ummm, no, I'm just Dr. Watson. Beryl blushes in embarrassment. When Watson walks off in the direction of Baskerville Hall, Beryl rushes over to speak to him. She apologizes for confusing him with Sir Henry but refuses to explain why it's so important for Sir Henry to leave.", "analysis": ""}

The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before. "I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!" said the baronet. "We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more." "And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination," I answered. "Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing in the night?" "That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream." "I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a woman." "We must ask about this right away." He rang the bell and asked Barrymore whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened to his master's question. "There are only two women in the house, Sir Henry," he answered. "One is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her." And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met Mrs. Barrymore in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Charles, and we had only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man's death. Was it possible that it was Barrymore, after all, whom we had seen in the cab in Regent Street? The beard might well have been the same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man, but such an impression might easily have been erroneous. How could I settle the point forever? Obviously the first thing to do was to see the Grimpen postmaster and find whether the test telegram had really been placed in Barrymore's own hands. Be the answer what it might, I should at least have something to report to Sherlock Holmes. Sir Henry had numerous papers to examine after breakfast, so that the time was propitious for my excursion. It was a pleasant walk of four miles along the edge of the moor, leading me at last to a small gray hamlet, in which two larger buildings, which proved to be the inn and the house of Dr. Mortimer, stood high above the rest. The postmaster, who was also the village grocer, had a clear recollection of the telegram. "Certainly, sir," said he, "I had the telegram delivered to Mr. Barrymore exactly as directed." "Who delivered it?" "My boy here. James, you delivered that telegram to Mr. Barrymore at the Hall last week, did you not?" "Yes, father, I delivered it." "Into his own hands?" I asked. "Well, he was up in the loft at the time, so that I could not put it into his own hands, but I gave it into Mrs. Barrymore's hands, and she promised to deliver it at once." "Did you see Mr. Barrymore?" "No, sir; I tell you he was in the loft." "If you didn't see him, how do you know he was in the loft?" "Well, surely his own wife ought to know where he is," said the postmaster testily. "Didn't he get the telegram? If there is any mistake it is for Mr. Barrymore himself to complain." It seemed hopeless to pursue the inquiry any farther, but it was clear that in spite of Holmes's ruse we had no proof that Barrymore had not been in London all the time. Suppose that it were so--suppose that the same man had been the last who had seen Sir Charles alive, and the first to dog the new heir when he returned to England. What then? Was he the agent of others or had he some sinister design of his own? What interest could he have in persecuting the Baskerville family? I thought of the strange warning clipped out of the leading article of the Times. Was that his work or was it possibly the doing of someone who was bent upon counteracting his schemes? The only conceivable motive was that which had been suggested by Sir Henry, that if the family could be scared away a comfortable and permanent home would be secured for the Barrymores. But surely such an explanation as that would be quite inadequate to account for the deep and subtle scheming which seemed to be weaving an invisible net round the young baronet. Holmes himself had said that no more complex case had come to him in all the long series of his sensational investigations. I prayed, as I walked back along the gray, lonely road, that my friend might soon be freed from his preoccupations and able to come down to take this heavy burden of responsibility from my shoulders. Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running feet behind me and by a voice which called me by name. I turned, expecting to see Dr. Mortimer, but to my surprise it was a stranger who was pursuing me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net in one of his hands. "You will, I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Watson," said he as he came panting up to where I stood. "Here on the moor we are homely folk and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard my name from our mutual friend, Mortimer. I am Stapleton, of Merripit House." "Your net and box would have told me as much," said I, "for I knew that Mr. Stapleton was a naturalist. But how did you know me?" "I have been calling on Mortimer, and he pointed you out to me from the window of his surgery as you passed. As our road lay the same way I thought that I would overtake you and introduce myself. I trust that Sir Henry is none the worse for his journey?" "He is very well, thank you." "We were all rather afraid that after the sad death of Sir Charles the new baronet might refuse to live here. It is asking much of a wealthy man to come down and bury himself in a place of this kind, but I need not tell you that it means a very great deal to the countryside. Sir Henry has, I suppose, no superstitious fears in the matter?" "I do not think that it is likely." "Of course you know the legend of the fiend dog which haunts the family?" "I have heard it." "It is extraordinary how credulous the peasants are about here! Any number of them are ready to swear that they have seen such a creature upon the moor." He spoke with a smile, but I seemed to read in his eyes that he took the matter more seriously. "The story took a great hold upon the imagination of Sir Charles, and I have no doubt that it led to his tragic end." "But how?" "His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have had a fatal effect upon his diseased heart. I fancy that he really did see something of the kind upon that last night in the yew alley. I feared that some disaster might occur, for I was very fond of the old man, and I knew that his heart was weak." "How did you know that?" "My friend Mortimer told me." "You think, then, that some dog pursued Sir Charles, and that he died of fright in consequence?" "Have you any better explanation?" "I have not come to any conclusion." "Has Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" The words took away my breath for an instant but a glance at the placid face and steadfast eyes of my companion showed that no surprise was intended. "It is useless for us to pretend that we do not know you, Dr. Watson," said he. "The records of your detective have reached us here, and you could not celebrate him without being known yourself. When Mortimer told me your name he could not deny your identity. If you are here, then it follows that Mr. Sherlock Holmes is interesting himself in the matter, and I am naturally curious to know what view he may take." "I am afraid that I cannot answer that question." "May I ask if he is going to honour us with a visit himself?" "He cannot leave town at present. He has other cases which engage his attention." "What a pity! He might throw some light on that which is so dark to us. But as to your own researches, if there is any possible way in which I can be of service to you I trust that you will command me. If I had any indication of the nature of your suspicions or how you propose to investigate the case, I might perhaps even now give you some aid or advice." "I assure you that I am simply here upon a visit to my friend, Sir Henry, and that I need no help of any kind." "Excellent!" said Stapleton. "You are perfectly right to be wary and discreet. I am justly reproved for what I feel was an unjustifiable intrusion, and I promise you that I will not mention the matter again." We had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the road and wound away across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay upon the right which had in bygone days been cut into a granite quarry. The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with ferns and brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a gray plume of smoke. "A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House," said he. "Perhaps you will spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister." My first thought was that I should be by Sir Henry's side. But then I remembered the pile of papers and bills with which his study table was littered. It was certain that I could not help with those. And Holmes had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I accepted Stapleton's invitation, and we turned together down the path. "It is a wonderful place, the moor," said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. "You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious." "You know it well, then?" "I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a newcomer. We came shortly after Sir Charles settled. But my tastes led me to explore every part of the country round, and I should think that there are few men who know it better than I do." "Is it hard to know?" "Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?" "It would be a rare place for a gallop." "You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?" "Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest." Stapleton laughed. "That is the great Grimpen Mire," said he. "A false step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!" Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion's nerves seemed to be stronger than mine. "It's gone!" said he. "The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It's a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire." "And you say you can penetrate it?" "Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out." "But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?" "Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them." "I shall try my luck some day." He looked at me with a surprised face. "For God's sake put such an idea out of your mind," said he. "Your blood would be upon my head. I assure you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive. It is only by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do it." "Halloa!" I cried. "What is that?" A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Stapleton looked at me with a curious expression in his face. "Queer place, the moor!" said he. "But what is it?" "The peasants say it is the Hound of the Baskervilles calling for its prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud." I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us. "You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as that?" said I. "What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?" "Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the water rising, or something." "No, no, that was a living voice." "Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?" "No, I never did." "It's a very rare bird--practically extinct--in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns." "It's the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life." "Yes, it's rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside yonder. What do you make of those?" The whole steep slope was covered with gray circular rings of stone, a score of them at least. "What are they? Sheep-pens?" "No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. These are his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even see his hearth and his couch if you have the curiosity to go inside. "But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?" "Neolithic man--no date." "What did he do?" "He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Watson. Oh, excuse me an instant! It is surely Cyclopides." A small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Stapleton was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps and, turning round, found a woman near me upon the path. She had come from the direction in which the plume of smoke indicated the position of Merripit House, but the dip of the moor had hid her until she was quite close. I could not doubt that this was the Miss Stapleton of whom I had been told, since ladies of any sort must be few upon the moor, and I remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. The woman who approached me was certainly that, and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Stapleton was neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England--slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark, eager eyes. With her perfect figure and elegant dress she was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path. Her eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace towards me. I had raised my hat and was about to make some explanatory remark when her own words turned all my thoughts into a new channel. "Go back!" she said. "Go straight back to London, instantly." I could only stare at her in stupid surprise. Her eyes blazed at me, and she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot. "Why should I go back?" I asked. "I cannot explain." She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon the moor again." "But I have only just come." "Man, man!" she cried. "Can you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see the beauties of the place." Stapleton had abandoned the chase and came back to us breathing hard and flushed with his exertions. "Halloa, Beryl!" said he, and it seemed to me that the tone of his greeting was not altogether a cordial one. "Well, Jack, you are very hot." "Yes, I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare and seldom found in the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!" He spoke unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the girl to me. "You have introduced yourselves, I can see." "Yes. I was telling Sir Henry that it was rather late for him to see the true beauties of the moor." "Why, who do you think this is?" "I imagine that it must be Sir Henry Baskerville." "No, no," said I. "Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is Dr. Watson." A flush of vexation passed over her expressive face. "We have been talking at cross purposes," said she. "Why, you had not very much time for talk," her brother remarked with the same questioning eyes. "I talked as if Dr. Watson were a resident instead of being merely a visitor," said she. "It cannot much matter to him whether it is early or late for the orchids. But you will come on, will you not, and see Merripit House?" A short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy. We were admitted by a strange, wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with the house. Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady. As I looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to live in such a place. "Queer spot to choose, is it not?" said he as if in answer to my thought. "And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, Beryl?" "Quite happy," said she, but there was no ring of conviction in her words. "I had a school," said Stapleton. "It was in the north country. The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out in the school and three of the boys died. It never recovered from the blow, and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet, if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys, I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for, with my strong tastes for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my sister is as devoted to Nature as I am. All this, Dr. Watson, has been brought upon your head by your expression as you surveyed the moor out of our window." "It certainly did cross my mind that it might be a little dull--less for you, perhaps, than for your sister." "No, no, I am never dull," said she quickly. "We have books, we have our studies, and we have interesting neighbours. Dr. Mortimer is a most learned man in his own line. Poor Sir Charles was also an admirable companion. We knew him well and miss him more than I can tell. Do you think that I should intrude if I were to call this afternoon and make the acquaintance of Sir Henry?" "I am sure that he would be delighted." "Then perhaps you would mention that I propose to do so. We may in our humble way do something to make things more easy for him until he becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. Will you come upstairs, Dr. Watson, and inspect my collection of Lepidoptera? I think it is the most complete one in the south-west of England. By the time that you have looked through them lunch will be almost ready." But I was eager to get back to my charge. The melancholy of the moor, the death of the unfortunate pony, the weird sound which had been associated with the grim legend of the Baskervilles, all these things tinged my thoughts with sadness. Then on the top of these more or less vague impressions there had come the definite and distinct warning of Miss Stapleton, delivered with such intense earnestness that I could not doubt that some grave and deep reason lay behind it. I resisted all pressure to stay for lunch, and I set off at once upon my return journey, taking the grass-grown path by which we had come. It seems, however, that there must have been some short cut for those who knew it, for before I had reached the road I was astounded to see Miss Stapleton sitting upon a rock by the side of the track. Her face was beautifully flushed with her exertions and she held her hand to her side. "I have run all the way in order to cut you off, Dr. Watson," said she. "I had not even time to put on my hat. I must not stop, or my brother may miss me. I wanted to say to you how sorry I am about the stupid mistake I made in thinking that you were Sir Henry. Please forget the words I said, which have no application whatever to you." "But I can't forget them, Miss Stapleton," said I. "I am Sir Henry's friend, and his welfare is a very close concern of mine. Tell me why it was that you were so eager that Sir Henry should return to London." "A woman's whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say or do." "No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Stapleton, for ever since I have been here I have been conscious of shadows all round me. Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track. Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey your warning to Sir Henry." An expression of irresolution passed for an instant over her face, but her eyes had hardened again when she answered me. "You make too much of it, Dr. Watson," said she. "My brother and I were very much shocked by the death of Sir Charles. We knew him very intimately, for his favourite walk was over the moor to our house. He was deeply impressed with the curse which hung over the family, and when this tragedy came I naturally felt that there must be some grounds for the fears which he had expressed. I was distressed therefore when another member of the family came down to live here, and I felt that he should be warned of the danger which he will run. That was all which I intended to convey. "But what is the danger?" "You know the story of the hound?" "I do not believe in such nonsense." "But I do. If you have any influence with Sir Henry, take him away from a place which has always been fatal to his family. The world is wide. Why should he wish to live at the place of danger?" "Because it is the place of danger. That is Sir Henry's nature. I fear that unless you can give me some more definite information than this it would be impossible to get him to move." "I cannot say anything definite, for I do not know anything definite." "I would ask you one more question, Miss Stapleton. If you meant no more than this when you first spoke to me, why should you not wish your brother to overhear what you said? There is nothing to which he, or anyone else, could object." "My brother is very anxious to have the Hall inhabited, for he thinks it is for the good of the poor folk upon the moor. He would be very angry if he knew that I have said anything which might induce Sir Henry to go away. But I have done my duty now and I will say no more. I must go back, or he will miss me and suspect that I have seen you. Good-bye!" She turned and had disappeared in a few minutes among the scattered boulders, while I, with my soul full of vague fears, pursued my way to Baskerville Hall.

Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-7

The next morning, the sun is shining and the house seems less, well, cursed. Even so, both Watson and Sir Henry agree that they heard a woman crying the night before. Watson suspects that the crying woman is Mrs. Barrymore, and that Barrymore's responsible. Watson's suspicions about Barrymore's character only increase when he walks into town and finds out that it wasn't Barrymore, but Barrymore's wife who received the telegram Holmes sent to check out his alibi while Sir Henry was in town. Could Barrymore have been in London spying on Sir Henry after all? A man runs up to Watson in the village and introduces himself: it's Stapleton, from nearby Merripit House. He's carrying a butterfly net. He announces that he is a "naturalist" . Stapleton asks if Sherlock Holmes has any theories behind the Hound of the Baskervilles to explain Sir Charles' death. Watson is like, whuh? Holmes? How did you know--? Stapleton promises him that everyone in the neighborhood knows why Watson is here. Stapleton invites Watson to Merripit House to meet his sister. As they walk through the moors, Stapleton tells Watson that the ground in this area is not stable: there are bogs and marshes all over the place. Stapleton warns that, if Watson went into the Mire on his own, he would probably drown in the swamp. The two men hear a long, low howl over the moor. Apparently, the local people believe that this howl belongs to the Hound of the Baskervilles. Stapleton thinks it's a bittern--a kind of bird that's nearly extinct in England. They walk past the remains of a prehistoric town. Stapleton suddenly spots a butterfly and goes running off into the Mire. Watson watches him anxiously, worried that he'll lose his footing and sink. As Watson stares after Stapleton, a woman suddenly approaches him. Watson assumes that she is Stapleton's sister, even though she doesn't look very much like him. She quickly warns him, "Go straight back to London, instantly" . When Stapleton returns to the path, she suddenly changes the subject and starts talking about the flowers on the moor. Stapleton addresses her as "Beryl" Beryl mentions that she has already introduced herself to "Sir Henry." Watson is like, ummm, no, I'm just Dr. Watson. Beryl blushes in embarrassment. When Watson walks off in the direction of Baskerville Hall, Beryl rushes over to speak to him. She apologizes for confusing him with Sir Henry but refuses to explain why it's so important for Sir Henry to leave.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_7_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-8", "summary": "As the narrator of this story, Watson then describes the telegrams he's sent to Holmes so far. The first telegram reports that it looks like Selden has left the area. Anyway, no one's seen him, which is a big relief. Watson has also noticed signs that Sir Henry is totally falling for Beryl Stapleton. Weird, though--you'd think Stapleton would be happy to have his sister marry the local rich guy. But in fact, Stapleton seems to be trying to find ways to keep Beryl and Sir Henry apart. Watson also mentions another neighbor: Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall. He's a litigious old man interested in astronomy who has a telescope on his roof. These days, Mr. Frankland spends a fair amount of his time scanning the moors with his telescope looking for Selden the murderer. And now, for the last bit of news: weird stuff has been happening with the Barrymores. Watson told Sir Henry that Barrymore may not have received the telegram Holmes sent from London himself. So Sir Henry asks Barrymore if he read the telegram and replied to it himself. He answers that, since he was busy, he let his wife answer. Later on in the day, Barrymore asks if Sir Henry suspects him of something. Sir Henry says no, and offers Barrymore some of his used clothes to prove his faith in him. Sir Henry's lost 75 lbs. on Jenny Craig, and anyway now that he's a baronet, he needs classier clothes. Watson can't forget that first night when he heard Mrs. Barrymore sobbing. He's seen signs of crying on her face several times since then. Watson's suspicions of Barrymore have only gotten worse since a strange incident the night before. At around two in the morning, Watson heard someone sneaking around outside his room. He woke up and looked out to see Barrymore creeping along the hallway to an empty room. Watson watched Barrymore standing in front of a window with a lamp in his hand. Barrymore stared out onto the moor for several minutes before groaning and putting out the light. Something is going on with that guy.", "analysis": ""}

From this point onward I will follow the course of events by transcribing my own letters to Mr. Sherlock Holmes which lie before me on the table. One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly as written and show my feelings and suspicions of the moment more accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these tragic events, can possibly do. Baskerville Hall, October 13th. MY DEAR HOLMES: My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy. All this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me and will probably be very uninteresting to your severely practical mind. I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun. Let me, therefore, return to the facts concerning Sir Henry Baskerville. If you have not had any report within the last few days it is because up to today there was nothing of importance to relate. Then a very surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell you in due course. But, first of all, I must keep you in touch with some of the other factors in the situation. One of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped convict upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that he has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the lonely householders of this district. A fortnight has passed since his flight, during which he has not been seen and nothing has been heard of him. It is surely inconceivable that he could have held out upon the moor during all that time. Of course, so far as his concealment goes there is no difficulty at all. Any one of these stone huts would give him a hiding-place. But there is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and slaughter one of the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone, and the outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence. We are four able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments when I have thought of the Stapletons. They live miles from any help. There are one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, the latter not a very strong man. They would be helpless in the hands of a desperate fellow like this Notting Hill criminal if he could once effect an entrance. Both Sir Henry and I were concerned at their situation, and it was suggested that Perkins the groom should go over to sleep there, but Stapleton would not hear of it. The fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is a dry glitter in his eyes and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an interesting study. He came over to call upon Baskerville on that first day, and the very next morning he took us both to show us the spot where the legend of the wicked Hugo is supposed to have had its origin. It was an excursion of some miles across the moor to a place which is so dismal that it might have suggested the story. We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Henry was much interested and asked Stapleton more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference of the supernatural in the affairs of men. He spoke lightly, but it was evident that he was very much in earnest. Stapleton was guarded in his replies, but it was easy to see that he said less than he might, and that he would not express his whole opinion out of consideration for the feelings of the baronet. He told us of similar cases, where families had suffered from some evil influence, and he left us with the impression that he shared the popular view upon the matter. On our way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there that Sir Henry made the acquaintance of Miss Stapleton. From the first moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed that we have not seen something of the brother and sister. They dine here tonight, and there is some talk of our going to them next week. One would imagine that such a match would be very welcome to Stapleton, and yet I have more than once caught a look of the strongest disapprobation in his face when Sir Henry has been paying some attention to his sister. He is much attached to her, no doubt, and would lead a lonely life without her, but it would seem the height of selfishness if he were to stand in the way of her making so brilliant a marriage. Yet I am certain that he does not wish their intimacy to ripen into love, and I have several times observed that he has taken pains to prevent them from being tete-a-tete. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow Sir Henry to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My popularity would soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders to the letter. The other day--Thursday, to be more exact--Dr. Mortimer lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Stapletons came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Henry's request to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either side. At the far end is an old tumble-down summer-house. Halfway down is the moor-gate, where the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate with a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your theory of the affair and tried to picture all that had occurred. As the old man stood there he saw something coming across the moor, something which terrified him so that he lost his wits and ran and ran until he died of sheer horror and exhaustion. There was the long, gloomy tunnel down which he fled. And from what? A sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound, black, silent, and monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter? Did the pale, watchful Barrymore know more than he cared to say? It was all dim and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind it. One other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Frankland, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in old manorial and communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but there are rumours that he intends to prosecute Dr. Mortimer for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down. He helps to keep our lives from being monotonous and gives a little comic relief where it is badly needed. And now, having brought you up to date in the escaped convict, the Stapletons, Dr. Mortimer, and Frankland, of Lafter Hall, let me end on that which is most important and tell you more about the Barrymores, and especially about the surprising development of last night. First of all about the test telegram, which you sent from London in order to make sure that Barrymore was really here. I have already explained that the testimony of the postmaster shows that the test was worthless and that we have no proof one way or the other. I told Sir Henry how the matter stood, and he at once, in his downright fashion, had Barrymore up and asked him whether he had received the telegram himself. Barrymore said that he had. "Did the boy deliver it into your own hands?" asked Sir Henry. Barrymore looked surprised, and considered for a little time. "No," said he, "I was in the box-room at the time, and my wife brought it up to me." "Did you answer it yourself?" "No; I told my wife what to answer and she went down to write it." In the evening he recurred to the subject of his own accord. "I could not quite understand the object of your questions this morning, Sir Henry," said he. "I trust that they do not mean that I have done anything to forfeit your confidence?" Sir Henry had to assure him that it was not so and pacify him by giving him a considerable part of his old wardrobe, the London outfit having now all arrived. Mrs. Barrymore is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Barrymore of being a domestic tyrant. I have always felt that there was something singular and questionable in this man's character, but the adventure of last night brings all my suspicions to a head. And yet it may seem a small matter in itself. You are aware that I am not a very sound sleeper, and since I have been on guard in this house my slumbers have been lighter than ever. Last night, about two in the morning, I was aroused by a stealthy step passing my room. I rose, opened my door, and peeped out. A long black shadow was trailing down the corridor. It was thrown by a man who walked softly down the passage with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Barrymore. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole appearance. I have told you that the corridor is broken by the balcony which runs round the hall, but that it is resumed upon the farther side. I waited until he had passed out of sight and then I followed him. When I came round the balcony he had reached the end of the farther corridor, and I could see from the glimmer of light through an open door that he had entered one of the rooms. Now, all these rooms are unfurnished and unoccupied so that his expedition became more mysterious than ever. The light shone steadily as if he were standing motionless. I crept down the passage as noiselessly as I could and peeped round the corner of the door. Barrymore was crouching at the window with the candle held against the glass. His profile was half turned towards me, and his face seemed to be rigid with expectation as he stared out into the blackness of the moor. For some minutes he stood watching intently. Then he gave a deep groan and with an impatient gesture he put out the light. Instantly I made my way back to my room, and very shortly came the stealthy steps passing once more upon their return journey. Long afterwards when I had fallen into a light sleep I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, but I could not tell whence the sound came. What it all means I cannot guess, but there is some secret business going on in this house of gloom which sooner or later we shall get to the bottom of. I do not trouble you with my theories, for you asked me to furnish you only with facts. I have had a long talk with Sir Henry this morning, and we have made a plan of campaign founded upon my observations of last night. I will not speak about it just now, but it should make my next report interesting reading.

Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-8

As the narrator of this story, Watson then describes the telegrams he's sent to Holmes so far. The first telegram reports that it looks like Selden has left the area. Anyway, no one's seen him, which is a big relief. Watson has also noticed signs that Sir Henry is totally falling for Beryl Stapleton. Weird, though--you'd think Stapleton would be happy to have his sister marry the local rich guy. But in fact, Stapleton seems to be trying to find ways to keep Beryl and Sir Henry apart. Watson also mentions another neighbor: Mr. Frankland of Lafter Hall. He's a litigious old man interested in astronomy who has a telescope on his roof. These days, Mr. Frankland spends a fair amount of his time scanning the moors with his telescope looking for Selden the murderer. And now, for the last bit of news: weird stuff has been happening with the Barrymores. Watson told Sir Henry that Barrymore may not have received the telegram Holmes sent from London himself. So Sir Henry asks Barrymore if he read the telegram and replied to it himself. He answers that, since he was busy, he let his wife answer. Later on in the day, Barrymore asks if Sir Henry suspects him of something. Sir Henry says no, and offers Barrymore some of his used clothes to prove his faith in him. Sir Henry's lost 75 lbs. on Jenny Craig, and anyway now that he's a baronet, he needs classier clothes. Watson can't forget that first night when he heard Mrs. Barrymore sobbing. He's seen signs of crying on her face several times since then. Watson's suspicions of Barrymore have only gotten worse since a strange incident the night before. At around two in the morning, Watson heard someone sneaking around outside his room. He woke up and looked out to see Barrymore creeping along the hallway to an empty room. Watson watched Barrymore standing in front of a window with a lamp in his hand. Barrymore stared out onto the moor for several minutes before groaning and putting out the light. Something is going on with that guy.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_9_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 10

chapter 10

{"name": "Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-10", "summary": "As the chapter title promises us, this is--wait for it--a section of Watson's diary from his time at Baskerville Hall. Shocking, we know. Barrymore and Sir Henry get into it the next morning. Turns out Barrymore's angry that Watson and Sir Henry went to hunt down Selden. Barrymore begs the two men to let Selden go until they can get him on a boat to South America. Watson and Sir Henry agree to leave Selden alone. Barrymore's so grateful that he wants to do something for Sir Henry in return. There's something about Sir Charles' death that Barrymore's been keeping secret. The morning of Sir Charles' death, Barrymore happened to notice him receiving a letter from a nearby town called Coombe Tracey. The letter was written in a woman's handwriting. A few weeks ago, long after Sir Charles' mysterious death, Barrymore was cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace in Sir Charles' study. He found the charred pieces of that letter. He could still read the final lines: \"Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate at ten o'clock\" . The letter was signed \"L.L.\" Barrymore hasn't wanted to reveal this because he wanted to protect Sir Charles' rep. But now that Sir Henry has been so kind, Barrymore wants to help him in return. The next day, Watson goes out walking on the moors. As he's heading back to Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer drives past him in a cart. Dr. Mortimer tells Watson that there is a woman with the initials \"L.L.\" living in Coombe Tracey: Laura Lyons, the disgraced, disowned daughter of Mr. Frankland. Apparently, she eloped against her father's will with an artist named Lyons, who then left her. After dinner that evening, Watson asks Barrymore if Selden's still around. Barrymore says he last left out food for him three days ago, but hasn't seen him since. Barrymore also mentions that there's someone else out on the moor. Selden has mentioned this other man to Barrymore--the man doesn't seem to be a convict. Selden told Barrymore that this other man is living in the prehistoric ruins, and that a kid from the village brings him food regularly. The moors seem to be just the thing if you need to hide but need to be close enough to a take-out place that delivers.", "analysis": ""}

So far I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded during these early days to Sherlock Holmes. Now, however, I have arrived at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the convict and our other strange experiences upon the moor. October 16th. A dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger--ever present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it. And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us. There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor. Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It is incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Stapleton may fall in with such a superstition, and Mortimer also, but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes. Holmes would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose that there were really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the letter which warned Sir Henry against the moor. This at least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend as easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he--could he be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor? It is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there are some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I have seen down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The figure was far taller than that of Stapleton, far thinner than that of Frankland. Barrymore it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us, and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then is still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We have never shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one purpose I must now devote all my energies. My first impulse was to tell Sir Henry all my plans. My second and wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely shaken by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his anxieties, but I will take my own steps to attain my own end. We had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Barrymore asked leave to speak with Sir Henry, and they were closeted in his study some little time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was under discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called for me. "Barrymore considers that he has a grievance," he said. "He thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret." The butler was standing very pale but very collected before us. "I may have spoken too warmly, sir," said he, "and if I have, I am sure that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much surprised when I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and learned that you had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough to fight against without my putting more upon his track." "If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a different thing," said the baronet, "you only told us, or rather your wife only told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help yourself." "I didn't think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir Henry--indeed I didn't." "The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over the moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only want to get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr. Stapleton's house, for example, with no one but himself to defend it. There's no safety for anyone until he is under lock and key." "He'll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that. But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you, Sir Henry, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will have been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God's sake, sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still on the moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet until the ship is ready for him. You can't tell on him without getting my wife and me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing to the police." "What do you say, Watson?" I shrugged my shoulders. "If he were safely out of the country it would relieve the tax-payer of a burden." "But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?" "He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was hiding." "That is true," said Sir Henry. "Well, Barrymore--" "God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have killed my poor wife had he been taken again." "I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Watson? But, after what we have heard I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end of it. All right, Barrymore, you can go." With a few broken words of gratitude the man turned, but he hesitated and then came back. "You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about poor Sir Charles's death." The baronet and I were both upon our feet. "Do you know how he died?" "No, sir, I don't know that." "What then?" "I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman." "To meet a woman! He?" "Yes, sir." "And the woman's name?" "I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L." "How do you know this, Barrymore?" "Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman's hand." "Well?" "Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Charles's study--it had never been touched since his death--and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L." "Have you got that slip?" "No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it." "Had Sir Charles received any other letters in the same writing?" "Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone." "And you have no idea who L. L. is?" "No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death." "I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information." "Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go carefully when there's a lady in the case. Even the best of us--" "You thought it might injure his reputation?" "Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter." "Very good, Barrymore; you can go." When the butler had left us Sir Henry turned to me. "Well, Watson, what do you think of this new light?" "It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before." "So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?" "Let Holmes know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him down." I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's conversation for Holmes. It was evident to me that he had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wish that he were here. October 17th. All day today the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the convict out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor devil! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other one--the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluged--the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in gray wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Baskerville Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before. As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Mortimer driving in his dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he gave me a lift homeward. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again. "By the way, Mortimer," said I as we jolted along the rough road, "I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?" "Hardly any, I think." "Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L. L.?" He thought for a few minutes. "No," said he. "There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit though," he added after a pause. "There is Laura Lyons--her initials are L. L.--but she lives in Coombe Tracey." "Who is she?" I asked. "She is Frankland's daughter." "What! Old Frankland the crank?" "Exactly. She married an artist named Lyons, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time." "How does she live?" "I fancy old Frankland allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Stapleton did for one, and Sir Charles for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting business." He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no reason why we should take anyone into our confidence. Tomorrow morning I shall find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this Mrs. Laura Lyons, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing. I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Barrymore just now, which gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time. Mortimer had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played ecarte afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to ask him a few questions. "Well," said I, "has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?" "I don't know, sir. I hope to heaven that he has gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I've not heard of him since I left out food for him last, and that was three days ago." "Did you see him then?" "No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that way." "Then he was certainly there?" "So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it." I sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at Barrymore. "You know that there is another man then?" "Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor." "Have you seen him?" "No, sir." "How do you know of him then?" "Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He's in hiding, too, but he's not a convict as far as I can make out. I don't like it, Dr. Watson--I tell you straight, sir, that I don't like it." He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness. "Now, listen to me, Barrymore! I have no interest in this matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don't like." Barrymore hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words. "It's all these goings-on, sir," he cried at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. "There's foul play somewhere, and there's black villainy brewing, to that I'll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Henry on his way back to London again!" "But what is it that alarms you?" "Look at Sir Charles's death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There's not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What's he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of Baskerville, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Henry's new servants are ready to take over the Hall." "But about this stranger," said I. "Can you tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was doing?" "He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away. At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was doing he could not make out." "And where did he say that he lived?" "Among the old houses on the hillside--the stone huts where the old folk used to live." "But how about his food?" "Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants." "Very good, Barrymore. We may talk further of this some other time." When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the mystery.

Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-10

As the chapter title promises us, this is--wait for it--a section of Watson's diary from his time at Baskerville Hall. Shocking, we know. Barrymore and Sir Henry get into it the next morning. Turns out Barrymore's angry that Watson and Sir Henry went to hunt down Selden. Barrymore begs the two men to let Selden go until they can get him on a boat to South America. Watson and Sir Henry agree to leave Selden alone. Barrymore's so grateful that he wants to do something for Sir Henry in return. There's something about Sir Charles' death that Barrymore's been keeping secret. The morning of Sir Charles' death, Barrymore happened to notice him receiving a letter from a nearby town called Coombe Tracey. The letter was written in a woman's handwriting. A few weeks ago, long after Sir Charles' mysterious death, Barrymore was cleaning out the ashes of the fireplace in Sir Charles' study. He found the charred pieces of that letter. He could still read the final lines: "Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate at ten o'clock" . The letter was signed "L.L." Barrymore hasn't wanted to reveal this because he wanted to protect Sir Charles' rep. But now that Sir Henry has been so kind, Barrymore wants to help him in return. The next day, Watson goes out walking on the moors. As he's heading back to Baskerville Hall, Dr. Mortimer drives past him in a cart. Dr. Mortimer tells Watson that there is a woman with the initials "L.L." living in Coombe Tracey: Laura Lyons, the disgraced, disowned daughter of Mr. Frankland. Apparently, she eloped against her father's will with an artist named Lyons, who then left her. After dinner that evening, Watson asks Barrymore if Selden's still around. Barrymore says he last left out food for him three days ago, but hasn't seen him since. Barrymore also mentions that there's someone else out on the moor. Selden has mentioned this other man to Barrymore--the man doesn't seem to be a convict. Selden told Barrymore that this other man is living in the prehistoric ruins, and that a kid from the village brings him food regularly. The moors seem to be just the thing if you need to hide but need to be close enough to a take-out place that delivers.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_10_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 11

chapter 11

{"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-11", "summary": "Watson travels into Coombe Tracey to see if he can track down Laura Lyons. She's actually pretty easy to find . Watson asks her straight out if she knew Sir Charles. She reluctantly admits that she has received financial assistance from him. Laura goes on to say that a friend of hers, Stapleton, used to speak to Sir Charles on her behalf. She denies that she ever wrote asking to meet him, though. That is, she denies it until Watson quotes her own letter back to her. Oops. She finally admits that she wrote to Sir Charles asking to meet him. She explains why she kept it secret: hello, it's rural England in 1901, a married woman can't just visit an unmarried guy at night without it being a huge scandal. The one thing she won't explain is why she never went to the meeting. She just swears that she made the appointment, but she never went to Baskerville Hall. She says she received the help she needed from \"another source\" . Watson is sure there's more to the story than Laura will tell him, but she never changes her answers. He realizes she must have been asking for money for a divorce, but why so urgently right now? Watson goes back to Baskerville Hall. Mr. Frankland sees him passing by in his carriage and calls him over for a drink. Mr. Frankland starts bragging because he knows something the cops don't know--and he won't tell them. Apparently, there's a boy that has been carrying food to a man hidden near a large hill called Black Tor. Mr. Frankland has been keeping watch with his telescope because he thinks the man is the murderous Selden. Even as they're talking about it, the boy appears on his twice daily errand of sneaking over the moors with food for the mysterious man. Watson ditches Mr. Frankland and goes out onto the moors to follow the boy's tracks. He finds a circle of old stone huts, and he discovers one that's clearly being lived in. Inside the hut, there's a note: \"Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey\" . Watson realizes that the mystery man has been following him. But he can't find any other signs of the man's identity. Watson sits and waits nervously for the man to return. Finally, he hears the sound of someone approaching. And he hears a familiar voice inviting him to come outside, where it's more comfortable.", "analysis": ""}

The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Laura Lyons of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Charles Baskerville and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places. I had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs. Lyons upon the evening before, for Dr. Mortimer remained with him at cards until it was very late. At breakfast, however, I informed him about my discovery and asked him whether he would care to accompany me to Coombe Tracey. At first he was very eager to come, but on second thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we might obtain. I left Sir Henry behind, therefore, not without some prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest. When I reached Coombe Tracey I told Perkins to put up the horses, and I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed. A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter, sprang up with a pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my visit. The first impression left by Mrs. Lyons was one of extreme beauty. Her eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the brunette, the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose. Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how delicate my mission was. "I have the pleasure," said I, "of knowing your father." It was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it. "There is nothing in common between my father and me," she said. "I owe him nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir Charles Baskerville and some other kind hearts I might have starved for all that my father cared." "It was about the late Sir Charles Baskerville that I have come here to see you." The freckles started out on the lady's face. "What can I tell you about him?" she asked, and her fingers played nervously over the stops of her typewriter. "You knew him, did you not?" "I have already said that I owe a great deal to his kindness. If I am able to support myself it is largely due to the interest which he took in my unhappy situation." "Did you correspond with him?" The lady looked quickly up with an angry gleam in her hazel eyes. "What is the object of these questions?" she asked sharply. "The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask them here than that the matter should pass outside our control." She was silent and her face was still very pale. At last she looked up with something reckless and defiant in her manner. "Well, I'll answer," she said. "What are your questions?" "Did you correspond with Sir Charles?" "I certainly wrote to him once or twice to acknowledge his delicacy and his generosity." "Have you the dates of those letters?" "No." "Have you ever met him?" "Yes, once or twice, when he came into Coombe Tracey. He was a very retiring man, and he preferred to do good by stealth." "But if you saw him so seldom and wrote so seldom, how did he know enough about your affairs to be able to help you, as you say that he has done?" She met my difficulty with the utmost readiness. "There were several gentlemen who knew my sad history and united to help me. One was Mr. Stapleton, a neighbour and intimate friend of Sir Charles's. He was exceedingly kind, and it was through him that Sir Charles learned about my affairs." I knew already that Sir Charles Baskerville had made Stapleton his almoner upon several occasions, so the lady's statement bore the impress of truth upon it. "Did you ever write to Sir Charles asking him to meet you?" I continued. Mrs. Lyons flushed with anger again. "Really, sir, this is a very extraordinary question." "I am sorry, madam, but I must repeat it." "Then I answer, certainly not." "Not on the very day of Sir Charles's death?" The flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her dry lips could not speak the "No" which I saw rather than heard. "Surely your memory deceives you," said I. "I could even quote a passage of your letter. It ran 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o'clock.'" I thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme effort. "Is there no such thing as a gentleman?" she gasped. "You do Sir Charles an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you wrote it?" "Yes, I did write it," she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of words. "I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an interview I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me." "But why at such an hour?" "Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get there earlier." "But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?" "Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor's house?" "Well, what happened when you did get there?" "I never went." "Mrs. Lyons!" "No, I swear it to you on all I hold sacred. I never went. Something intervened to prevent my going." "What was that?" "That is a private matter. I cannot tell it." "You acknowledge then that you made an appointment with Sir Charles at the very hour and place at which he met his death, but you deny that you kept the appointment." "That is the truth." Again and again I cross-questioned her, but I could never get past that point. "Mrs. Lyons," said I as I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, "you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will find how seriously you are compromised. If your position is innocent, why did you in the first instance deny having written to Sir Charles upon that date?" "Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and that I might find myself involved in a scandal." "And why were you so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy your letter?" "If you have read the letter you will know." "I did not say that I had read all the letter." "You quoted some of it." "I quoted the postscript. The letter had, as I said, been burned and it was not all legible. I ask you once again why it was that you were so pressing that Sir Charles should destroy this letter which he received on the day of his death." "The matter is a very private one." "The more reason why you should avoid a public investigation." "I will tell you, then. If you have heard anything of my unhappy history you will know that I made a rash marriage and had reason to regret it." "I have heard so much." "My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor. The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility that he may force me to live with him. At the time that I wrote this letter to Sir Charles I had learned that there was a prospect of my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant everything to me--peace of mind, happiness, self-respect--everything. I knew Sir Charles's generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story from my own lips he would help me." "Then how is it that you did not go?" "Because I received help in the interval from another source." "Why then, did you not write to Sir Charles and explain this?" "So I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next morning." The woman's story hung coherently together, and all my questions were unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed, instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time of the tragedy. It was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to Baskerville Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale? Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy? Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought for among the stone huts upon the moor. And that was a most vague direction. I realized it as I drove back and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people. Barrymore's only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Holmes had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where my master had failed. Luck had been against us again and again in this inquiry, but now at last it came to my aid. And the messenger of good fortune was none other than Mr. Frankland, who was standing, gray-whiskered and red-faced, outside the gate of his garden, which opened on to the highroad along which I travelled. "Good-day, Dr. Watson," cried he with unwonted good humour, "you must really give your horses a rest and come in to have a glass of wine and to congratulate me." My feelings towards him were very far from being friendly after what I had heard of his treatment of his daughter, but I was anxious to send Perkins and the wagonette home, and the opportunity was a good one. I alighted and sent a message to Sir Henry that I should walk over in time for dinner. Then I followed Frankland into his dining-room. "It is a great day for me, sir--one of the red-letter days of my life," he cried with many chuckles. "I have brought off a double event. I mean to teach them in these parts that law is law, and that there is a man here who does not fear to invoke it. I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton's park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We'll teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Watson, and both in my favour. I haven't had such a day since I had Sir John Morland for trespass because he shot in his own warren." "How on earth did you do that?" "Look it up in the books, sir. It will repay reading--Frankland v. Morland, Court of Queen's Bench. It cost me 200 pounds, but I got my verdict." "Did it do you any good?" "None, sir, none. I am proud to say that I had no interest in the matter. I act entirely from a sense of public duty. I have no doubt, for example, that the Fernworthy people will burn me in effigy tonight. I told the police last time they did it that they should stop these disgraceful exhibitions. The County Constabulary is in a scandalous state, sir, and it has not afforded me the protection to which I am entitled. The case of Frankland v. Regina will bring the matter before the attention of the public. I told them that they would have occasion to regret their treatment of me, and already my words have come true." "How so?" I asked. The old man put on a very knowing expression. "Because I could tell them what they are dying to know; but nothing would induce me to help the rascals in any way." I had been casting round for some excuse by which I could get away from his gossip, but now I began to wish to hear more of it. I had seen enough of the contrary nature of the old sinner to understand that any strong sign of interest would be the surest way to stop his confidences. "Some poaching case, no doubt?" said I with an indifferent manner. "Ha, ha, my boy, a very much more important matter than that! What about the convict on the moor?" I stared. "You don't mean that you know where he is?" said I. "I may not know exactly where he is, but I am quite sure that I could help the police to lay their hands on him. Has it never struck you that the way to catch that man was to find out where he got his food and so trace it to him?" He certainly seemed to be getting uncomfortably near the truth. "No doubt," said I; "but how do you know that he is anywhere upon the moor?" "I know it because I have seen with my own eyes the messenger who takes him his food." My heart sank for Barrymore. It was a serious thing to be in the power of this spiteful old busybody. But his next remark took a weight from my mind. "You'll be surprised to hear that his food is taken to him by a child. I see him every day through my telescope upon the roof. He passes along the same path at the same hour, and to whom should he be going except to the convict?" Here was luck indeed! And yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A child! Barrymore had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was on his track, and not upon the convict's, that Frankland had stumbled. If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But incredulity and indifference were evidently my strongest cards. "I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of the moorland shepherds taking out his father's dinner." The least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat. His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his gray whiskers bristled like those of an angry cat. "Indeed, sir!" said he, pointing out over the wide-stretching moor. "Do you see that Black Tor over yonder? Well, do you see the low hill beyond with the thornbush upon it? It is the stoniest part of the whole moor. Is that a place where a shepherd would be likely to take his station? Your suggestion, sir, is a most absurd one." I meekly answered that I had spoken without knowing all the facts. My submission pleased him and led him to further confidences. "You may be sure, sir, that I have very good grounds before I come to an opinion. I have seen the boy again and again with his bundle. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, I have been able--but wait a moment, Dr. Watson. Do my eyes deceive me, or is there at the present moment something moving upon that hillside?" It was several miles off, but I could distinctly see a small dark dot against the dull green and gray. "Come, sir, come!" cried Frankland, rushing upstairs. "You will see with your own eyes and judge for yourself." The telescope, a formidable instrument mounted upon a tripod, stood upon the flat leads of the house. Frankland clapped his eye to it and gave a cry of satisfaction. "Quick, Dr. Watson, quick, before he passes over the hill!" There he was, sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest I saw the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one who dreads pursuit. Then he vanished over the hill. "Well! Am I right?" "Certainly, there is a boy who seems to have some secret errand." "And what the errand is even a county constable could guess. But not one word shall they have from me, and I bind you to secrecy also, Dr. Watson. Not a word! You understand!" "Just as you wish." "They have treated me shamefully--shamefully. When the facts come out in Frankland v. Regina I venture to think that a thrill of indignation will run through the country. Nothing would induce me to help the police in any way. For all they cared it might have been me, instead of my effigy, which these rascals burned at the stake. Surely you are not going! You will help me to empty the decanter in honour of this great occasion!" But I resisted all his solicitations and succeeded in dissuading him from his announced intention of walking home with me. I kept the road as long as his eye was on me, and then I struck off across the moor and made for the stony hill over which the boy had disappeared. Everything was working in my favour, and I swore that it should not be through lack of energy or perseverance that I should miss the chance which fortune had thrown in my way. The sun was already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his hiding place--his secret was within my grasp. As I approached the hut, walking as warily as Stapleton would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself that the place had indeed been used as a habitation. A vague pathway among the boulders led to the dilapidated opening which served as a door. All was silent within. The unknown might be lurking there, or he might be prowling on the moor. My nerves tingled with the sense of adventure. Throwing aside my cigarette, I closed my hand upon the butt of my revolver and, walking swiftly up to the door, I looked in. The place was empty. But there were ample signs that I had not come upon a false scent. This was certainly where the man lived. Some blankets rolled in a waterproof lay upon that very stone slab upon which Neolithic man had once slumbered. The ashes of a fire were heaped in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the checkered light, a pannikin and a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and upon this stood a small cloth bundle--the same, no doubt, which I had seen through the telescope upon the shoulder of the boy. It contained a loaf of bread, a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. As I set it down again, after having examined it, my heart leaped to see that beneath it there lay a sheet of paper with writing upon it. I raised it, and this was what I read, roughly scrawled in pencil: "Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey." For a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not Sir Henry, who was being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent--the boy, perhaps--upon my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed and reported. Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes. If there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind, nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel? I swore that I would not leave the hut until I knew. Outside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers of Baskerville Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house of the Stapletons. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden evening light, and yet as I looked at them my soul shared none of the peace of Nature but quivered at the vagueness and the terror of that interview which every instant was bringing nearer. With tingling nerves but a fixed purpose, I sat in the dark recess of the hut and waited with sombre patience for the coming of its tenant. And then at last I heard him. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut. "It is a lovely evening, my dear Watson," said a well-known voice. "I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in."

Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-11

Watson travels into Coombe Tracey to see if he can track down Laura Lyons. She's actually pretty easy to find . Watson asks her straight out if she knew Sir Charles. She reluctantly admits that she has received financial assistance from him. Laura goes on to say that a friend of hers, Stapleton, used to speak to Sir Charles on her behalf. She denies that she ever wrote asking to meet him, though. That is, she denies it until Watson quotes her own letter back to her. Oops. She finally admits that she wrote to Sir Charles asking to meet him. She explains why she kept it secret: hello, it's rural England in 1901, a married woman can't just visit an unmarried guy at night without it being a huge scandal. The one thing she won't explain is why she never went to the meeting. She just swears that she made the appointment, but she never went to Baskerville Hall. She says she received the help she needed from "another source" . Watson is sure there's more to the story than Laura will tell him, but she never changes her answers. He realizes she must have been asking for money for a divorce, but why so urgently right now? Watson goes back to Baskerville Hall. Mr. Frankland sees him passing by in his carriage and calls him over for a drink. Mr. Frankland starts bragging because he knows something the cops don't know--and he won't tell them. Apparently, there's a boy that has been carrying food to a man hidden near a large hill called Black Tor. Mr. Frankland has been keeping watch with his telescope because he thinks the man is the murderous Selden. Even as they're talking about it, the boy appears on his twice daily errand of sneaking over the moors with food for the mysterious man. Watson ditches Mr. Frankland and goes out onto the moors to follow the boy's tracks. He finds a circle of old stone huts, and he discovers one that's clearly being lived in. Inside the hut, there's a note: "Dr. Watson has gone to Coombe Tracey" . Watson realizes that the mystery man has been following him. But he can't find any other signs of the man's identity. Watson sits and waits nervously for the man to return. Finally, he hears the sound of someone approaching. And he hears a familiar voice inviting him to come outside, where it's more comfortable.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_11_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 12

chapter 12

{"name": "Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-12", "summary": "Surprise! The mysterious man on the hill is none other than Holmes. Watson gets upset when he realizes that Holmes has been deliberately keeping him in the dark. And what about all those reports, which he so carefully wrote up and sent off to London? Holmes tries to make nice. He says he trusts Watson completely. But he also worried that Watson wouldn't have been able to resist making contact with Holmes on the moors. And Holmes has been getting the reports--he arranged to have them delivered back to him on the moors from London. Holmes is fascinated by Watson's account of his conversation with Laura Lyons. Holmes knows that Stapleton and Laura Lyons have been hooking up. Holmes drops another bombshell: Beryl is actually Mrs. Stapleton. She's his wife, not his sister! Stapleton is the one who followed Sir Henry in London, and Beryl's the one who sent that warning to Sir Henry at his hotel. Holmes knows that Stapleton's pose as an unmarried man helped him enlist Laura in his plotting. And Laura's desperate for divorce money now because she believes that she can marry him. Holmes is almost ready to charge Stapleton with murder. But he needs Watson to wait at Baskerville Hall with Sir Henry for at least another day or two. Just as Holmes says this, they hear a horrible scream over the moors, followed by the growling of a dog. Holmes fears that they may be too late. At the side of a cliff, they find a body with a crushed skull. It's Sir Henry Baskerville. Besides feeling guilty that they were on the moors and still failed to save Sir Henry, Holmes is deeply frustrated. Even though Holmes and Watson are both sure that Stapleton is involved with the Hound murders, there's no definite proof linking him to the Baskerville deaths. Holmes goes over to the body to carry it to the hall. But suddenly, he starts dancing around and shaking Watson's hand. It's not Sir Henry at all! The body has a beard! In fact, the body belongs to Selden. Watson remembers that Sir Henry gave some of his old clothes to Barrymore; Barrymore probably passed them on to Selden. Stapleton's dog has obviously been trained to react to Sir Henry's smell, which lead him to attack Selden in Sir Henry's clothes. They see someone smoking and strolling towards them: it's Stapleton. Stapleton turns pale when he sees the body, since he realizes that it's not Sir Henry. Stapleton claims he invited Sir Henry to walk over to Merripit House and then got worried when he never turned up. Stapleton asks suspiciously if anybody heard the sounds of a dog, since the moors are supposed to be haunted. Neither Holmes nor Watson gives any sign that they might know why Stapleton's so interested in this mysterious dog. Watson claims to believe that Selden died from madness and stress, which drove him over a cliff. Holmes also pretends that he plans to go back to London the next day, since this has \"not been a satisfactory case\" .", "analysis": ""}

For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the world. "Holmes!" I cried--"Holmes!" "Come out," said he, "and please be careful with the revolver." I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street. "I never was more glad to see anyone in my life," said I as I wrung him by the hand. "Or more astonished, eh?" "Well, I must confess to it." "The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you. I had no idea that you had found my occasional retreat, still less that you were inside it, until I was within twenty paces of the door." "My footprint, I presume?" "No, Watson, I fear that I could not undertake to recognize your footprint amid all the footprints of the world. If you seriously desire to deceive me you must change your tobacconist; for when I see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that my friend Watson is in the neighbourhood. You will see it there beside the path. You threw it down, no doubt, at that supreme moment when you charged into the empty hut." "Exactly." "I thought as much--and knowing your admirable tenacity I was convinced that you were sitting in ambush, a weapon within reach, waiting for the tenant to return. So you actually thought that I was the criminal?" "I did not know who you were, but I was determined to find out." "Excellent, Watson! And how did you localize me? You saw me, perhaps, on the night of the convict hunt, when I was so imprudent as to allow the moon to rise behind me?" "Yes, I saw you then." "And have no doubt searched all the huts until you came to this one?" "No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where to look." "The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make it out when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens." He rose and peeped into the hut. "Ha, I see that Cartwright has brought up some supplies. What's this paper? So you have been to Coombe Tracey, have you?" "Yes." "To see Mrs. Laura Lyons?" "Exactly." "Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel lines, and when we unite our results I expect we shall have a fairly full knowledge of the case." "Well, I am glad from my heart that you are here, for indeed the responsibility and the mystery were both becoming too much for my nerves. But how in the name of wonder did you come here, and what have you been doing? I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that case of blackmailing." "That was what I wished you to think." "Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!" I cried with some bitterness. "I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Holmes." "My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a trick upon you. In truth, it was partly for your own sake that I did it, and it was my appreciation of the danger which you ran which led me to come down and examine the matter for myself. Had I been with Sir Henry and you it is confident that my point of view would have been the same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about as I could not possibly have done had I been living in the Hall, and I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my weight at a critical moment." "But why keep me in the dark?" "For you to know could not have helped us and might possibly have led to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an unnecessary risk would be run. I brought Cartwright down with me--you remember the little chap at the express office--and he has seen after my simple wants: a loaf of bread and a clean collar. What does man want more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of feet, and both have been invaluable." "Then my reports have all been wasted!"--My voice trembled as I recalled the pains and the pride with which I had composed them. Holmes took a bundle of papers from his pocket. "Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult case." I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me, but the warmth of Holmes's praise drove my anger from my mind. I felt also in my heart that he was right in what he said and that it was really best for our purpose that I should not have known that he was upon the moor. "That's better," said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. "And now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Laura Lyons--it was not difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone today it is exceedingly probable that I should have gone tomorrow." The sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned chill and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together in the twilight, I told Holmes of my conversation with the lady. So interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was satisfied. "This is most important," said he when I had concluded. "It fills up a gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and the man Stapleton?" "I did not know of a close intimacy." "There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife--" "His wife?" "I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Stapleton is in reality his wife." "Good heavens, Holmes! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have permitted Sir Henry to fall in love with her?" "Sir Henry's falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Henry. He took particular care that Sir Henry did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister." "But why this elaborate deception?" "Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman." All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible--a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart. "It is he, then, who is our enemy--it is he who dogged us in London?" "So I read the riddle." "And the warning--it must have come from her!" "Exactly." The shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed through the darkness which had girt me so long. "But are you sure of this, Holmes? How do you know that the woman is his wife?" "Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in the north of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that the man who had owned it--the name was different--had disappeared with his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete." The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows. "If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Laura Lyons come in?" I asked. "That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her husband. In that case, regarding Stapleton as an unmarried man, she counted no doubt upon becoming his wife." "And when she is undeceived?" "Why, then we may find the lady of service. It must be our first duty to see her--both of us--tomorrow. Don't you think, Watson, that you are away from your charge rather long? Your place should be at Baskerville Hall." The last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violet sky. "One last question, Holmes," I said as I rose. "Surely there is no need of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he after?" Holmes's voice sank as he answered: "It is murder, Watson--refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are upon Sir Henry, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so. Another day--two at the most--and I have my case complete, but until then guard your charge as closely as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission today has justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his side. Hark!" A terrible scream--a prolonged yell of horror and anguish--burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins. "Oh, my God!" I gasped. "What is it? What does it mean?" Holmes had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward, his face peering into the darkness. "Hush!" he whispered. "Hush!" The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before. "Where is it?" Holmes whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. "Where is it, Watson?" "There, I think." I pointed into the darkness. "No, there!" Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea. "The hound!" cried Holmes. "Come, Watson, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!" He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night. I saw Holmes put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground. "He has beaten us, Watson. We are too late." "No, no, surely not!" "Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Watson, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened we'll avenge him!" Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Holmes looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its dreary face. "Can you see anything?" "Nothing." "But, hark, what is that?" A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Holmes laid his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us--the body of Sir Henry Baskerville! There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit--the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Holmes groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness. "The brute! The brute!" I cried with clenched hands. "Oh Holmes, I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate." "I am more to blame than you, Watson. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know--how could I know--that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?" "That we should have heard his screams--my God, those screams!--and yet have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant. And Stapleton, where is he? He shall answer for this deed." "He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered--the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Henry has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!" We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Stapletons. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed. "Why should we not seize him at once?" "Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet." "What can we do?" "There will be plenty for us to do tomorrow. Tonight we can only perform the last offices to our poor friend." Together we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the body, black and clear against the silvered stones. The agony of those contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with tears. "We must send for help, Holmes! We cannot carry him all the way to the Hall. Good heavens, are you mad?" He had uttered a cry and bent over the body. Now he was dancing and laughing and wringing my hand. Could this be my stern, self-contained friend? These were hidden fires, indeed! "A beard! A beard! The man has a beard!" "A beard?" "It is not the baronet--it is--why, it is my neighbour, the convict!" With feverish haste we had turned the body over, and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes. It was indeed the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock--the face of Selden, the criminal. Then in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Barrymore. Barrymore had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap--it was all Sir Henry's. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Holmes how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy. "Then the clothes have been the poor devil's death," said he. "It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Henry's--the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability--and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?" "He heard him." "To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this convict into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?" "A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our conjectures are correct--" "I presume nothing." "Well, then, why this hound should be loose tonight. I suppose that it does not always run loose upon the moor. Stapleton would not let it go unless he had reason to think that Sir Henry would be there." "My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain forever a mystery. The question now is, what shall we do with this poor wretch's body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens." "I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate with the police." "Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Watson, what's this? It's the man himself, by all that's wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions--not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground." A figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and then came on again. "Why, Dr. Watson, that's not you, is it? You are the last man that I should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night. But, dear me, what's this? Somebody hurt? Not--don't tell me that it is our friend Sir Henry!" He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers. "Who--who's this?" he stammered. "It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown." Stapleton turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from Holmes to me. "Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?" "He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. My friend and I were strolling on the moor when we heard a cry." "I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about Sir Henry." "Why about Sir Henry in particular?" I could not help asking. "Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I heard cries upon the moor. By the way"--his eyes darted again from my face to Holmes's--"did you hear anything else besides a cry?" "No," said Holmes; "did you?" "No." "What do you mean, then?" "Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom hound, and so on. It is said to be heard at night upon the moor. I was wondering if there were any evidence of such a sound tonight." "We heard nothing of the kind," said I. "And what is your theory of this poor fellow's death?" "I have no doubt that anxiety and exposure have driven him off his head. He has rushed about the moor in a crazy state and eventually fallen over here and broken his neck." "That seems the most reasonable theory," said Stapleton, and he gave a sigh which I took to indicate his relief. "What do you think about it, Mr. Sherlock Holmes?" My friend bowed his compliments. "You are quick at identification," said he. "We have been expecting you in these parts since Dr. Watson came down. You are in time to see a tragedy." "Yes, indeed. I have no doubt that my friend's explanation will cover the facts. I will take an unpleasant remembrance back to London with me tomorrow." "Oh, you return tomorrow?" "That is my intention." "I hope your visit has cast some light upon those occurrences which have puzzled us?" Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "One cannot always have the success for which one hopes. An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours. It has not been a satisfactory case." My friend spoke in his frankest and most unconcerned manner. Stapleton still looked hard at him. Then he turned to me. "I would suggest carrying this poor fellow to my house, but it would give my sister such a fright that I do not feel justified in doing it. I think that if we put something over his face he will be safe until morning." And so it was arranged. Resisting Stapleton's offer of hospitality, Holmes and I set off to Baskerville Hall, leaving the naturalist to return alone. Looking back we saw the figure moving slowly away over the broad moor, and behind him that one black smudge on the silvered slope which showed where the man was lying who had come so horribly to his end.

Chapter 12

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-12

Surprise! The mysterious man on the hill is none other than Holmes. Watson gets upset when he realizes that Holmes has been deliberately keeping him in the dark. And what about all those reports, which he so carefully wrote up and sent off to London? Holmes tries to make nice. He says he trusts Watson completely. But he also worried that Watson wouldn't have been able to resist making contact with Holmes on the moors. And Holmes has been getting the reports--he arranged to have them delivered back to him on the moors from London. Holmes is fascinated by Watson's account of his conversation with Laura Lyons. Holmes knows that Stapleton and Laura Lyons have been hooking up. Holmes drops another bombshell: Beryl is actually Mrs. Stapleton. She's his wife, not his sister! Stapleton is the one who followed Sir Henry in London, and Beryl's the one who sent that warning to Sir Henry at his hotel. Holmes knows that Stapleton's pose as an unmarried man helped him enlist Laura in his plotting. And Laura's desperate for divorce money now because she believes that she can marry him. Holmes is almost ready to charge Stapleton with murder. But he needs Watson to wait at Baskerville Hall with Sir Henry for at least another day or two. Just as Holmes says this, they hear a horrible scream over the moors, followed by the growling of a dog. Holmes fears that they may be too late. At the side of a cliff, they find a body with a crushed skull. It's Sir Henry Baskerville. Besides feeling guilty that they were on the moors and still failed to save Sir Henry, Holmes is deeply frustrated. Even though Holmes and Watson are both sure that Stapleton is involved with the Hound murders, there's no definite proof linking him to the Baskerville deaths. Holmes goes over to the body to carry it to the hall. But suddenly, he starts dancing around and shaking Watson's hand. It's not Sir Henry at all! The body has a beard! In fact, the body belongs to Selden. Watson remembers that Sir Henry gave some of his old clothes to Barrymore; Barrymore probably passed them on to Selden. Stapleton's dog has obviously been trained to react to Sir Henry's smell, which lead him to attack Selden in Sir Henry's clothes. They see someone smoking and strolling towards them: it's Stapleton. Stapleton turns pale when he sees the body, since he realizes that it's not Sir Henry. Stapleton claims he invited Sir Henry to walk over to Merripit House and then got worried when he never turned up. Stapleton asks suspiciously if anybody heard the sounds of a dog, since the moors are supposed to be haunted. Neither Holmes nor Watson gives any sign that they might know why Stapleton's so interested in this mysterious dog. Watson claims to believe that Selden died from madness and stress, which drove him over a cliff. Holmes also pretends that he plans to go back to London the next day, since this has "not been a satisfactory case" .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_12_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 13

chapter 13

{"name": "Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-13", "summary": "Holmes is impressed at how Stapleton's so cool under pressure. Yeah, he's cool--it's not like Holmes can prove any of his ideas in a court of law yet. Holmes believes that Laura Lyons will be the key to this stage of the case. Watson brings Holmes to Baskerville Hall, and Sir Henry welcomes him. Watson breaks the news to the Barrymores that Selden's dead. Holmes tells Sir Henry that he'll soon have the answer to his mystery, as long as Sir Henry does exactly what Holmes says without asking why. More control-freak stuff. Holmes suddenly jumps up to look at one of the portraits on Sir Henry's wall. When Holmes points to the portrait of a man in black velvet and lace, Sir Henry identifies him as than Hugo Baskerville--the original victim of the Hound. After dinner, Holmes leads Watson back over to the portrait. When Holmes covers Hugo's ridiculous hair, Watson can finally spot what Holmes noticed so long before: that the face of Hugo Baskerville hugely resembles Stapleton's. In other words, Stapleton must be a member of the Baskerville family. Sir Henry comes in, and Holmes tells him that he and Watson are planning to go back to London. Sir Henry's disappointed , but Holmes reassures him that they'll be back soon. They were all supposed to go over to dinner at Stapleton's house together, but now Sir Henry will just have to go alone. Holmes tells Sir Henry to drive over to Merripit House, but then to have the groom bring the carriage home. Sir Henry should then tell his host, Stapleton, that he plans to walk home that night. At the train station in Coombe Tracey, Holmes and Watson meet the boy, Cartwright, who was bringing Holmes' food to the moors over those many days. Holmes orders Cartwright to take the train into London. From London, Cartwright should send a telegram to Sir Henry asking about a pocketbook Holmes might have forgotten at Baskerville Hall. Cartwright agrees, and he also gives Holmes a telegram. It's from \"Lestrade,\" who's coming down to Devonshire on the 5:40 train with a warrant. Holmes explains that Lestrade's a policeman, and they may need his help tonight. Holmes and Watson head over to Laura Lyons' house. Holmes tells Laura Lyons that he is involved in a case which implicates Stapleton and \"his wife\" in murder. Holmes shows her pictures of the people now calling themselves Jack and Beryl Stapleton. The pictures were taken several years ago in York, where they were called Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur . Laura Lyons is shocked that Stapleton has lied to her about his wife. First time in history that's ever happened. She admits that Stapleton told her what to write in the letter to Sir Charles. She also says that, after she sent the letter, Stapleton appeared to change his mind about her borrowing money from Sir Charles. After she agreed not to meet with Sir Charles, she didn't hear anything more about him until she read about his death in the newspaper. Stapleton then frightened Laura into promising not to say anything about the scheduled appointment with Sir Charles, since his death was so mysterious. Holmes and Watson go to the train station to meet Lestrade. Holmes promises that this case is the \"biggest thing for years\" .", "analysis": ""}

"We're at close grips at last," said Holmes as we walked together across the moor. "What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Watson, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel." "I am sorry that he has seen you." "And so was I at first. But there was no getting out of it." "What effect do you think it will have upon his plans now that he knows you are here?" "It may cause him to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us." "Why should we not arrest him at once?" "My dear Watson, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument's sake, that we had him arrested tonight, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There's the devilish cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent we could get some evidence, but if we were to drag this great dog to the light of day it would not help us in putting a rope round the neck of its master." "Surely we have a case." "Not a shadow of one--only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence." "There is Sir Charles's death." "Found dead without a mark upon him. You and I know that he died of sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him, but how are we to get twelve stolid jurymen to know it? What signs are there of a hound? Where are the marks of its fangs? Of course we know that a hound does not bite a dead body and that Sir Charles was dead before ever the brute overtook him. But we have to prove all this, and we are not in a position to do it." "Well, then, tonight?" "We are not much better off tonight. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man's death. We never saw the hound. We heard it, but we could not prove that it was running upon this man's trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish one." "And how do you propose to do so?" "I have great hopes of what Mrs. Laura Lyons may do for us when the position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as well. Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the day is past to have the upper hand at last." I could draw nothing further from him, and he walked, lost in thought, as far as the Baskerville gates. "Are you coming up?" "Yes; I see no reason for further concealment. But one last word, Watson. Say nothing of the hound to Sir Henry. Let him think that Selden's death was as Stapleton would have us believe. He will have a better nerve for the ordeal which he will have to undergo tomorrow, when he is engaged, if I remember your report aright, to dine with these people." "And so am I." "Then you must excuse yourself and he must go alone. That will be easily arranged. And now, if we are too late for dinner, I think that we are both ready for our suppers." Sir Henry was more pleased than surprised to see Sherlock Holmes, for he had for some days been expecting that recent events would bring him down from London. He did raise his eyebrows, however, when he found that my friend had neither any luggage nor any explanations for its absence. Between us we soon supplied his wants, and then over a belated supper we explained to the baronet as much of our experience as it seemed desirable that he should know. But first I had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to Barrymore and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him. "I've been moping in the house all day since Watson went off in the morning," said the baronet. "I guess I should have some credit, for I have kept my promise. If I hadn't sworn not to go about alone I might have had a more lively evening, for I had a message from Stapleton asking me over there." "I have no doubt that you would have had a more lively evening," said Holmes drily. "By the way, I don't suppose you appreciate that we have been mourning over you as having broken your neck?" Sir Henry opened his eyes. "How was that?" "This poor wretch was dressed in your clothes. I fear your servant who gave them to him may get into trouble with the police." "That is unlikely. There was no mark on any of them, as far as I know." "That's lucky for him--in fact, it's lucky for all of you, since you are all on the wrong side of the law in this matter. I am not sure that as a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole household. Watson's reports are most incriminating documents." "But how about the case?" asked the baronet. "Have you made anything out of the tangle? I don't know that Watson and I are much the wiser since we came down." "I think that I shall be in a position to make the situation rather more clear to you before long. It has been an exceedingly difficult and most complicated business. There are several points upon which we still want light--but it is coming all the same." "We've had one experience, as Watson has no doubt told you. We heard the hound on the moor, so I can swear that it is not all empty superstition. I had something to do with dogs when I was out West, and I know one when I hear one. If you can muzzle that one and put him on a chain I'll be ready to swear you are the greatest detective of all time." "I think I will muzzle him and chain him all right if you will give me your help." "Whatever you tell me to do I will do." "Very good; and I will ask you also to do it blindly, without always asking the reason." "Just as you like." "If you will do this I think the chances are that our little problem will soon be solved. I have no doubt--" He stopped suddenly and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of alertness and expectation. "What is it?" we both cried. I could see as he looked down that he was repressing some internal emotion. His features were still composed, but his eyes shone with amused exultation. "Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur," said he as he waved his hand towards the line of portraits which covered the opposite wall. "Watson won't allow that I know anything of art but that is mere jealousy because our views upon the subject differ. Now, these are a really very fine series of portraits." "Well, I'm glad to hear you say so," said Sir Henry, glancing with some surprise at my friend. "I don't pretend to know much about these things, and I'd be a better judge of a horse or a steer than of a picture. I didn't know that you found time for such things." "I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now. That's a Kneller, I'll swear, that lady in the blue silk over yonder, and the stout gentleman with the wig ought to be a Reynolds. They are all family portraits, I presume?" "Every one." "Do you know the names?" "Barrymore has been coaching me in them, and I think I can say my lessons fairly well." "Who is the gentleman with the telescope?" "That is Rear-Admiral Baskerville, who served under Rodney in the West Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William Baskerville, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons under Pitt." "And this Cavalier opposite to me--the one with the black velvet and the lace?" "Ah, you have a right to know about him. That is the cause of all the mischief, the wicked Hugo, who started the Hound of the Baskervilles. We're not likely to forget him." I gazed with interest and some surprise upon the portrait. "Dear me!" said Holmes, "he seems a quiet, meek-mannered man enough, but I dare say that there was a lurking devil in his eyes. I had pictured him as a more robust and ruffianly person." "There's no doubt about the authenticity, for the name and the date, 1647, are on the back of the canvas." Holmes said little more, but the picture of the old roysterer seemed to have a fascination for him, and his eyes were continually fixed upon it during supper. It was not until later, when Sir Henry had gone to his room, that I was able to follow the trend of his thoughts. He led me back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall. "Do you see anything there?" I looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them. It was not a brutal countenance, but it was prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye. "Is it like anyone you know?" "There is something of Sir Henry about the jaw." "Just a suggestion, perhaps. But wait an instant!" He stood upon a chair, and, holding up the light in his left hand, he curved his right arm over the broad hat and round the long ringlets. "Good heavens!" I cried in amazement. The face of Stapleton had sprung out of the canvas. "Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise." "But this is marvellous. It might be his portrait." "Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual. A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation. The fellow is a Baskerville--that is evident." "With designs upon the succession." "Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our most obvious missing links. We have him, Watson, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!" He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody. I was up betimes in the morning, but Holmes was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive. "Yes, we should have a full day today," he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action. "The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We'll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, leanjawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes." "Have you been on the moor already?" "I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut, as a dog does at his master's grave, if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety." "What is the next move?" "To see Sir Henry. Ah, here he is!" "Good-morning, Holmes," said the baronet. "You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff." "That is the exact situation. Watson was asking for orders." "And so do I." "Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends the Stapletons tonight." "I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I am sure that they would be very glad to see you." "I fear that Watson and I must go to London." "To London?" "Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present juncture." The baronet's face perceptibly lengthened. "I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone." "My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. We hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them that message?" "If you insist upon it." "There is no alternative, I assure you." I saw by the baronet's clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he regarded as our desertion. "When do you desire to go?" he asked coldly. "Immediately after breakfast. We will drive in to Coombe Tracey, but Watson will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you. Watson, you will send a note to Stapleton to tell him that you regret that you cannot come." "I have a good mind to go to London with you," said the baronet. "Why should I stay here alone?" "Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay." "All right, then, I'll stay." "One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home." "To walk across the moor?" "Yes." "But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to do." "This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in your nerve and courage I would not suggest it, but it is essential that you should do it." "Then I will do it." "And as you value your life do not go across the moor in any direction save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home." "I will do just what you say." "Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon." I was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Holmes had said to Stapleton on the night before that his visit would terminate next day. It had not crossed my mind however, that he would wish me to go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for it, however, but implicit obedience; so we bade good-bye to our rueful friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A small boy was waiting upon the platform. "Any orders, sir?" "You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Henry Baskerville, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocketbook which I have dropped he is to send it by registered post to Baker Street." "Yes, sir." "And ask at the station office if there is a message for me." The boy returned with a telegram, which Holmes handed to me. It ran: Wire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant. Arrive five-forty. Lestrade. "That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Watson, I think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your acquaintance, Mrs. Laura Lyons." His plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the baronet in order to convince the Stapletons that we were really gone, while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Henry to the Stapletons, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I seemed to see our nets drawing closer around that leanjawed pike. Mrs. Laura Lyons was in her office, and Sherlock Holmes opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her. "I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Charles Baskerville," said he. "My friend here, Dr. Watson, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter." "What have I withheld?" she asked defiantly. "You have confessed that you asked Sir Charles to be at the gate at ten o'clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have withheld what the connection is between these events." "There is no connection." "In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection, after all. I wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Lyons. We regard this case as one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend Mr. Stapleton but his wife as well." The lady sprang from her chair. "His wife!" she cried. "The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his sister is really his wife." Mrs. Lyons had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure of her grip. "His wife!" she said again. "His wife! He is not a married man." Sherlock Holmes shrugged his shoulders. "Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so--!" The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words. "I have come prepared to do so," said Holmes, drawing several papers from his pocket. "Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is indorsed 'Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,' but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver's private school. Read them and see if you can doubt the identity of these people." She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face of a desperate woman. "Mr. Holmes," she said, "this man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why--why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you, and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend." "I entirely believe you, madam," said Sherlock Holmes. "The recital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by Stapleton?" "He dictated it." "I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from Sir Charles for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?" "Exactly." "And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping the appointment?" "He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us." "He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?" "No." "And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir Charles?" "He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining silent." "Quite so. But you had your suspicions?" She hesitated and looked down. "I knew him," she said. "But if he had kept faith with me I should always have done so with him." "I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape," said Sherlock Holmes. "You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for some months very near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish you good-morning now, Mrs. Lyons, and it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again." "Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in front of us," said Holmes as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. "I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year '66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night." The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the practical man. "Anything good?" he asked. "The biggest thing for years," said Holmes. "We have two hours before we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night air of Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don't suppose you will forget your first visit."

Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-13

Holmes is impressed at how Stapleton's so cool under pressure. Yeah, he's cool--it's not like Holmes can prove any of his ideas in a court of law yet. Holmes believes that Laura Lyons will be the key to this stage of the case. Watson brings Holmes to Baskerville Hall, and Sir Henry welcomes him. Watson breaks the news to the Barrymores that Selden's dead. Holmes tells Sir Henry that he'll soon have the answer to his mystery, as long as Sir Henry does exactly what Holmes says without asking why. More control-freak stuff. Holmes suddenly jumps up to look at one of the portraits on Sir Henry's wall. When Holmes points to the portrait of a man in black velvet and lace, Sir Henry identifies him as than Hugo Baskerville--the original victim of the Hound. After dinner, Holmes leads Watson back over to the portrait. When Holmes covers Hugo's ridiculous hair, Watson can finally spot what Holmes noticed so long before: that the face of Hugo Baskerville hugely resembles Stapleton's. In other words, Stapleton must be a member of the Baskerville family. Sir Henry comes in, and Holmes tells him that he and Watson are planning to go back to London. Sir Henry's disappointed , but Holmes reassures him that they'll be back soon. They were all supposed to go over to dinner at Stapleton's house together, but now Sir Henry will just have to go alone. Holmes tells Sir Henry to drive over to Merripit House, but then to have the groom bring the carriage home. Sir Henry should then tell his host, Stapleton, that he plans to walk home that night. At the train station in Coombe Tracey, Holmes and Watson meet the boy, Cartwright, who was bringing Holmes' food to the moors over those many days. Holmes orders Cartwright to take the train into London. From London, Cartwright should send a telegram to Sir Henry asking about a pocketbook Holmes might have forgotten at Baskerville Hall. Cartwright agrees, and he also gives Holmes a telegram. It's from "Lestrade," who's coming down to Devonshire on the 5:40 train with a warrant. Holmes explains that Lestrade's a policeman, and they may need his help tonight. Holmes and Watson head over to Laura Lyons' house. Holmes tells Laura Lyons that he is involved in a case which implicates Stapleton and "his wife" in murder. Holmes shows her pictures of the people now calling themselves Jack and Beryl Stapleton. The pictures were taken several years ago in York, where they were called Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur . Laura Lyons is shocked that Stapleton has lied to her about his wife. First time in history that's ever happened. She admits that Stapleton told her what to write in the letter to Sir Charles. She also says that, after she sent the letter, Stapleton appeared to change his mind about her borrowing money from Sir Charles. After she agreed not to meet with Sir Charles, she didn't hear anything more about him until she read about his death in the newspaper. Stapleton then frightened Laura into promising not to say anything about the scheduled appointment with Sir Charles, since his death was so mysterious. Holmes and Watson go to the train station to meet Lestrade. Holmes promises that this case is the "biggest thing for years" .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_13_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 14

chapter 14

{"name": "Chapter 14", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-14", "summary": "As Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade drive over to Merripit House, the suspense is killing Watson. Holmes and Lestrade hide about two hundred yards away from the house. Holmes sends Watson to spy through the dining-room window. Sir Henry and Stapleton are sitting together and smoking. Beryl's nowhere to be seen. The Grimpen Mire is covered with fog, which is a bummer for Holmes--fog is the one thing that could really endanger Sir Henry's life. They hear the sounds of Sir Henry leaving the house. And then, Holmes hushes Watson--there's another sound of pattering feet coming. It's a black hound covered in flickering flame, with fire coming out of its mouth. Oh no, it's running toward Sir Henry. Holmes and Watson shoot the dog, which howls but keeps running. Sir Henry is looking behind him at the dog--and he looks terrified. Duh. The dog leaps at Sir Henry and starts biting him. Bad dog! But Holmes catches up and empties his gun into the dog. The dog falls dead. Sir Henry faints, but he's still alive. When Sir Henry comes to, he, Holmes, and Watson inspect the body of the dog. It's an enormous beast with huge jaws, and it's been covered in some kind of weird glow-in-the-dark stuff. Watson touches the stuff on the dog's fur and realizes that it's phosphorus . Holmes apologizes for putting Sir Henry in so much danger--he didn't expect either the fog or the dog. Sir Henry's so freaked out that Holmes and Watson leave him sitting on a rock while they go off after Stapleton. Back at Merripit House, there's a locked bedroom door. Holmes breaks down the door. They find a woman bound and gagged: Beryl Stapleton. She's furious and heartbroken that Stapleton has been abusing her and using her as his tool in his schemes against Sir Henry. Beryl says that Stapleton has a hiding place in the middle of the Grimpen Mire. The fog is so dense that he won't be able to leave his hiding place that night. The next morning, Beryl leads Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade through the dangerous bog. As the three men walk deep into the Grimpen Mire, Holmes spots something: Sir Henry's black boot. Stapleton must have been using the boot to teach the hound to track Sir Henry's smell. But they don't find any other sign of Stapleton. Watson believes that Stapleton probably got lost in the fog that night and fell into the Mire, never to emerge. On the island in the Mire, they find traces of the dog: this must be where Stapleton kept it. Sadly, they also find the skeleton of Dr. Mortimer's little spaniel. There's a pot full of the glowing stuff that Stapleton had been using to create the fire-breathing \"Hound of the Baskervilles,\" which frightened Selden into running over a cliff and scared Sir Charles to death.", "analysis": ""}

One of Sherlock Holmes's defects--if, indeed, one may call it a defect--was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we were about to make our final effort, and yet Holmes had said nothing, and I could only surmise what his course of action would be. My nerves thrilled with anticipation when at last the cold wind upon our faces and the dark, void spaces on either side of the narrow road told me that we were back upon the moor once again. Every stride of the horses and every turn of the wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure. Our conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver of the hired wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial matters when our nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me, after that unnatural restraint, when we at last passed Frankland's house and knew that we were drawing near to the Hall and to the scene of action. We did not drive up to the door but got down near the gate of the avenue. The wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe Tracey forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House. "Are you armed, Lestrade?" The little detective smiled. "As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it." "Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies." "You're mighty close about this affair, Mr. Holmes. What's the game now?" "A waiting game." "My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place," said the detective with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes of the hill and at the huge lake of fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. "I see the lights of a house ahead of us." "That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must request you to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper." We moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for the house, but Holmes halted us when we were about two hundred yards from it. "This will do," said he. "These rocks upon the right make an admirable screen." "We are to wait here?" "Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this hollow, Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not, Watson? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What are those latticed windows at this end?" "I think they are the kitchen windows." "And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?" "That is certainly the dining-room." "The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep forward quietly and see what they are doing--but for heaven's sake don't let them know that they are watched!" I tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which surrounded the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached a point whence I could look straight through the uncurtained window. There were only two men in the room, Sir Henry and Stapleton. They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Stapleton was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing heavily upon his mind. As I watched them Stapleton rose and left the room, while Sir Henry filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of boots upon gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other side of the wall under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the naturalist pause at the door of an out-house in the corner of the orchard. A key turned in a lock, and as he passed in there was a curious scuffling noise from within. He was only a minute or so inside, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed me and reentered the house. I saw him rejoin his guest, and I crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell them what I had seen. "You say, Watson, that the lady is not there?" Holmes asked when I had finished my report. "No." "Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room except the kitchen?" "I cannot think where she is." I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low but thick and well defined. The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads of the distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface. Holmes's face was turned towards it, and he muttered impatiently as he watched its sluggish drift. "It's moving towards us, Watson." "Is that serious?" "Very serious, indeed--the one thing upon earth which could have disarranged my plans. He can't be very long, now. It is already ten o'clock. Our success and even his life may depend upon his coming out before the fog is over the path." The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright, while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft, uncertain light. Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky. Broad bars of golden light from the lower windows stretched across the orchard and the moor. One of them was suddenly shut off. The servants had left the kitchen. There only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the two men, the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted over their cigars. Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand passionately upon the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his impatience. "If he isn't out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered. In half an hour we won't be able to see our hands in front of us." "Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?" "Yes, I think it would be as well." So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on. "We are going too far," said Holmes. "We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before he can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are." He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. "Thank God, I think that I hear him coming." A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a man who is ill at ease. "Hist!" cried Holmes, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. "Look out! It's coming!" There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Holmes's elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog. With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Holmes and I both fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard scream after scream from Sir Henry and the deep roar of the hound. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat. But the next instant Holmes had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was dead. Sir Henry lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his collar, and Holmes breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in time. Already our friend's eyelids shivered and he made a feeble effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between the baronet's teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at us. "My God!" he whispered. "What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?" "It's dead, whatever it is," said Holmes. "We've laid the family ghost once and forever." In mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two--gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness. "Phosphorus," I said. "A cunning preparation of it," said Holmes, sniffing at the dead animal. "There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Henry, for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to receive him." "You have saved my life." "Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?" "Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?" "To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures tonight. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall." He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering with his face buried in his hands. "We must leave you now," said Holmes. "The rest of our work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we only want our man. "It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house," he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. "Those shots must have told him that the game was up." "We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them." "He followed the hound to call him off--of that you may be certain. No, no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the house and make sure." The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Holmes caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked. "There's someone in here," cried Lestrade. "I can hear a movement. Open this door!" A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Holmes struck the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room. But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement. The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes--eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning--stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Stapleton sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash across her neck. "The brute!" cried Holmes. "Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion." She opened her eyes again. "Is he safe?" she asked. "Has he escaped?" "He cannot escape us, madam." "No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Henry? Is he safe?" "Yes." "And the hound?" "It is dead." She gave a long sigh of satisfaction. "Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!" She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. "But this is nothing--nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool." She broke into passionate sobbing as she spoke. "You bear him no good will, madam," said Holmes. "Tell us then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so atone." "There is but one place where he can have fled," she answered. "There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he would fly." The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Holmes held the lamp towards it. "See," said he. "No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight." She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment. "He may find his way in, but never out," she cried. "How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out today. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!" It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while Holmes and I went back with the baronet to Baskerville Hall. The story of the Stapletons could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Mortimer. The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Henry had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate. And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Stapleton to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting. Holmes sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air. "Meyers, Toronto," was printed on the leather inside. "It is worth a mud bath," said he. "It is our friend Sir Henry's missing boot." "Thrown there by Stapleton in his flight." "Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight. We know at least that he came so far in safety." But more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Stapleton never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried. Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the debris. "A dog!" said Holmes. "By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Mortimer will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an emergency he could keep the hound in the out-house at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and by the desire to frighten old Sir Charles to death. No wonder the poor devil of a convict ran and screamed, even as our friend did, and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw such a creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of driving your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Watson, and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder"--he swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor.

Chapter 14

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-14

As Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade drive over to Merripit House, the suspense is killing Watson. Holmes and Lestrade hide about two hundred yards away from the house. Holmes sends Watson to spy through the dining-room window. Sir Henry and Stapleton are sitting together and smoking. Beryl's nowhere to be seen. The Grimpen Mire is covered with fog, which is a bummer for Holmes--fog is the one thing that could really endanger Sir Henry's life. They hear the sounds of Sir Henry leaving the house. And then, Holmes hushes Watson--there's another sound of pattering feet coming. It's a black hound covered in flickering flame, with fire coming out of its mouth. Oh no, it's running toward Sir Henry. Holmes and Watson shoot the dog, which howls but keeps running. Sir Henry is looking behind him at the dog--and he looks terrified. Duh. The dog leaps at Sir Henry and starts biting him. Bad dog! But Holmes catches up and empties his gun into the dog. The dog falls dead. Sir Henry faints, but he's still alive. When Sir Henry comes to, he, Holmes, and Watson inspect the body of the dog. It's an enormous beast with huge jaws, and it's been covered in some kind of weird glow-in-the-dark stuff. Watson touches the stuff on the dog's fur and realizes that it's phosphorus . Holmes apologizes for putting Sir Henry in so much danger--he didn't expect either the fog or the dog. Sir Henry's so freaked out that Holmes and Watson leave him sitting on a rock while they go off after Stapleton. Back at Merripit House, there's a locked bedroom door. Holmes breaks down the door. They find a woman bound and gagged: Beryl Stapleton. She's furious and heartbroken that Stapleton has been abusing her and using her as his tool in his schemes against Sir Henry. Beryl says that Stapleton has a hiding place in the middle of the Grimpen Mire. The fog is so dense that he won't be able to leave his hiding place that night. The next morning, Beryl leads Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade through the dangerous bog. As the three men walk deep into the Grimpen Mire, Holmes spots something: Sir Henry's black boot. Stapleton must have been using the boot to teach the hound to track Sir Henry's smell. But they don't find any other sign of Stapleton. Watson believes that Stapleton probably got lost in the fog that night and fell into the Mire, never to emerge. On the island in the Mire, they find traces of the dog: this must be where Stapleton kept it. Sadly, they also find the skeleton of Dr. Mortimer's little spaniel. There's a pot full of the glowing stuff that Stapleton had been using to create the fire-breathing "Hound of the Baskervilles," which frightened Selden into running over a cliff and scared Sir Charles to death.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2852-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/The Hound of the Baskervilles/section_14_part_0.txt

The Hound of the Baskervilles.chapter 15

chapter 15

{"name": "Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-15", "summary": "About a month later, Holmes and Watson are sitting by the fire in their apartment in London. They've had a visit from Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer, who are about to go on a relaxing trip around the world to help improve Sir Henry's \"shattered nerves\" . No kidding. Since the case of the Baskervilles is on Watson's mind, he presses Holmes to tell him more about the background of the case. Apparently, Mrs. Stapleton has confirmed Holmes' guess that Stapleton was a Baskerville. He was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles' younger brother, who moved to South America to escape some nasty rumors about him. Stapleton's real name was Rodger Baskerville , and he married a South American woman named Beryl Garcia. He and Beryl came to England under the fake name of Vandelay--wait, we meant Vandeleur--after running away with some embezzled money. They opened a school, which eventually failed. So the Vandeleurs changed their names to Stapleton and moved to the south of England. Stapleton discovered that he was pretty close to being the heir to the Baskerville fortune. And--luckily for him, because he was a creep--the current holder of that fortune was easily frightened and had a heart problem. So Stapleton bought a giant dog, mixed up some phosphorus, plunked the dog down in the middle of the Grimpen Mire, and waited for his chance. Stapleton had planned at first to live with Beryl as his sister rather than his wife just in case he could use her to attract Sir Charles. But she absolutely refused to help Stapleton in this way. Stapleton lucked out when he met Laura Lyons, whom he manipulated into writing to Sir Charles for help in getting a divorce. On the night of Sir Charles' death, Stapleton brought the dog to the driveway where Sir Charles was waiting for Laura. Stapleton released the dog on Sir Charles, who ran away screaming until he collapsed from his weak heart. That's why there was a paw print near Sir Charles' body. Both Beryl and Laura Lyons suspected Stapleton of planning Sir Charles' death, but neither would turn on him while they were still in love with him. And then, along came Sir Henry. Stapleton traveled to London to see if he could figure out some way of stopping Sir Henry from coming down to Baskerville Hall at all. At this point, Stapleton had stopped trusting Beryl, so he dragged her along on the trip and kept her prisoner in the hotel while he spied on Sir Henry. She still managed to send Sir Henry her secret message cut out of the Times, though. The disappearing boots were also a clue: the first one was too new to smell like Sir Henry, which is why Stapleton returned it. The older black boot was better for training his giant dog to chase the scent. When Stapleton spotted Holmes in the company of Sir Henry, he realized that there was no point in continuing to hunt Sir Henry in London. Stapleton went back to Merripit House with his wife to try his luck in Dartmoor. Even before Holmes went down to the moors, he already suspected Stapleton. The problem was catching him, with enough proof to make a legal case against him. That's why Holmes set up poor Sir Henry as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. As for Beryl, she started out helping Stapleton because she really loved him . But as time went on, Beryl's loyalties shifted to Sir Henry and she began to hate Stapleton. Finally, on the night of the attack, Beryl tried to stop Stapleton from setting up Sir Henry for death-by-dog, and he tied her up to keep her out of the way. So that's that. Elementary. There's nothing more that Holmes can say with any certainty. So he and Watson go off to the opera for the evening--a happy ending .", "analysis": ""}

It was the end of November, and Holmes and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Baskerville mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer were, however, in London, on their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very afternoon, so that it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion. "The whole course of events," said Holmes, "from the point of view of the man who called himself Stapleton was simple and direct, although to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Stapleton, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my indexed list of cases." "Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from memory." "Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Carere has blurred my recollection of Baskerville Hall. Tomorrow some other little problem may be submitted to my notice which will in turn dispossess the fair French lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as the case of the hound goes, however, I will give you the course of events as nearly as I can, and you will suggest anything which I may have forgotten. "My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did not lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Baskerville. He was a son of that Rodger Baskerville, the younger brother of Sir Charles, who fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father's. He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire. His reason for attempting this special line of business was that he had struck up an acquaintance with a consumptive tutor upon the voyage home, and that he had used this man's ability to make the undertaking a success. Fraser, the tutor, died however, and the school which had begun well sank from disrepute into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient to change their name to Stapleton, and he brought the remains of his fortune, his schemes for the future, and his taste for entomology to the south of England. I learned at the British Museum that he was a recognized authority upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur has been permanently attached to a certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe. "We now come to that portion of his life which has proved to be of such intense interest to us. The fellow had evidently made inquiry and found that only two lives intervened between him and a valuable estate. When he went to Devonshire his plans were, I believe, exceedingly hazy, but that he meant mischief from the first is evident from the way in which he took his wife with him in the character of his sister. The idea of using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged. He meant in the end to have the estate, and he was ready to use any tool or run any risk for that end. His first act was to establish himself as near to his ancestral home as he could, and his second was to cultivate a friendship with Sir Charles Baskerville and with the neighbours. "The baronet himself told him about the family hound, and so prepared the way for his own death. Stapleton, as I will continue to call him, knew that the old man's heart was weak and that a shock would kill him. So much he had learned from Dr. Mortimer. He had heard also that Sir Charles was superstitious and had taken this grim legend very seriously. His ingenious mind instantly suggested a way by which the baronet could be done to death, and yet it would be hardly possible to bring home the guilt to the real murderer. "Having conceived the idea he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. He had already on his insect hunts learned to penetrate the Grimpen Mire, and so had found a safe hiding-place for the creature. Here he kennelled it and waited his chance. "But it was some time coming. The old gentleman could not be decoyed outside of his grounds at night. Several times Stapleton lurked about with his hound, but without avail. It was during these fruitless quests that he, or rather his ally, was seen by peasants, and that the legend of the demon dog received a new confirmation. He had hoped that his wife might lure Sir Charles to his ruin, but here she proved unexpectedly independent. She would not endeavour to entangle the old gentleman in a sentimental attachment which might deliver him over to his enemy. Threats and even, I am sorry to say, blows refused to move her. She would have nothing to do with it, and for a time Stapleton was at a deadlock. "He found a way out of his difficulties through the chance that Sir Charles, who had conceived a friendship for him, made him the minister of his charity in the case of this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Laura Lyons. By representing himself as a single man he acquired complete influence over her, and he gave her to understand that in the event of her obtaining a divorce from her husband he would marry her. His plans were suddenly brought to a head by his knowledge that Sir Charles was about to leave the Hall on the advice of Dr. Mortimer, with whose opinion he himself pretended to coincide. He must act at once, or his victim might get beyond his power. He therefore put pressure upon Mrs. Lyons to write this letter, imploring the old man to give her an interview on the evening before his departure for London. He then, by a specious argument, prevented her from going, and so had the chance for which he had waited. "Driving back in the evening from Coombe Tracey he was in time to get his hound, to treat it with his infernal paint, and to bring the beast round to the gate at which he had reason to expect that he would find the old gentleman waiting. The dog, incited by its master, sprang over the wicket-gate and pursued the unfortunate baronet, who fled screaming down the yew alley. In that gloomy tunnel it must indeed have been a dreadful sight to see that huge black creature, with its flaming jaws and blazing eyes, bounding after its victim. He fell dead at the end of the alley from heart disease and terror. The hound had kept upon the grassy border while the baronet had run down the path, so that no track but the man's was visible. On seeing him lying still the creature had probably approached to sniff at him, but finding him dead had turned away again. It was then that it left the print which was actually observed by Dr. Mortimer. The hound was called off and hurried away to its lair in the Grimpen Mire, and a mystery was left which puzzled the authorities, alarmed the countryside, and finally brought the case within the scope of our observation. "So much for the death of Sir Charles Baskerville. You perceive the devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women concerned in the case, Mrs. Stapleton and Mrs. Laura Lyons, were left with a strong suspicion against Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton knew that he had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound. Mrs. Lyons knew neither of these things, but had been impressed by the death occurring at the time of an uncancelled appointment which was only known to him. However, both of them were under his influence, and he had nothing to fear from them. The first half of his task was successfully accomplished but the more difficult still remained. "It is possible that Stapleton did not know of the existence of an heir in Canada. In any case he would very soon learn it from his friend Dr. Mortimer, and he was told by the latter all details about the arrival of Henry Baskerville. Stapleton's first idea was that this young stranger from Canada might possibly be done to death in London without coming down to Devonshire at all. He distrusted his wife ever since she had refused to help him in laying a trap for the old man, and he dared not leave her long out of his sight for fear he should lose his influence over her. It was for this reason that he took her to London with him. They lodged, I find, at the Mexborough Private Hotel, in Craven Street, which was actually one of those called upon by my agent in search of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Mortimer to Baker Street and afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband--a fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment--that she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into Stapleton's hands her own life would not be safe. Eventually, as we know, she adopted the expedient of cutting out the words which would form the message, and addressing the letter in a disguised hand. It reached the baronet, and gave him the first warning of his danger. "It was very essential for Stapleton to get some article of Sir Henry's attire so that, in case he was driven to use the dog, he might always have the means of setting him upon his track. With characteristic promptness and audacity he set about this at once, and we cannot doubt that the boots or chamber-maid of the hotel was well bribed to help him in his design. By chance, however, the first boot which was procured for him was a new one and, therefore, useless for his purpose. He then had it returned and obtained another--a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it. "Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always by Stapleton in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Stapleton's career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Baskerville affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Stapleton recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man. "We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival of the baronet." "One moment!" said I. "You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?" "I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of importance. There can be no question that Stapleton had a confidant, though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Stapletons can be traced for several years, as far back as the school-mastering days, so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England, while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The man, like Mrs. Stapleton herself, spoke good English, but with a curious lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen Mire by the path which Stapleton had marked out. It is very probable, therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast was used. "The Stapletons then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon followed by Sir Henry and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined the paper upon which the printed words were fastened I made a close inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Stapletons. Thus I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before ever we went to the west country. "It was my game to watch Stapleton. It was evident, however, that I could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action. Cartwright had come down with me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was watching Stapleton, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I was able to keep my hand upon all the strings. "I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece of biography of Stapleton's. I was able to establish the identity of the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped convict and the relations between him and the Barrymores. This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations. "By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to a jury. Even Stapleton's attempt upon Sir Henry that night which ended in the death of the unfortunate convict did not help us much in proving murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Henry, alone and apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and driving Stapleton to his destruction. That Sir Henry should have been exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Mortimer assure me will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings. His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her. "It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout. There can be no doubt that Stapleton exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Henry so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again and again she tried to do so. Stapleton himself seems to have been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy he made it certain that Sir Henry would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the convict, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Henry was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Henry, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Watson, without referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained." "He could not hope to frighten Sir Henry to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound." "The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance which might be offered." "No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Stapleton came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?" "It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Stapleton has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all, or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Watson, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for 'Les Huguenots.' Have you heard the De Reszkes? Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way?"

Chapter 15

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508135841/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/hound-of-the-baskervilles/summary/chapter-15

About a month later, Holmes and Watson are sitting by the fire in their apartment in London. They've had a visit from Sir Henry and Dr. Mortimer, who are about to go on a relaxing trip around the world to help improve Sir Henry's "shattered nerves" . No kidding. Since the case of the Baskervilles is on Watson's mind, he presses Holmes to tell him more about the background of the case. Apparently, Mrs. Stapleton has confirmed Holmes' guess that Stapleton was a Baskerville. He was the son of Rodger Baskerville, Sir Charles' younger brother, who moved to South America to escape some nasty rumors about him. Stapleton's real name was Rodger Baskerville , and he married a South American woman named Beryl Garcia. He and Beryl came to England under the fake name of Vandelay--wait, we meant Vandeleur--after running away with some embezzled money. They opened a school, which eventually failed. So the Vandeleurs changed their names to Stapleton and moved to the south of England. Stapleton discovered that he was pretty close to being the heir to the Baskerville fortune. And--luckily for him, because he was a creep--the current holder of that fortune was easily frightened and had a heart problem. So Stapleton bought a giant dog, mixed up some phosphorus, plunked the dog down in the middle of the Grimpen Mire, and waited for his chance. Stapleton had planned at first to live with Beryl as his sister rather than his wife just in case he could use her to attract Sir Charles. But she absolutely refused to help Stapleton in this way. Stapleton lucked out when he met Laura Lyons, whom he manipulated into writing to Sir Charles for help in getting a divorce. On the night of Sir Charles' death, Stapleton brought the dog to the driveway where Sir Charles was waiting for Laura. Stapleton released the dog on Sir Charles, who ran away screaming until he collapsed from his weak heart. That's why there was a paw print near Sir Charles' body. Both Beryl and Laura Lyons suspected Stapleton of planning Sir Charles' death, but neither would turn on him while they were still in love with him. And then, along came Sir Henry. Stapleton traveled to London to see if he could figure out some way of stopping Sir Henry from coming down to Baskerville Hall at all. At this point, Stapleton had stopped trusting Beryl, so he dragged her along on the trip and kept her prisoner in the hotel while he spied on Sir Henry. She still managed to send Sir Henry her secret message cut out of the Times, though. The disappearing boots were also a clue: the first one was too new to smell like Sir Henry, which is why Stapleton returned it. The older black boot was better for training his giant dog to chase the scent. When Stapleton spotted Holmes in the company of Sir Henry, he realized that there was no point in continuing to hunt Sir Henry in London. Stapleton went back to Merripit House with his wife to try his luck in Dartmoor. Even before Holmes went down to the moors, he already suspected Stapleton. The problem was catching him, with enough proof to make a legal case against him. That's why Holmes set up poor Sir Henry as bait to catch Stapleton red-handed. As for Beryl, she started out helping Stapleton because she really loved him . But as time went on, Beryl's loyalties shifted to Sir Henry and she began to hate Stapleton. Finally, on the night of the attack, Beryl tried to stop Stapleton from setting up Sir Henry for death-by-dog, and he tied her up to keep her out of the way. So that's that. Elementary. There's nothing more that Holmes can say with any certainty. So he and Watson go off to the opera for the evening--a happy ending .

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_0_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 1

part 1, chapter 1

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-1", "summary": "A nameless first-person narrator recounts the day young Charles Bovary appeared at school. Charles is an embarrassed, rusticated, slow, and bewildered rural fellow. Also, he's a total fashion victim. Charles has some difficulty managing his tragically ugly hat; the teacher and the other boys all mock him. The class gets even rowdier, and the teacher assigns some lines to punish them. Things quiet down, though Charles is attacked with surreptitious spitballs. The other boys observe the newcomer carefully. He's not terribly bright, but he's a hard worker. Next, we get some background on the Bovary family: Charles's dad is a boastful but unsuccessful businessman who pretty much fails to support his family. His poor mom, whose money sustained her husband through his attempts at finding a career, is embittered, peevish, and obsessed with her son. Charles received a half-hearted education, but spent most of his childhood left to his own devices, running barefoot around the village and chasing turkeys . Despite his lackluster upbringing, Charles's parents hope that he'll make a name for himself. After a pretty average, unmemorable time at school, they enroll him in medical school, where he begins to appreciate the finer things in life: the stereotypical temptations of wine, women, and song. After failing his exams once, then cramming like crazy and passing a second time, Charles manages to get certified as an officier de sante . This is kind of like a junior doctor; it's a guy who's not a real doctor, but is allowed to practice medicine. Mama Bovary is happy. She sets Charles up in a nearby town, Tostes, then marries him off to a wealthy, needy widow. You've got to feel bad for the guy.", "analysis": ""}

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work. The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice-- "Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age." The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots. We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us. When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the thing." But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone. "Rise," said the master. He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once more. "Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag. There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down again and placed it on his knee. "Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name." The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name. "Again!" The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering 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 his voice as if calling someone in the word "Charbovari." A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing 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 gradually re-established in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of "Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated. "What are you looking for?" asked the master. "My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round him. "Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!" continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow 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 cap again; it hasn't been stolen." *A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat. **I am ridiculous. Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered. In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible. His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a hosier'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 always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours, he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial traveller. Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought he would make money. But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, 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 up all speculation. For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of 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 the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace. His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once, 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 much without complaint at first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders. When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village. He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour. When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions, when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had a very good memory. *A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell. Here, the evening prayer. Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps. Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take his first communion. Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October, at the time of the St. Romain fair. It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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.

Part 1, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-1

A nameless first-person narrator recounts the day young Charles Bovary appeared at school. Charles is an embarrassed, rusticated, slow, and bewildered rural fellow. Also, he's a total fashion victim. Charles has some difficulty managing his tragically ugly hat; the teacher and the other boys all mock him. The class gets even rowdier, and the teacher assigns some lines to punish them. Things quiet down, though Charles is attacked with surreptitious spitballs. The other boys observe the newcomer carefully. He's not terribly bright, but he's a hard worker. Next, we get some background on the Bovary family: Charles's dad is a boastful but unsuccessful businessman who pretty much fails to support his family. His poor mom, whose money sustained her husband through his attempts at finding a career, is embittered, peevish, and obsessed with her son. Charles received a half-hearted education, but spent most of his childhood left to his own devices, running barefoot around the village and chasing turkeys . Despite his lackluster upbringing, Charles's parents hope that he'll make a name for himself. After a pretty average, unmemorable time at school, they enroll him in medical school, where he begins to appreciate the finer things in life: the stereotypical temptations of wine, women, and song. After failing his exams once, then cramming like crazy and passing a second time, Charles manages to get certified as an officier de sante . This is kind of like a junior doctor; it's a guy who's not a real doctor, but is allowed to practice medicine. Mama Bovary is happy. She sets Charles up in a nearby town, Tostes, then marries him off to a wealthy, needy widow. You've got to feel bad for the guy.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_1_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 2

part 1, chapter 2

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-2", "summary": "The young \"doctor\" is awakened in the night by a call from a patient; someone at a farm called Les Bertaux outside the town has a broken leg that needs to be set. It's agreed that Charles will head out to take care of the patient at moonrise. Until then, Charles lies awake, dreading the medical debacle about to unfold. We've already figured out that he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he doesn't feel too confident about his healing powers. We have to admit, we're nervous for him and his patient, too...seriously, would you want this guy operating on your broken leg? Les Bertaux turns out to be a nice piece of real estate. Monsieur Rouault, the farmer/patient, is obviously pretty well off. A widower, he takes care of the family farm with the help of his young daughter. Said daughter lets Charles in and takes him up to the patient. Monsieur Rouault is a good-natured man, and his fracture also proves to be somewhat good-natured; it's a totally clean break, and Charles starts to feel confident again. He cheers up his patient, and competently takes care of the injury. In the meanwhile, the daughter, Emma, attempts to make herself useful by sewing some padding, but she turns out to be a bad seamstress. Her ineptitude doesn't matter, though - Charles is quite taken by her dainty appearance . As the three of them go downstairs to have a bite to eat, the young doctor takes a better look at the young daughter. Charles get to know Emma a little better. She hates country living, and doesn't seem quite content with her life. We're not sure if Charles notices this. What he does notice is that she is really beautiful. She's got gorgeous brown eyes, full lips, carefully arranged black hair, and rosy cheeks. Someone's got a crush... Charles keeps visiting Les Bertaux, supposedly to check in with his patient, but really to see Emma. His irritable/irritating wife finds out that Emma is something of a fine young lady, having received a fancy education at a convent, and is upset by the idea that Charles is in love with the girl. She makes Charles promise not to visit Les Bertaux anymore. Charles's first wife is not long in this world. Some bad financial news emerges , and the distraught woman actually collapses and dies. Charles is now free, although he does feel a little sad, since she loved him.", "analysis": ""}

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 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 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. 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 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 sew some pads. As she was a long time before she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails. They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness. The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he left. Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre, was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written in Gothic letters "To dear Papa." First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night. Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full 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 were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she asked. "My whip, if you please," he answered. He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip. Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident. Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen. As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to 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 wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots. She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said "Good-bye"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk. During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called "a good education"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider 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 he puts 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 herself by allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted town misses." And she went on-- "The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess. Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears." For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings. Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. 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 the house. But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!

Part 1, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-2

The young "doctor" is awakened in the night by a call from a patient; someone at a farm called Les Bertaux outside the town has a broken leg that needs to be set. It's agreed that Charles will head out to take care of the patient at moonrise. Until then, Charles lies awake, dreading the medical debacle about to unfold. We've already figured out that he's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he doesn't feel too confident about his healing powers. We have to admit, we're nervous for him and his patient, too...seriously, would you want this guy operating on your broken leg? Les Bertaux turns out to be a nice piece of real estate. Monsieur Rouault, the farmer/patient, is obviously pretty well off. A widower, he takes care of the family farm with the help of his young daughter. Said daughter lets Charles in and takes him up to the patient. Monsieur Rouault is a good-natured man, and his fracture also proves to be somewhat good-natured; it's a totally clean break, and Charles starts to feel confident again. He cheers up his patient, and competently takes care of the injury. In the meanwhile, the daughter, Emma, attempts to make herself useful by sewing some padding, but she turns out to be a bad seamstress. Her ineptitude doesn't matter, though - Charles is quite taken by her dainty appearance . As the three of them go downstairs to have a bite to eat, the young doctor takes a better look at the young daughter. Charles get to know Emma a little better. She hates country living, and doesn't seem quite content with her life. We're not sure if Charles notices this. What he does notice is that she is really beautiful. She's got gorgeous brown eyes, full lips, carefully arranged black hair, and rosy cheeks. Someone's got a crush... Charles keeps visiting Les Bertaux, supposedly to check in with his patient, but really to see Emma. His irritable/irritating wife finds out that Emma is something of a fine young lady, having received a fancy education at a convent, and is upset by the idea that Charles is in love with the girl. She makes Charles promise not to visit Les Bertaux anymore. Charles's first wife is not long in this world. Some bad financial news emerges , and the distraught woman actually collapses and dies. Charles is now free, although he does feel a little sad, since she loved him.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_2_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 3

part 1, chapter 3

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-3", "summary": "Charles's half-hearted mourning doesn't last too long. Monsieur Rouault shows up the day after the funeral to deliver his payment for the medical treatment, and also to give his condolences. He encourages Charles to visit Les Bertaux again, which he does, happily. Monsieur Rouault cheers Charles up, and he quickly begins to forget about his dead wife. In the weeks that follow, things start to look up for Charles. He discovers that he likes living without his wife - he can decide when and what he wants to eat, and doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Furthermore, her death was actually good for business, since all the townspeople feel bad for him. Charles keeps up his visits to Les Bertaux. One day, he encounters Emma alone. She convinces him to have a drink by saying that she'll have one, too. She pours herself a few drops of liqueur, but in order to taste it, she throws back her head and licks the bottom of the shot glass. Emma and Charles have their first real conversation - that is, Emma talks, and Charles listens. They even go to her room to look at mementos of her days as a schoolgirl at the convent. She complains about the hired help, complains about not living in the city, and generally talks a lot about herself. Charles is charmed. On his way home, Charles mulls over the pros and cons of starting something with Emma. He begins to wonder if another marriage might be a good idea... Monsieur Rouault, we discover, is not averse to this idea. He loves Emma, but he's come to terms with the fact that she is simply useless on the farm. He himself isn't a big fan of farming, and really doesn't enjoy his profession. When he notices Charles's interest in Emma, he decides to give his blessing. After a while, Charles finally builds up the courage ask Monsieur Rouault for Emma's hand in marriage. In typical fashion, Charles can't even get the words out - fortunately, his future father-in-law figures out what's going on and says it's all cool with him. The marriage ball is rolling. Notably, we don't know what Emma thinks about any of this... The winter passes, and Emma busily prepares her trousseau . Emma reveals herself to be something of a romantic ninny; she would like to be married by torchlight in the dead of night. However, her more practical fiance and father decide that this is probably not the best idea. A traditional wedding is planned.", "analysis": ""}

One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could. "I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit." Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life. Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her. He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked. He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass. One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders. After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass. She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs. She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid! She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering. Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married, and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the Bertaux. Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips. Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid as on the stage. *A mixture of coffee and spirits. When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property," as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said to himself, "I'll give her to him." At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux. The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it-- "Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to you." They stopped. Charles was silent. "Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault, laughing softly. "Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles. "I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge." And he went off. Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging. The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year. The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be entrees. Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following.

Part 1, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-3

Charles's half-hearted mourning doesn't last too long. Monsieur Rouault shows up the day after the funeral to deliver his payment for the medical treatment, and also to give his condolences. He encourages Charles to visit Les Bertaux again, which he does, happily. Monsieur Rouault cheers Charles up, and he quickly begins to forget about his dead wife. In the weeks that follow, things start to look up for Charles. He discovers that he likes living without his wife - he can decide when and what he wants to eat, and doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Furthermore, her death was actually good for business, since all the townspeople feel bad for him. Charles keeps up his visits to Les Bertaux. One day, he encounters Emma alone. She convinces him to have a drink by saying that she'll have one, too. She pours herself a few drops of liqueur, but in order to taste it, she throws back her head and licks the bottom of the shot glass. Emma and Charles have their first real conversation - that is, Emma talks, and Charles listens. They even go to her room to look at mementos of her days as a schoolgirl at the convent. She complains about the hired help, complains about not living in the city, and generally talks a lot about herself. Charles is charmed. On his way home, Charles mulls over the pros and cons of starting something with Emma. He begins to wonder if another marriage might be a good idea... Monsieur Rouault, we discover, is not averse to this idea. He loves Emma, but he's come to terms with the fact that she is simply useless on the farm. He himself isn't a big fan of farming, and really doesn't enjoy his profession. When he notices Charles's interest in Emma, he decides to give his blessing. After a while, Charles finally builds up the courage ask Monsieur Rouault for Emma's hand in marriage. In typical fashion, Charles can't even get the words out - fortunately, his future father-in-law figures out what's going on and says it's all cool with him. The marriage ball is rolling. Notably, we don't know what Emma thinks about any of this... The winter passes, and Emma busily prepares her trousseau . Emma reveals herself to be something of a romantic ninny; she would like to be married by torchlight in the dead of night. However, her more practical fiance and father decide that this is probably not the best idea. A traditional wedding is planned.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_3_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 4

part 1, chapter 4

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-4", "summary": "It's the big day, and various friends and family members arrive in a bustle of horses, carriages, and passengers. Flaubert treats us to a rather ridiculous description of country folks; we are reminded again that this is not the sophisticated big city event that Emma longs for; rather, it is a procession of people awkwardly dressed up in their unfashionable best for a small-town wedding. We don't get to see the ceremony, but the wedding feast that comes afterwards is mouth-watering. The guests are treated to be huge table overflowing with roast beef, mutton, chickens, a suckling pig, many alcohols, and a dizzyingly fancy wedding cake. The guests gorge themselves until nightfall, when they pile back into their vehicles and raucously drive back home. As everyone settles in for the night, a group of whiny wedding guests complain about how unsatisfactory the event was, cursing Monsieur Rouault behind his back . The Bovary family members are characteristically unimpressive during all of these goings-on. Charles's mother holds her tongue for once , while his father stays up partying and drinking all night with the guests. Charles himself is, as usual, fairly dull on the day of the wedding - but after the wedding night, he's a changed man. He's clearly very, very in love with Emma. The bride, on the other hand, is pretty casual about the whole thing. After the couple leaves to start their married life, Monsieur Rouault reflects upon his own life and his dear, departed wife. He remembers happier times and, overcome by sadness, heads home alone. Charles and Emma return to his house in Tostes; the neighbors show up to check out the new arrival.", "analysis": ""}

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to. From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. According to their different social positions they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt. And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs. The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little birds from afar. The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly 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 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 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, 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 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.

Part 1, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-4

It's the big day, and various friends and family members arrive in a bustle of horses, carriages, and passengers. Flaubert treats us to a rather ridiculous description of country folks; we are reminded again that this is not the sophisticated big city event that Emma longs for; rather, it is a procession of people awkwardly dressed up in their unfashionable best for a small-town wedding. We don't get to see the ceremony, but the wedding feast that comes afterwards is mouth-watering. The guests are treated to be huge table overflowing with roast beef, mutton, chickens, a suckling pig, many alcohols, and a dizzyingly fancy wedding cake. The guests gorge themselves until nightfall, when they pile back into their vehicles and raucously drive back home. As everyone settles in for the night, a group of whiny wedding guests complain about how unsatisfactory the event was, cursing Monsieur Rouault behind his back . The Bovary family members are characteristically unimpressive during all of these goings-on. Charles's mother holds her tongue for once , while his father stays up partying and drinking all night with the guests. Charles himself is, as usual, fairly dull on the day of the wedding - but after the wedding night, he's a changed man. He's clearly very, very in love with Emma. The bride, on the other hand, is pretty casual about the whole thing. After the couple leaves to start their married life, Monsieur Rouault reflects upon his own life and his dear, departed wife. He remembers happier times and, overcome by sadness, heads home alone. Charles and Emma return to his house in Tostes; the neighbors show up to check out the new arrival.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_4_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 5

part 1, chapter 5

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-5", "summary": "Next, we get a brief tour of Charles and Emma's house. It sounds pretty decent - nothing impressive, but a nice enough home for a country doctor and his wife. There's a little garden, an office for Charles , and generally everything a typical village housewife might need. Emma, however, is not your typical village housewife. First of all, she notices the former Madame Bovary's bridal bouquet preserved in the bedroom - this totally doesn't fly. This relic of wife #1 is relegated to exile in the attic. After this change, Emma goes on a total renovation rampage, making changes to every aspect of the little house's decor. Charles is in heaven. He gives in to all of Emma's whims, and buys everything she wants. He's totally head over heels in love with her, and is infatuated by her beauty. Everything is perfect, as far as he's concerned, and he can't remember ever being happier. The whole world is wrapped up in Emma. Emma, however, isn't sure that she's so happy. She had thought herself in love before the marriage, but now conjugal life doesn't seem so blissful. She wonders if the words she's read about in books - passion, rapture, bliss - can apply to her life.", "analysis": ""}

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 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 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 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. 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. 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.

Part 1, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-5

Next, we get a brief tour of Charles and Emma's house. It sounds pretty decent - nothing impressive, but a nice enough home for a country doctor and his wife. There's a little garden, an office for Charles , and generally everything a typical village housewife might need. Emma, however, is not your typical village housewife. First of all, she notices the former Madame Bovary's bridal bouquet preserved in the bedroom - this totally doesn't fly. This relic of wife #1 is relegated to exile in the attic. After this change, Emma goes on a total renovation rampage, making changes to every aspect of the little house's decor. Charles is in heaven. He gives in to all of Emma's whims, and buys everything she wants. He's totally head over heels in love with her, and is infatuated by her beauty. Everything is perfect, as far as he's concerned, and he can't remember ever being happier. The whole world is wrapped up in Emma. Emma, however, isn't sure that she's so happy. She had thought herself in love before the marriage, but now conjugal life doesn't seem so blissful. She wonders if the words she's read about in books - passion, rapture, bliss - can apply to her life.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_5_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 6

part 1, chapter 6

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-6", "summary": "Now that we've had a tour of the Bovary household, it's time for a tour of Emma's inner landscape. Fade out to a flashback... Emma is a dreamy, romantic child, and is perhaps too heavily influenced by Paul and Virginia, a popular and super-utopian novel about two siblings stranded on a desert island. At age thirteen, Emma is sent to a convent school, where she quickly falls in love with the mystical, aesthetic atmosphere of the religious life; she devotes herself to the ceremonies and artistic poses of convent life. We can see where this is heading. The things Emma likes best about religion aren't what you'd hope or expect - you know, stuff like God or faith. Instead, she is really into the romantic aspects of it; metaphors for the nun's relationship with God like \"betrothed\" and \"heavenly lover\" really get her going. At the convent, Emma meets an old lady with an aristocratic background . She introduces Emma to novels - and thus to a whole new world of swoony romantic dreams. As she does her work, the girls listen to her stories and read the romance novels she carries around in her apron pocket. Soon enough, Emma's attentions turn from religious ecstasy to dreams of historical romance. She wishes she could live the life she read about in her books. Emma's mother dies while Emma is away at school; the girl is dramatically sad for a little while, but is kind of secretly pleased at herself for being so sensitive. The nuns worry that they've lost Emma - they'd assumed that she would join the sisterhood. She rebells against their attempts to draw her back in, and ends up leaving the convent. As Flaubert states pointedly, \"no one was sorry to see her go\" . Back home, Emma enjoys playing lady of the manor and ordering the servants around for a while. However, she gets sick of it soon enough and - surprise, surprise - misses the convent. By the time Charles appears on the scene, she feels cynical and experienced . She actually believes that she's in love with Charles - but we get the feeling that she would have felt the same way about any guy who happened to wander into her life at that time. Unsurprisingly, now that they're married, she's unsettled and discontented.", "analysis": ""}

She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, 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. Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil. When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the "Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV. In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards. When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.

Part 1, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-6

Now that we've had a tour of the Bovary household, it's time for a tour of Emma's inner landscape. Fade out to a flashback... Emma is a dreamy, romantic child, and is perhaps too heavily influenced by Paul and Virginia, a popular and super-utopian novel about two siblings stranded on a desert island. At age thirteen, Emma is sent to a convent school, where she quickly falls in love with the mystical, aesthetic atmosphere of the religious life; she devotes herself to the ceremonies and artistic poses of convent life. We can see where this is heading. The things Emma likes best about religion aren't what you'd hope or expect - you know, stuff like God or faith. Instead, she is really into the romantic aspects of it; metaphors for the nun's relationship with God like "betrothed" and "heavenly lover" really get her going. At the convent, Emma meets an old lady with an aristocratic background . She introduces Emma to novels - and thus to a whole new world of swoony romantic dreams. As she does her work, the girls listen to her stories and read the romance novels she carries around in her apron pocket. Soon enough, Emma's attentions turn from religious ecstasy to dreams of historical romance. She wishes she could live the life she read about in her books. Emma's mother dies while Emma is away at school; the girl is dramatically sad for a little while, but is kind of secretly pleased at herself for being so sensitive. The nuns worry that they've lost Emma - they'd assumed that she would join the sisterhood. She rebells against their attempts to draw her back in, and ends up leaving the convent. As Flaubert states pointedly, "no one was sorry to see her go" . Back home, Emma enjoys playing lady of the manor and ordering the servants around for a while. However, she gets sick of it soon enough and - surprise, surprise - misses the convent. By the time Charles appears on the scene, she feels cynical and experienced . She actually believes that she's in love with Charles - but we get the feeling that she would have felt the same way about any guy who happened to wander into her life at that time. Unsurprisingly, now that they're married, she's unsettled and discontented.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_6_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 7

part 1, chapter 7

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-7", "summary": "Emma wonders if these \"honeymoon days\" are really the best days of her life. She starts to feel cheated, as though Charles has deprived her of the cliched, romantic fantasies she cooks up. She's sure that she would be happier if only she was somewhere else...preferably with someone else... Emma wants to reveal these feelings of discontent to somebody, and wishes Charles could be a little more sensitive. Day by day he just grows less and less interesting to her, and she is consistently disappointed in the man she married. She believes that men should know everything and be able to do anything - Charles, however, is just an average guy. Emma attempts to express her turbulent feelings through drawing and music; Charles loves to watch her, and the people of the village are impressed by her accomplishments. Speaking of which, Emma turns out to actually be a pretty capable wife when she tries. She knows how to take care of the house and of Charles's business, and this makes the village respect the doctor and his young wife even more. Charles is also extremely impressed himself for having such a terrific wife. In his view, everything is just peachy keen. As far as we can tell, he's a really simple creature, with very few desires and no ambition at all. He's stingy and kind of oafish, but is generally still the same old predictable Charles - the kind of nice guy that finishes last. Charles's mom approves of her son's ways wholeheartedly, but she's skeptical of her daughter-in-law. She's worried that Emma wastes too much money, and every time she visits , the two women harass each other relentlessly. This springs largely from Mom's anxieties about Charles's love for Emma - she's no longer the favorite, now that Wife #2 is in the picture. Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two loves of his life. He can't believe that his mother could ever be wrong, but he also can't believe that Emma ever makes any mistakes. It's a confusing time for him; mostly, he just bumbles about, which doesn't help. Emma decides to at least attempt to \"experience love\" . She sings songs and recites poetry to Charles, but it doesn't accomplish anything. That's it. Emma is certain she doesn't love Charles, and furthermore, that she's incapable of loving him. She's way, way bored with her life on the whole. One of the great constants in life is the fact that Puppies Are Awesome. Emma receives a little greyhound pup as a gift from one of Charles's patients, and for a while, the awesomeness of the puppy actually makes her feel a wee bit better. She names the dog Djali and tells her about the troubles of married life. You may not have realized it, but dog is woman's best friend, too. Emma is certain she could have married someone different - and better - given the chance. She wonders about her former classmates from the convent school, and is sure that they have better husbands than she does. Her former life seems painfully far away. Just when it seems like nothing will ever happen for Emma, an invitation arrives: she and Charles are invited to a party at the home of a local big-shot, the Marquis d'Andervilliers. The Marquis, a former patient of Charles's, was impressed by Emma's elegance. The chapter ends as the couple arrives at the Marquis' chateau.", "analysis": ""}

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage. If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him. Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel. A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him. Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand. Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was extended to Bovary. Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife. He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his door in his wool-work slippers. He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored. As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good enough for the country." His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her ways too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger. In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively. Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients. And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved. When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner. A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you. She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?" She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles." Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling. Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl round her shoulders and rose. In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak. But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard. Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it his business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple. On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles held a bandbox between his knees. They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit to show the way for the carriages.

Part 1, Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-7

Emma wonders if these "honeymoon days" are really the best days of her life. She starts to feel cheated, as though Charles has deprived her of the cliched, romantic fantasies she cooks up. She's sure that she would be happier if only she was somewhere else...preferably with someone else... Emma wants to reveal these feelings of discontent to somebody, and wishes Charles could be a little more sensitive. Day by day he just grows less and less interesting to her, and she is consistently disappointed in the man she married. She believes that men should know everything and be able to do anything - Charles, however, is just an average guy. Emma attempts to express her turbulent feelings through drawing and music; Charles loves to watch her, and the people of the village are impressed by her accomplishments. Speaking of which, Emma turns out to actually be a pretty capable wife when she tries. She knows how to take care of the house and of Charles's business, and this makes the village respect the doctor and his young wife even more. Charles is also extremely impressed himself for having such a terrific wife. In his view, everything is just peachy keen. As far as we can tell, he's a really simple creature, with very few desires and no ambition at all. He's stingy and kind of oafish, but is generally still the same old predictable Charles - the kind of nice guy that finishes last. Charles's mom approves of her son's ways wholeheartedly, but she's skeptical of her daughter-in-law. She's worried that Emma wastes too much money, and every time she visits , the two women harass each other relentlessly. This springs largely from Mom's anxieties about Charles's love for Emma - she's no longer the favorite, now that Wife #2 is in the picture. Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two loves of his life. He can't believe that his mother could ever be wrong, but he also can't believe that Emma ever makes any mistakes. It's a confusing time for him; mostly, he just bumbles about, which doesn't help. Emma decides to at least attempt to "experience love" . She sings songs and recites poetry to Charles, but it doesn't accomplish anything. That's it. Emma is certain she doesn't love Charles, and furthermore, that she's incapable of loving him. She's way, way bored with her life on the whole. One of the great constants in life is the fact that Puppies Are Awesome. Emma receives a little greyhound pup as a gift from one of Charles's patients, and for a while, the awesomeness of the puppy actually makes her feel a wee bit better. She names the dog Djali and tells her about the troubles of married life. You may not have realized it, but dog is woman's best friend, too. Emma is certain she could have married someone different - and better - given the chance. She wonders about her former classmates from the convent school, and is sure that they have better husbands than she does. Her former life seems painfully far away. Just when it seems like nothing will ever happen for Emma, an invitation arrives: she and Charles are invited to a party at the home of a local big-shot, the Marquis d'Andervilliers. The Marquis, a former patient of Charles's, was impressed by Emma's elegance. The chapter ends as the couple arrives at the Marquis' chateau.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_7_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 8

part 1, chapter 8

{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-8", "summary": "The chateau is everything Emma could have dreamt of. It's gorgeous and extravagantly beautiful. Emma is profoundly impressed by the whole thing and notices every detail. At dinner, Emma sees that many of the ladies take wine at dinner . Emma is fascinated by an old, unattractive man, the Duc de Laverdiere; rumor has it that he had been Marie Antoinette's lover. Emma gets her first taste of champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple. Everything here seems better than it is at home. We get the feeling that she finally feels she's getting what she deserves. Getting dressed for the ball, Emma and Charles have a little spat. Charles wants to dance, but Emma claims it's ridiculous, saying that people will laugh at him. On this night, Emma looks better than ever. Charles, taken with her beauty, attempts to kiss her, but she just shoos him away. The ball is like one of Emma's romantic daydreams. It's filled with beautiful women in gorgeous dresses and jewels, and - to Emma's excitement - with beautiful men, too. Everything about these gorgeous guys radiates wealth, from their clear, white complexions to their well-cut clothes. Emma and Charles are clearly in a brand new world. Emma sees some peasants looking in through the windows, and is reminded of her former life on the farm at Les Bertaux. These new visions of luxury and beauty totally sweep her off her feet, and she begins to wonder if she ever really was a simple country girl. Emma witnesses a lady and gentleman exchange a secret love note. Hours into the ball, a second gourmet meal is served. After this, people start to leave. By 3am, it's time for the last dance, a waltz. Emma dances with a man Flaubert simply calls the Viscount, despite the fact that she doesn't really know how to waltz. She stumbles, then watches the Viscount resume the dance with another lady. Charles, who's been watching a game of whist at the card table all night, takes Emma up to bed, complaining all the way about his tired legs. Emma stays up late, looking out the window and hoping to prolong her stay in this fantastical other world. Eventually she lets herself fall asleep. In the morning, the remaining guests eat a quick breakfast, then walk around the chateau's extensive grounds. Charles and Emma pack up their buggy, say their thank yous, and head back to Tostes. During the drive home, they encounter a party of riders on horseback. One of them, Emma thinks, is the Viscount. Shortly thereafter, Charles has to fix something on the buggy. While he's outside, he finds a green silk cigar case. Home again, Emma is really in a foul mood. She fires the maid, Nastasie, because dinner isn't ready on time. The word that comes to mind is \"irrational.\" Charles, on the other hand, is happy to be home. He's a little sad to see Nastasie go, since she's gone through a lot with him, but doesn't want to argue with his wife. After dinner, Charles tries to act like an aristocratic man by smoking one of the cigars he found in the silk case. Embarrassingly, he makes himself rather ill. Emma is disgusted. In the following days, Emma rehashes the ball over and over again in her mind. She tries to remember everything about it.", "analysis": ""}

The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old chateau. Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule. It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church. Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their strokes. On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black letters. She read: "Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1587." And on another: "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf. The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire. At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness. Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays; bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life. Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses. But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball. Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers were tight across the belly. "My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said. "Dancing?" repeated Emma. "Yes!" "Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place. Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added. Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish dressing. He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green. Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder. "Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me." One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She went downstairs restraining herself from running. Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She sat down on a form near the door. The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans. Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis d'or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room; then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again. A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress, or face. Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women. A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls. They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus," and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors that had disfigured the name of his horse. The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth. A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing. "Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has fallen behind the sofa?" The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began smelling her bouquet. After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door. *With almond milk At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz. Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a dozen persons. One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well. They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more. Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others. Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed. Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees were going up into his body." He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots. Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out. The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up. Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep. There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables. Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness room shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall. Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and Marchioness and set out again for Tostes. Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it. They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop. A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces that had broken. But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a carriage. "There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening after dinner." "Why, do you smoke?" she asked. "Sometimes, when I get a chance." He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag. When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper. Nastasie answered rudely. "Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you warning." For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel. Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully. "How good it is to be at home again!" Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place. "Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last. "Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied. Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff. "You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully. He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard. The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced. The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma. Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah! I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance. She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.

Part 1, Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-1-chapter-8

The chateau is everything Emma could have dreamt of. It's gorgeous and extravagantly beautiful. Emma is profoundly impressed by the whole thing and notices every detail. At dinner, Emma sees that many of the ladies take wine at dinner . Emma is fascinated by an old, unattractive man, the Duc de Laverdiere; rumor has it that he had been Marie Antoinette's lover. Emma gets her first taste of champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple. Everything here seems better than it is at home. We get the feeling that she finally feels she's getting what she deserves. Getting dressed for the ball, Emma and Charles have a little spat. Charles wants to dance, but Emma claims it's ridiculous, saying that people will laugh at him. On this night, Emma looks better than ever. Charles, taken with her beauty, attempts to kiss her, but she just shoos him away. The ball is like one of Emma's romantic daydreams. It's filled with beautiful women in gorgeous dresses and jewels, and - to Emma's excitement - with beautiful men, too. Everything about these gorgeous guys radiates wealth, from their clear, white complexions to their well-cut clothes. Emma and Charles are clearly in a brand new world. Emma sees some peasants looking in through the windows, and is reminded of her former life on the farm at Les Bertaux. These new visions of luxury and beauty totally sweep her off her feet, and she begins to wonder if she ever really was a simple country girl. Emma witnesses a lady and gentleman exchange a secret love note. Hours into the ball, a second gourmet meal is served. After this, people start to leave. By 3am, it's time for the last dance, a waltz. Emma dances with a man Flaubert simply calls the Viscount, despite the fact that she doesn't really know how to waltz. She stumbles, then watches the Viscount resume the dance with another lady. Charles, who's been watching a game of whist at the card table all night, takes Emma up to bed, complaining all the way about his tired legs. Emma stays up late, looking out the window and hoping to prolong her stay in this fantastical other world. Eventually she lets herself fall asleep. In the morning, the remaining guests eat a quick breakfast, then walk around the chateau's extensive grounds. Charles and Emma pack up their buggy, say their thank yous, and head back to Tostes. During the drive home, they encounter a party of riders on horseback. One of them, Emma thinks, is the Viscount. Shortly thereafter, Charles has to fix something on the buggy. While he's outside, he finds a green silk cigar case. Home again, Emma is really in a foul mood. She fires the maid, Nastasie, because dinner isn't ready on time. The word that comes to mind is "irrational." Charles, on the other hand, is happy to be home. He's a little sad to see Nastasie go, since she's gone through a lot with him, but doesn't want to argue with his wife. After dinner, Charles tries to act like an aristocratic man by smoking one of the cigars he found in the silk case. Embarrassingly, he makes himself rather ill. Emma is disgusted. In the following days, Emma rehashes the ball over and over again in her mind. She tries to remember everything about it.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/10.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_9_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 1

part 2, chapter 1

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-1", "summary": "Welcome to Emma and Charles's new home! Yonville-l'Abbaye, their new town, is a small step up from Tostes. It's a market town in the Neufchatel region of France, not too far from Rouen . The town is bordered by farmland, and it actually sounds fairly attractive. Flaubert, ever the party pooper, describes it as \"characterless,\" and claims that it makes the worst Neufchatel cheese in the whole district . Despite new improvements in roads and trade routes, Yonville is still really slow and old-fashioned. We can already tell that this doesn't bode well for Emma. The actual town is pretty simple; it has a nice house or two, a church and graveyard, some brandy distilleries and cider presses, and an inn. Most notably, it's also home to a very peculiar building: Monsieur Homais' Pharmacy. It sounds like a pretty exciting place, covered in signs advertising the pharmacist's products. Apparently that's all there is to see in Yonville. Our sense of dread increases. Emma is so not going to like this... The church's caretaker , Lestiboudois, is in the practice of planting crops right up to the cemetery, a rather sketchy thing, if you ask us. The priest claims half-jokingly that he's \"feeding on the dead\" - creepy! All in all, we get the picture - nothing ever changes in Yonville. It's not exactly the booming metropolis Emma dreams of. On the day of the Bovary's arrival, the innkeeper, Madame Lefrancois, is busy preparing everything for the coming week. She's all in a tizzy because she's got a lot of food to prepare, both for her regular boarders, and for Charles and Emma. As she's in the midst of preparations, Monsieur Homais pays her a little visit. He immediately appears to be quite an arrogant guy. Monsieur Homais and Madame Lefrancois have a somewhat aggressive conversation. They chat about town affairs, including a rival bar, and about the inn's boarders. Among them are an oddly dull man named Binet and some young man called Leon. Binet enters on cue, ready for his dinner. He seems like a normal guy, but is really, really boring. Monsieur Homais obviously isn't a huge fan. The town priest stops by to pick up his umbrella. He and Monsieur Homais clearly have some kind of antagonistic relationship , since Homais bursts out in a big anti-clerical rant after he leaves. Homais clearly regards himself as quite an intellectual. He's immoderately proud of himself. Finally, the Hirondelle pulls up with the Bovarys inside. The driver, Hivert, is immediately besieged by questions from the townspeople . Hivert explains the Hirondelle's tardiness: Emma's beloved greyhound, Djali, ran away and they had to stop to look for her. She was nowhere to be found. A local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, who was along for the ride, attempts to console Emma by telling her that Djali will find her way home.", "analysis": ""}

Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen, between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays. We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver. Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country. Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France, a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints. Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side. At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the finest in the place. *The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of notaries. The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes. The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr. So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted. The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other the scales of Justice. But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black ground. Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached. At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials. "You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to him one day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally. Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane. On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks. A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist. "Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand. "That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would buy another." "Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow. "Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!" The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on-- "You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floods--" "It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!" "Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?" "Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!" "Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector." Six o'clock struck. Binet came in. He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois. He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way. "It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady. "He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish and never said a word." "Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society-man." "Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady. "Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it is possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on-- "Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my ear!" Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle" were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic. "What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of Cassis*? A glass of wine?" *Black currant liqueur. The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing. When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe. The landlady took up the defence of her curie. "Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong." "Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals." "Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion." The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them." He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door. It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground. Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the yards. An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to go on. Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town.

Part 2, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-1

Welcome to Emma and Charles's new home! Yonville-l'Abbaye, their new town, is a small step up from Tostes. It's a market town in the Neufchatel region of France, not too far from Rouen . The town is bordered by farmland, and it actually sounds fairly attractive. Flaubert, ever the party pooper, describes it as "characterless," and claims that it makes the worst Neufchatel cheese in the whole district . Despite new improvements in roads and trade routes, Yonville is still really slow and old-fashioned. We can already tell that this doesn't bode well for Emma. The actual town is pretty simple; it has a nice house or two, a church and graveyard, some brandy distilleries and cider presses, and an inn. Most notably, it's also home to a very peculiar building: Monsieur Homais' Pharmacy. It sounds like a pretty exciting place, covered in signs advertising the pharmacist's products. Apparently that's all there is to see in Yonville. Our sense of dread increases. Emma is so not going to like this... The church's caretaker , Lestiboudois, is in the practice of planting crops right up to the cemetery, a rather sketchy thing, if you ask us. The priest claims half-jokingly that he's "feeding on the dead" - creepy! All in all, we get the picture - nothing ever changes in Yonville. It's not exactly the booming metropolis Emma dreams of. On the day of the Bovary's arrival, the innkeeper, Madame Lefrancois, is busy preparing everything for the coming week. She's all in a tizzy because she's got a lot of food to prepare, both for her regular boarders, and for Charles and Emma. As she's in the midst of preparations, Monsieur Homais pays her a little visit. He immediately appears to be quite an arrogant guy. Monsieur Homais and Madame Lefrancois have a somewhat aggressive conversation. They chat about town affairs, including a rival bar, and about the inn's boarders. Among them are an oddly dull man named Binet and some young man called Leon. Binet enters on cue, ready for his dinner. He seems like a normal guy, but is really, really boring. Monsieur Homais obviously isn't a huge fan. The town priest stops by to pick up his umbrella. He and Monsieur Homais clearly have some kind of antagonistic relationship , since Homais bursts out in a big anti-clerical rant after he leaves. Homais clearly regards himself as quite an intellectual. He's immoderately proud of himself. Finally, the Hirondelle pulls up with the Bovarys inside. The driver, Hivert, is immediately besieged by questions from the townspeople . Hivert explains the Hirondelle's tardiness: Emma's beloved greyhound, Djali, ran away and they had to stop to look for her. She was nowhere to be found. A local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, who was along for the ride, attempts to console Emma by telling her that Djali will find her way home.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/11.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_10_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 2

part 2, chapter 2

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-2", "summary": "Emma, Charles, Felicite, and Monsieur Lheureux get out of the Hirondelle for the Bovarys' first glimpse of Yonville. Monsieur Homais is on hand to introduce himself. Emma checks out the inn. Meanwhile, a blond young man checks her out. Who is this guy, you may ask? Flaubert tells us. It turns out that this is the Monsieur Leon mentioned earlier. He's a clerk who works for the notary in town. He, like Emma, is a bored young person trapped in a town full of aging, dull people. The dinner party, comprised of Emma, Charles, Homais, and Leon, make polite chitter chatter about their trip, and about the town. Homais goes off on a long spiel about Yonville. We realize that his primary mode of communication is probably by long spiel. Leon and Emma are clearly on the same wavelength - one that nobody else is on. They seem to have similar ideas and interests. It turns out that Leon is an amateur musician, like Emma. Monsieur Homais, with whom the young clerk lives, claims that Leon is a beautiful singer. Emma is intrigued. Emma and Leon have a little moment, in which he reveals that he loves German music, \"the kind that makes you dream\" - what an Emma-like thing to say! He also tells her he's going away to Paris to study to be lawyer. Homais and Charles have obviously been conversing on their own. Homais attempts to include everyone in the conversation; Emma and Leon aren't interested, and soon get caught up in their private conversation again. Like Emma, Leon is a big reader, and it seems like they have pretty similar thoughts about literature, as well. Homais tries to break into their conversation again, offering the use of his personal library to Emma. Emma and Leon are sitting so close that he has his feet on one of the rungs of her chair. After dinner, the guests all go their separate ways. Emma and Charles go into their new house for the first time. It doesn't sound too thrilling. We are unsurprised. Emma philosophically muses that, since her life so far hasn't been too hot, it has to get better.", "analysis": ""}

Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in. Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away. When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney. With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door. On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her silently. As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four. Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza; then, turning to his neighbour-- "Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in our 'Hirondelle.'" "That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like change of place." "It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same places." "If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the saddle"-- "But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added. "Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from Russia." "At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man. "Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset." "I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but especially by the side of the sea." "Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon. "And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?" "It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing site." "You play?" she asked. "No, but I am very fond of music," he replied. "Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais, bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor." Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a good deal of show. Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?" "Oh, German music; that which makes you dream." "Have you been to the opera?" "Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish reading for the bar." "As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the chemist, "with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen. Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be able--" "My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading." "Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?" "What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him. "One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes." "That is true! That is true?" she said. "Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?" "I have experienced it," she replied. "That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." "Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature." "In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords so few resources." "Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a lending library." "If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and vicinity." For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks. Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner. When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started. The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company dispersed. As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows. She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly. This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth. And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.

Part 2, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-2

Emma, Charles, Felicite, and Monsieur Lheureux get out of the Hirondelle for the Bovarys' first glimpse of Yonville. Monsieur Homais is on hand to introduce himself. Emma checks out the inn. Meanwhile, a blond young man checks her out. Who is this guy, you may ask? Flaubert tells us. It turns out that this is the Monsieur Leon mentioned earlier. He's a clerk who works for the notary in town. He, like Emma, is a bored young person trapped in a town full of aging, dull people. The dinner party, comprised of Emma, Charles, Homais, and Leon, make polite chitter chatter about their trip, and about the town. Homais goes off on a long spiel about Yonville. We realize that his primary mode of communication is probably by long spiel. Leon and Emma are clearly on the same wavelength - one that nobody else is on. They seem to have similar ideas and interests. It turns out that Leon is an amateur musician, like Emma. Monsieur Homais, with whom the young clerk lives, claims that Leon is a beautiful singer. Emma is intrigued. Emma and Leon have a little moment, in which he reveals that he loves German music, "the kind that makes you dream" - what an Emma-like thing to say! He also tells her he's going away to Paris to study to be lawyer. Homais and Charles have obviously been conversing on their own. Homais attempts to include everyone in the conversation; Emma and Leon aren't interested, and soon get caught up in their private conversation again. Like Emma, Leon is a big reader, and it seems like they have pretty similar thoughts about literature, as well. Homais tries to break into their conversation again, offering the use of his personal library to Emma. Emma and Leon are sitting so close that he has his feet on one of the rungs of her chair. After dinner, the guests all go their separate ways. Emma and Charles go into their new house for the first time. It doesn't sound too thrilling. We are unsurprised. Emma philosophically muses that, since her life so far hasn't been too hot, it has to get better.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_11_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 3

part 2, chapter 3

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-3", "summary": "The next morning, Emma sees Leon through her bedroom window; they bow to each other. Leon, hopeful that the Bovarys will turn up for dinner at the inn again, can't wait for six o'clock. However, dinnertime rolls around, and Emma is nowhere to be found. He's deeply disappointed. Apparently, Leon isn't exactly a lady's man. His conversation with Emma the previous night was the most intimate situation he's ever been in with a \"lady.\" Everyone in the town likes him for his many fine qualities, but he felt a different kind of connection with Emma. Homais turns out to be a very, very attentive neighbor. He gives Emma all kinds of assistance with the house, and is oh-so-friendly. However, he's not exactly Ned Flanders. It seems that his kindly guy-next-door act is a front; he'd been accused previously of illegally practicing medicine without any certification, and was threatened with legal action. A lot of townspeople, including the mayor, are out to get him, so he's careful to keep Charles on his side. Speaking of Charles, the poor guy isn't so happy. He doesn't have any patients yet, and spends most of his time hanging about the house. He's worried about money - the move from Tostes was expensive, and all the money that Emma brought with her to the marriage is gone. The only thing that cheers Charles up is the thought of Emma's pregnancy. He feels that his whole life is complete now that a baby is on the horizon. Emma, on the other hand, traversed a whole range of emotions, from astonished to bitter, before settling on indifferent. She decides that if she must have a baby, it should be a boy, so it can have the power to escape the rules that govern women. Instead, it's a girl. Emma passes out, presumably from disappointment, as well as the rigors of childbirth. Madame Homais and Madame Lefrancois rush in to see how things are going. Everyone is excited except Emma. Emma can't even think up a name for the poor kid. She has all kinds of romantic ideas about what she'd like to call the daughter . Homais has all kinds of crazy ideas, naturally, having named his children all kinds of crazy things. Emma eventually settles haphazardly on \"Berthe.\" Little Berthe is baptized. Her godfather is Homais, since Emma's dad couldn't make it for the birth, and her godmother is old Madame Bovary, who's visiting with her husband. Charles's father gets along pretty well with Emma, who's interested in his stories of travel in the army. Charles's mom is worried that her husband will be a bad influence upon Emma, and they peace out pretty quickly. One day, as Emma is going to visit the baby , she runs into Leon. She invites him to come with her, which causes quite the scandal among the gossips of the town. The wetnurse lives in an unsavory little cottage. Leon is thrown off by the image before him, of the beautiful lady in a fancy dress surrounded by squalor. The baby makes a spectacular entrance by promptly spitting up on Emma. The visitors head out. As they're leaving, Madame Rollet comes up and wheedles the promise of some brandy out of Emma. Emma and Leon head back to Yonville. They obviously have an intense connection already. When they get back to town, Emma heads home, while Leon keeps wandering, pondering his boredom and the dullness of the other people he knows in town. He has quite the crush on our young Madame Bovary.", "analysis": ""}

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and reclosed the window. Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation. At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time as a servant. The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year, according to the taste of the customers. The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it all. He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits. Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him "the paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the Doctor. Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two years. Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity. Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated. As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively. She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was rising. "It is a girl!" said Charles. She turned her head away and fainted. Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made. Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better. Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders. "Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in fashion just now." But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported, but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour. At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement. Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer. Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne. The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs, or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look out for yourself." Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was not the man to respect anything. One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and, without looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the highroad and the fields. It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing; Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest. At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbouring door with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of the Lheureux's shop under the projecting grey awning. Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was beginning to grow tired. "If--" said Leon, not daring to go on. "Have you any business to attend to?" she asked. And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was compromising herself." To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air. They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country. "Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep." The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door, shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs. Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro. Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who had just been sick over her collar. The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show. "She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of her. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't trouble you then." "Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door. The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights. "I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk." After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned round. It was the nurse. "What is it?" Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year that the captain-- "Oh, be quick!" said Emma. "Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--" "But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You bother me!" "Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him." "Do make haste, Mere Rollet!" "Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue." Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing desk. They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling round her. The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk. They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the Rouen theatre. "Are you going?" she asked. "If I can," he answered. Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know. In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water. When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared. Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went out. He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched the sky through his fingers. "How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!" He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had impressed the clerk. As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown. And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions. But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss. In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.

Part 2, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-3

The next morning, Emma sees Leon through her bedroom window; they bow to each other. Leon, hopeful that the Bovarys will turn up for dinner at the inn again, can't wait for six o'clock. However, dinnertime rolls around, and Emma is nowhere to be found. He's deeply disappointed. Apparently, Leon isn't exactly a lady's man. His conversation with Emma the previous night was the most intimate situation he's ever been in with a "lady." Everyone in the town likes him for his many fine qualities, but he felt a different kind of connection with Emma. Homais turns out to be a very, very attentive neighbor. He gives Emma all kinds of assistance with the house, and is oh-so-friendly. However, he's not exactly Ned Flanders. It seems that his kindly guy-next-door act is a front; he'd been accused previously of illegally practicing medicine without any certification, and was threatened with legal action. A lot of townspeople, including the mayor, are out to get him, so he's careful to keep Charles on his side. Speaking of Charles, the poor guy isn't so happy. He doesn't have any patients yet, and spends most of his time hanging about the house. He's worried about money - the move from Tostes was expensive, and all the money that Emma brought with her to the marriage is gone. The only thing that cheers Charles up is the thought of Emma's pregnancy. He feels that his whole life is complete now that a baby is on the horizon. Emma, on the other hand, traversed a whole range of emotions, from astonished to bitter, before settling on indifferent. She decides that if she must have a baby, it should be a boy, so it can have the power to escape the rules that govern women. Instead, it's a girl. Emma passes out, presumably from disappointment, as well as the rigors of childbirth. Madame Homais and Madame Lefrancois rush in to see how things are going. Everyone is excited except Emma. Emma can't even think up a name for the poor kid. She has all kinds of romantic ideas about what she'd like to call the daughter . Homais has all kinds of crazy ideas, naturally, having named his children all kinds of crazy things. Emma eventually settles haphazardly on "Berthe." Little Berthe is baptized. Her godfather is Homais, since Emma's dad couldn't make it for the birth, and her godmother is old Madame Bovary, who's visiting with her husband. Charles's father gets along pretty well with Emma, who's interested in his stories of travel in the army. Charles's mom is worried that her husband will be a bad influence upon Emma, and they peace out pretty quickly. One day, as Emma is going to visit the baby , she runs into Leon. She invites him to come with her, which causes quite the scandal among the gossips of the town. The wetnurse lives in an unsavory little cottage. Leon is thrown off by the image before him, of the beautiful lady in a fancy dress surrounded by squalor. The baby makes a spectacular entrance by promptly spitting up on Emma. The visitors head out. As they're leaving, Madame Rollet comes up and wheedles the promise of some brandy out of Emma. Emma and Leon head back to Yonville. They obviously have an intense connection already. When they get back to town, Emma heads home, while Leon keeps wandering, pondering his boredom and the dullness of the other people he knows in town. He has quite the crush on our young Madame Bovary.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/13.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_12_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 4

part 2, chapter 4

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-4", "summary": "Once the winter arrives, Emma moves into the parlor from her room. She sits and people-watches all day. Twice a day, she sees Leon go back and forth to and from his office. Monsieur Homais continues to be an attentive neighbor; he stops by every day around dinner time to discuss the daily news with Charles and to give Emma household tips. After this evening chat, Justin comes in to fetch his master. Homais pokes fun at the boy for having a crush on Felicite. The pharmacist also scolds Justin for eavesdropping all the time. On Sundays, the Homais household entertains the few townspeople Monsieur Homais hasn't alienated. Leon and the Bovarys always come. On these occasions, Leon is always by Emma's side, talking to her, coaching her at card games, and looking at magazines with her. Something is obviously going on between Emma and Leon. Charles, unsuspecting as ever, has no idea. At this point, Emma herself doesn't fully realize it. Leon is careful to include Charles in his thoughts, as to avoid suspicions. He gives the officier de sante a splendid phrenological head model for his birthday . Leon is always willing to get things for Emma, from the latest books to a bushel of cacti. Emma and Leon each have little gardens outside their windows, from which they look at each other while tending the plants. To show her gratitude, Emma has a gorgeous velvet bedspread sent over to Leon...it seems like something of an extravagant present. Everyone else is sure that the pair are lovers. Leon idiotically reinforces this idea by talking about Emma 24/7. Even poor Binet gets so sick of him that he snaps at the boy one day. Ah, l'amour! Leon is tortured by his love for Emma, and tries to figure out how to possibly tell her. He can't bring himself to do it. Emma, on the other hand, doesn't get all worked up; she doesn't even try and see if she is or isn't in love with him. Flaubert ominously ends the chapter, though, with the suggestion that one day she'll crack and her love will be out of control.", "analysis": ""}

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see the villagers pass along the pavement. Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past. She would get up and order the table to be laid. Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase, "Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at the table between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked of "what was in the paper." Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him. Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning. He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines. At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop. Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite was there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house. "The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!" But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs, and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too large. Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow. First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice. Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the ground. When Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one. When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration". She had brought her ladies' journal with her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six. Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading. Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances with their balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard. Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it. On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard hairs. She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers at their windows. Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard at the Lion d'Or. One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his lover. He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him-- "What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?" He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred. Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.

Part 2, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-4

Once the winter arrives, Emma moves into the parlor from her room. She sits and people-watches all day. Twice a day, she sees Leon go back and forth to and from his office. Monsieur Homais continues to be an attentive neighbor; he stops by every day around dinner time to discuss the daily news with Charles and to give Emma household tips. After this evening chat, Justin comes in to fetch his master. Homais pokes fun at the boy for having a crush on Felicite. The pharmacist also scolds Justin for eavesdropping all the time. On Sundays, the Homais household entertains the few townspeople Monsieur Homais hasn't alienated. Leon and the Bovarys always come. On these occasions, Leon is always by Emma's side, talking to her, coaching her at card games, and looking at magazines with her. Something is obviously going on between Emma and Leon. Charles, unsuspecting as ever, has no idea. At this point, Emma herself doesn't fully realize it. Leon is careful to include Charles in his thoughts, as to avoid suspicions. He gives the officier de sante a splendid phrenological head model for his birthday . Leon is always willing to get things for Emma, from the latest books to a bushel of cacti. Emma and Leon each have little gardens outside their windows, from which they look at each other while tending the plants. To show her gratitude, Emma has a gorgeous velvet bedspread sent over to Leon...it seems like something of an extravagant present. Everyone else is sure that the pair are lovers. Leon idiotically reinforces this idea by talking about Emma 24/7. Even poor Binet gets so sick of him that he snaps at the boy one day. Ah, l'amour! Leon is tortured by his love for Emma, and tries to figure out how to possibly tell her. He can't bring himself to do it. Emma, on the other hand, doesn't get all worked up; she doesn't even try and see if she is or isn't in love with him. Flaubert ominously ends the chapter, though, with the suggestion that one day she'll crack and her love will be out of control.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/14.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_13_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 5

part 2, chapter 5

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-5", "summary": "The usual quartet is out on an odd and incredibly boring field trip. They're visiting a new spinning mill just outside town, along with two of Homais' unfortunately named children, Athalie and Napoleon. The main attraction is generally unattractive. Homais, as usual, chats up a storm. Everyone else is somewhat pensive. Emma reflects suddenly upon how irritating Charles is, even when he's doing nothing. Leon, on the other hand, looks particularly lovely to her. She begins to realize that something is happening between them. Napoleon ruins the moment by generally being bratty. He's painted his shoes white with a pile of lime that's lying around the mill. Charles and Justin attempt to get rid of it. That evening, Emma thinks about the day - and about Leon. She can't stop envisioning his face, his mannerisms, the sound of his voice. Finally, an epiphany: Leon loves her! Once she admits this to herself, Emma goes into full-out dramatic Love Overdrive. She laments fate, lolls around the house swooning left and right, and drifts about in a blissful haze. Generally, she does everything she's read about in books. The next day, Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant stops by for a visit. He is quite clever and sounds, from Flaubert's description, like a pretty shady character. Nobody knows what he was up to before he came to Yonville. The merchant knows exactly what buttons to press with Emma. He talks up her elegance and refinement, then offers her a selection of dainty items to choose from. She sticks by her guns and says she doesn't need anything, but the seed has been planted - Emma, naturally, wants pretty things. Lheureux also slyly tells Emma that if she needs money, she can always borrow it from him...which doesn't sound like such a great idea, if you ask us. Emma congratulates herself on being so frugal, but she still can't stop thinking of Monsieur Lheureux's pretty wares. Leon shows up, nervous and on edge. He wants to say something to her about his feelings, but chickens out yet again. Awkwardness ensues. In the wake of the realization that she and Leon are in love, Emma attempts briefly to reform herself - she goes all serious and tries to clean up her act. Emma's good girl facade fools everyone, even Leon. He begins to wonder how he'd even hoped to get close to her. In his mind, she becomes even more spectacular and flawless. Everyone admires Emma for her elegance and character. Now that she's playing the good housewife, she floats along easily in Yonville society. However, on the inside, she conceals passionate feelings. We're talking serious angst, here. When she's alone, she can only think of Leon - actually, these fantasies are more enjoyable than his presence, which leaves her unsatisfied. Emma wishes Leon would notice that she's in love with him, but she's either too lazy or too scared to make anything happen herself. She consoles herself by striking dramatic poses in the mirror and prides herself on her \"virtue.\" All of Emma's secret troubles build up to the boiling point, and she strikes out, complaining about the littlest things, like a door left open or a dish she doesn't enjoy. She is also incredibly irritated by Charles's dopey lack of awareness; he's still sure that he's making her perfectly happy. She feels underappreciated, and makes Charles the focus of all her aggression. Emma's depression returns from time to time. Felicite tries to comfort her, telling her that she once knew another girl who suffered from a similar problem - it was cured by marriage. Unfortunately for Emma, her sadness was brought on by her marriage to Charles.", "analysis": ""}

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling. They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder. Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind. Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use. Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer. While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored. "Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist. And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his. "Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like a peasant." The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville. In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down there, Leon standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss-- "Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but with whom? With me?" All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms. Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had not willed it! And why not? What prevented it?" When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening. "Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early." She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a new delight. The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others. What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who invites. After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract a "fashionable lady"; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered collars from the box. Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she said. Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little stars. "How much are they?" "A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no hurry; whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews." She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly-- "Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!" Emma smiled. "I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some, if need be." She made a gesture of surprise. "Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go far to find you some, rely on that." And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the "Cafe Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending. "What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off." And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's patients. "It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor, "that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble servant." And he closed the door gently. Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with her. "How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves. She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy. The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech. "Poor fellow!" she thought. "How have I displeased her?" he asked himself. At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these days, to go to Rouen on some office business. "Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?" "No," she replied. "Why?" "Because--" And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread. This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it. "Then you are giving it up?" he went on. "What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?" She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!" The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises, which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist. "Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma. "Certainly," replied the clerk. And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance generally made them laugh. "What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does not trouble about her appearance." Then she relapsed into silence. It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity. She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de Paris." When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his forehead: "What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!" And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices. Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist said-- "She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a sub-prefecture." The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the poor her charity. But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended in sorrow. Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this. What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making. Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home. What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides. On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires. She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed. Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul. "Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me? What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?" She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with flowing tears. "Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in during these crises. "It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would worry him." "Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say." "But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began."

Part 2, Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-5

The usual quartet is out on an odd and incredibly boring field trip. They're visiting a new spinning mill just outside town, along with two of Homais' unfortunately named children, Athalie and Napoleon. The main attraction is generally unattractive. Homais, as usual, chats up a storm. Everyone else is somewhat pensive. Emma reflects suddenly upon how irritating Charles is, even when he's doing nothing. Leon, on the other hand, looks particularly lovely to her. She begins to realize that something is happening between them. Napoleon ruins the moment by generally being bratty. He's painted his shoes white with a pile of lime that's lying around the mill. Charles and Justin attempt to get rid of it. That evening, Emma thinks about the day - and about Leon. She can't stop envisioning his face, his mannerisms, the sound of his voice. Finally, an epiphany: Leon loves her! Once she admits this to herself, Emma goes into full-out dramatic Love Overdrive. She laments fate, lolls around the house swooning left and right, and drifts about in a blissful haze. Generally, she does everything she's read about in books. The next day, Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant stops by for a visit. He is quite clever and sounds, from Flaubert's description, like a pretty shady character. Nobody knows what he was up to before he came to Yonville. The merchant knows exactly what buttons to press with Emma. He talks up her elegance and refinement, then offers her a selection of dainty items to choose from. She sticks by her guns and says she doesn't need anything, but the seed has been planted - Emma, naturally, wants pretty things. Lheureux also slyly tells Emma that if she needs money, she can always borrow it from him...which doesn't sound like such a great idea, if you ask us. Emma congratulates herself on being so frugal, but she still can't stop thinking of Monsieur Lheureux's pretty wares. Leon shows up, nervous and on edge. He wants to say something to her about his feelings, but chickens out yet again. Awkwardness ensues. In the wake of the realization that she and Leon are in love, Emma attempts briefly to reform herself - she goes all serious and tries to clean up her act. Emma's good girl facade fools everyone, even Leon. He begins to wonder how he'd even hoped to get close to her. In his mind, she becomes even more spectacular and flawless. Everyone admires Emma for her elegance and character. Now that she's playing the good housewife, she floats along easily in Yonville society. However, on the inside, she conceals passionate feelings. We're talking serious angst, here. When she's alone, she can only think of Leon - actually, these fantasies are more enjoyable than his presence, which leaves her unsatisfied. Emma wishes Leon would notice that she's in love with him, but she's either too lazy or too scared to make anything happen herself. She consoles herself by striking dramatic poses in the mirror and prides herself on her "virtue." All of Emma's secret troubles build up to the boiling point, and she strikes out, complaining about the littlest things, like a door left open or a dish she doesn't enjoy. She is also incredibly irritated by Charles's dopey lack of awareness; he's still sure that he's making her perfectly happy. She feels underappreciated, and makes Charles the focus of all her aggression. Emma's depression returns from time to time. Felicite tries to comfort her, telling her that she once knew another girl who suffered from a similar problem - it was cured by marriage. Unfortunately for Emma, her sadness was brought on by her marriage to Charles.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_14_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 6

part 2, chapter 6

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-6", "summary": "Poor Emma. It's springtime, and she finally attempts to do something to change her life. Remembering how much she loved the convent school, she goes to church to talk to Father Bournisien. She finds the priest much preoccupied by the schoolboys he's in charge of. He's something of an irritable and unpleasant man. Emma flat-out tells the priest that she's suffering. He assumes that her suffering is physical, and asks if Charles has prescribed anything for it. When Emma attempts to explain her situation, he gets distracted by the boys again, and breaks off the conversation to yell at them. This is hopeless. The priest obviously has nothing to offer Emma - they talk for a while longer, their conversation punctuated by the children. Father Bournisien eventually just dismisses Emma, telling her to go home and have a cup of tea. She leaves, disgruntled. When she gets home, the stillness of the house seems to mock her. Berthe tries to come over and hug her mother. Emma , angrily pushes the little girl away. Pushing a baby? Come on, Emma. This is a new low. Poor Berthe falls and hits her head on the dresser. She starts to bleed, and Emma freaks out. She feels terrible. Charles comes home, and Emma tells him that the baby fell over while she was playing. He takes care of the injury and tells Emma not to worry. Emma feels bad for a while, but her anxiety eventually wears off. She looks at Berthe dispassionately, thinking about how ugly the child is. Charles, in the meanwhile, has been visiting the Homais family. Mr. and Mrs. Homais. try to cheer him up in a truly warped way, by talking about the various dangers that children face in their everyday lives. The Homais kids live in a totally child-safe household without sharp knives and with bars on the windows. Leon is also around. Charles pulls him aside - the clerk worries that the doctor suspects his feelings for Emma. Luckily for Leon, Charles is still the same old well-intentioned buffoon he always was. He actually wants Leon to go into Rouen for him and make some inquiries about getting a portrait of Charles made. It turns out that Leon goes into the city every week - nobody knows why. Homais suspects that the young man has a secret lover there . Nobody can figure out what Leon's deal is. Madame Lefrancois notices that he's started leaving food on his plate at dinner. Binet suggests that Leon should take up carpentry to improve his disposition . Leon's boredom with Yonville and angst about his love for Emma are at a breaking point. However, he's also afraid of moving away. In the end, though, he decides to leave right away for Paris, to start his studies in the big city. Soon enough it's time to go. The Homais give Leon a tearful seeing-off, but before he leaves, he goes to bid Charles and Emma farewell. Charles isn't at home, so he and Emma have a tense parting moment. He kisses baby Berthe goodbye, then he and Emma are left alone. They shake hands awkwardly - the tension is palpable. Leon leaves Yonville, accompanied by the notary, Monsieur Guillaumin. After he's gone, Emma mopes around, wondering where he is. Monsieur Homais comes over to visit as usual, and they discuss Leon's fate in Paris. Homais and Charles are worried that Leon will be corrupted by the city, or else catch some horrible disease. Emma is distressed. Soon enough, though, Homais acts as though nothing has happened. He heads back home merrily.", "analysis": ""}

One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the Angelus ringing. It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond the river seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation. With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it. On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour. Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom. The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners. "Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it. "He is just coming," he answered. And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church. "These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!" Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with is foot, "They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognise you." He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers. The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily. "How are you?" he added. "Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill." "Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days weaken one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?" "He!" she said with a gesture of contempt. "What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe something for you?" "Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need." But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards. "I should like to know--" she went on. "You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma, "He's Boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I even say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?" She seemed not to hear him. And he went on-- "Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a thick laugh, "and I of the soul." She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you solace all sorrows." "Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me! Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?" And with a bound he ran into the church. The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there. "Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are much to be pitied." "Others, too," she replied. "Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example." "It is not they--" "Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread." "But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--" "Fire in the winter," said the priest. "Oh, what does that matter?" "What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and food--for, after all--" "My God! my God!" she sighed. "It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a little moist sugar." "Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream. "Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were asking me something? What was it? I really don't remember." "I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma. And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking. "Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after Ascension Day I keep them recta* an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband." *On the straight and narrow path. And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached the door. Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with a heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two hands half-open behind him. Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot, and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her. "Are you a Christian?" "Yes, I am a Christian." "What is a Christian?" "He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--" She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an arm-chair. The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations. The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her apron-strings. "Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand. The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron. "Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably. Her face frightened the child, who began to scream. "Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow. Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame Bovary sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might, and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It was the dinner-hour; he had come home. "Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down while she was playing, and has hurt herself." Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for some sticking plaster. Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little. Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed. Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely. "It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!" When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle. "I assure you it's nothing." he said, kissing her on the forehead. "Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill." He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to "keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homais, in spite of their spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais'; her husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went so far as to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?" Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation. "I should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him. "Can he suspect anything?" Leon asked himself. His heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises. At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes. It was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know "how much it would be." The inquiries would not put Monsieur Leon out, since he went to town almost every week. Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was after no love-making. He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he "wasn't paid by the police." All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely of life. "It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector. "What recreation?" "If I were you I'd have a lathe." "But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk. "Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction. Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him. This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented him? And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's head on the guitar above them. The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course, then, Leon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She consented. He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and when Leon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation. When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage. The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary. When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out of breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary arose hurriedly. "It is I again!" said Leon. "I was sure of it!" She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot. "The doctor is not here?" he went on. "He is out." She repeated, "He is out." Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts. "I should like to kiss Berthe," said Leon. Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite. He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of a string. Leon kissed her several times on the neck. "Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!" And he gave her back to her mother. "Take her away," she said. They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh. "It is going to rain," said Emma. "I have a cloak," he answered. "Ah!" She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what Emma was seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself. "Well, good-bye," he sighed. She raised her head with a quick movement. "Yes, good-bye--go!" They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated. "In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh. Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared. When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon set off running. From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were talking. They were waiting for him. "Embrace me," said the druggist with tears in his eyes. "Here is your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself." "Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary. Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs uttered these three sad words-- "A pleasant journey!" "Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head." They set out, and Homais went back. Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves. Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia. "Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought. Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner. "Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!" "So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; "Any news at home?" "Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours." "Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he get used to it?" Madame Bovary sighed. "Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly enough, I assure you." "I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary. "Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with actresses. Besides, students are thought a great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches." "But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--" "You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom one would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house, introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three-fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into some pernicious step. "That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the provinces." Emma shuddered. "Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the professors." And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted. "Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out for a minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling. What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By the way, do you know the news?" "What news?" "That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious expression, "that the agricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the round. This morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you; Justin has the lantern."

Part 2, Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-6

Poor Emma. It's springtime, and she finally attempts to do something to change her life. Remembering how much she loved the convent school, she goes to church to talk to Father Bournisien. She finds the priest much preoccupied by the schoolboys he's in charge of. He's something of an irritable and unpleasant man. Emma flat-out tells the priest that she's suffering. He assumes that her suffering is physical, and asks if Charles has prescribed anything for it. When Emma attempts to explain her situation, he gets distracted by the boys again, and breaks off the conversation to yell at them. This is hopeless. The priest obviously has nothing to offer Emma - they talk for a while longer, their conversation punctuated by the children. Father Bournisien eventually just dismisses Emma, telling her to go home and have a cup of tea. She leaves, disgruntled. When she gets home, the stillness of the house seems to mock her. Berthe tries to come over and hug her mother. Emma , angrily pushes the little girl away. Pushing a baby? Come on, Emma. This is a new low. Poor Berthe falls and hits her head on the dresser. She starts to bleed, and Emma freaks out. She feels terrible. Charles comes home, and Emma tells him that the baby fell over while she was playing. He takes care of the injury and tells Emma not to worry. Emma feels bad for a while, but her anxiety eventually wears off. She looks at Berthe dispassionately, thinking about how ugly the child is. Charles, in the meanwhile, has been visiting the Homais family. Mr. and Mrs. Homais. try to cheer him up in a truly warped way, by talking about the various dangers that children face in their everyday lives. The Homais kids live in a totally child-safe household without sharp knives and with bars on the windows. Leon is also around. Charles pulls him aside - the clerk worries that the doctor suspects his feelings for Emma. Luckily for Leon, Charles is still the same old well-intentioned buffoon he always was. He actually wants Leon to go into Rouen for him and make some inquiries about getting a portrait of Charles made. It turns out that Leon goes into the city every week - nobody knows why. Homais suspects that the young man has a secret lover there . Nobody can figure out what Leon's deal is. Madame Lefrancois notices that he's started leaving food on his plate at dinner. Binet suggests that Leon should take up carpentry to improve his disposition . Leon's boredom with Yonville and angst about his love for Emma are at a breaking point. However, he's also afraid of moving away. In the end, though, he decides to leave right away for Paris, to start his studies in the big city. Soon enough it's time to go. The Homais give Leon a tearful seeing-off, but before he leaves, he goes to bid Charles and Emma farewell. Charles isn't at home, so he and Emma have a tense parting moment. He kisses baby Berthe goodbye, then he and Emma are left alone. They shake hands awkwardly - the tension is palpable. Leon leaves Yonville, accompanied by the notary, Monsieur Guillaumin. After he's gone, Emma mopes around, wondering where he is. Monsieur Homais comes over to visit as usual, and they discuss Leon's fate in Paris. Homais and Charles are worried that Leon will be corrupted by the city, or else catch some horrible disease. Emma is distressed. Soon enough, though, Homais acts as though nothing has happened. He heads back home merrily.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_16_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 8

part 2, chapter 8

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-8", "summary": "It's a big day for little Yonville - the town fair. Everyone in the town is up early to set up for it. Binet, who doubles as the captain of the fire brigade, is all gussied up. The whole town is looking its best. The only person who's not too thrilled about all of this is Madame Lefrancois. Homais stops to chat with her, and she cheers up a little when she finds out that he's on the fair advisory committee . Homais keeps talking, but his audience is not listening. We follow Madame Lefrancois' gaze and see what has put her in such a foul mood - the town's other tavern, her rival, is full of singing people. These good days won't last too long, though; she tells Homais that she heard that Tellier, the barkeep, was in such great debt to Monsieur Lheureux that the tavern was going to be shut down the following week. From the perspective of these gossiping neighbors, we see Emma and Rodolphe a little ways off, talking to Monsieur Lheureux. Rodolphe is obviously planning on making his move already - unlike Leon, he's a pretty smooth operator. Homais goes over to say hello, but Rodolphe manages to avoid him. He regards Emma as they walk along - he's pleased with what he sees. Monsieur Lheureux attempts to follow them and maintain their conversation, but they get rid of him quickly. Rodolphe immediately launches his attack and starts flirting openly with Emma once they're alone. The townspeople are assembled for various agricultural competitions. Rodolphe is supposed to participate in the judging, but he has other things on his mind. He turns all his attention to Emma, who responds eagerly to him. He knows exactly what buttons to push - they talk about the frustrations of provincial life, the loneliness of existence...basically, all of Emma's favorite subjects. Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the fire brigade and the start of the awards ceremony. A government official, Monsieur Lieuvain, arrives to dole out the prizes; he gives a long, long, loooong speech about the government, the country. While this is going on, Emma and Rodolphe continue their intimate conversation. Rodolphe claims that the only true duty is to enjoy what's beautiful about life, and reject the conventions of society. Emma feebly tries to argue that society's moral standards are important, but Rodolphe shoots her down promptly. He's the clear winner here; Emma is toast. Monsieur Lieuvain, in the meanwhile, just keeps talking and talking. He's full of governmental rhetoric, but he's basically not talking about anything. Despite this fact, the whole town is enraptured by him. Rodolphe quickly wins Emma over. All of her feelings about Leon, the Viscount at the ball, and her loneliness come rushing back, and re-focus on Rodolphe. She's smitten. Finally, Monsieur Lieuvain wraps up his speech. Another speech begins, and Rodolphe continues to woo Emma all the while. Agricultural prizes are given for things as diverse as pigs, liquid manure , and drainage. Simultaneously , Rodolphe declares his love for Emma. The prizes, and the wooing, conclude with the awarding of a prize for long service, which is awarded to a confused little old woman. Flaubert describes this woman, Catherine Leroux, with rather excruciating detail; she's obviously been broken down by years of hard work. She says that she will give her prize money to the priest, which offends Homais. Following this ludicrous ceremony, a big feast begins. The townspeople, in a frenzy of communal gluttony, all stuff themselves. Rodolphe isn't interested in the food - he's thinking of Emma and of the pleasure he'll get from her in the future. Emma is off with Charles and the Homais family. The grand finale of the festival is a display of fireworks - unfortunately, they're too damp, and they barely go off. The evening ends rather anti-climactically, and everyone drifts back home. Homais proceeds to write an enthusiastic, over-the-top article about the fiesta, and publish it in a Rouen paper.", "analysis": ""}

At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement. As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again. There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses, pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner between their teeth. The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village. People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters. On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To Agriculture"; on the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To the Fine Arts." But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place! Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!" The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown. "Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked where he was going-- "It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese." "What cheese?" asked the landlady. "Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse. To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--" "Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously. "Yes, I am going," replied the druggist, astonished. "Am I not a member of the consulting commission?" Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying with a smile-- "That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you? Do you understand anything about it?" "Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say, a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?" The landlady did not answer. Homais went on-- "Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements." The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and the chemist went on-- "Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied. "Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't last long," she added. "It'll be over before a week." Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and whispered in his ear-- "What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week. It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills." "What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances. Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak." "There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur Boulanger's arm." "Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind. Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone-- "It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist." She pressed his elbow. "What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips. "Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe. Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter into the conversation. "What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!" And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your pardon!" and raised his hat. When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him Madame Bovary. He called out-- "Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently." "How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing. "Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as to-day I have the happiness of being with you--" Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had sprung up again. "Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?" "Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little. "H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe. The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks. The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope. Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said-- "What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?" Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had disappeared-- "Ma foi!*" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his." *Upon my word! And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one side. "Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country--" "It's waste of time," said Emma. "That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!" Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there. "And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression." "You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted." "Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!" "Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them." "My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips. But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration. Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to himself-- "Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!" "Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied." "Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe. "For, after all," she went on, "you are free--" she hesitated, "rich--" "Do not mock me," he replied. And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell towards the village. It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait. At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time. "Present!" shouted Binet. "Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march." And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville. Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of the "Lion d'Or", where a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache. All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows. All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of their heavy boots. The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the platform. "I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty effect." "To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art." Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it was empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other. There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying. At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began-- "Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?" "I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further." "Why?" said Emma. But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary pitch. He declaimed-- "This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations." "Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation--" "Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma. "No! It is dreadful, I assure you." "But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there? Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France breathes once more!" "Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they are right." "How so?" she asked. "What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies." Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on-- "We have not even this distraction, we poor women!" "A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it." "But is it ever found?" she asked. "Yes; one day it comes," he answered. "And this is what you have understood," said the councillor. "You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality, you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!" "It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen each other in dreams!" (And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from darkness into light." And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it fall on Emma's. She took hers away. "And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind, so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty--" "Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us." "Yet--yet--" objected Madame Bovary. "No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?" "But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code." "Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us light." Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief. He continued-- "And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother, lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention." He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness. The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors, and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths. Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly-- "Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other." His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He said--"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. "Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices." Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence. "Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each other." And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it. "For good farming generally!" cried the president. "Just now, for example, when I went to your house." "To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix." "Did I know I should accompany you?" "Seventy francs." "A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained." "Manures!" "And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!" "To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!" "For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm." "To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin." "And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you." "For a merino ram!" "But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow." "To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame." "Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I not?" "Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg, sixty francs!" Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a movement with her fingers. He exclaimed-- "Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!" A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering. "Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on: "Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service." Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort, their fingers intertwined. "Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value, twenty-five francs!" "Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor. She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering-- "Go up!" "Don't be afraid!" "Oh, how stupid she is!" "Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache. "Yes; here she is." "Then let her come up!" Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at her. Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of servitude. "Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president; and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!" "Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal! Twenty-five francs! For you!" Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!" "What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary. The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on their horns. The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet. The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future. He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and give some advice to Binet. The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns. They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head. At this moment the councillor's carriage came out from the inn. His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces. "Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of need. But excuse me!" *Specifically for that. And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to see his lathe again. "Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your men, or to go yourself--" "Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!" "Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his friends. "Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest." "Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete." Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very beautiful!" And having bowed to one another, they separated. Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article on the show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning. "Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?" Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on the entry of the councillor, he did not forget "the martial air of our militia;" nor "our most merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot. "About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays, Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

Part 2, Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-8

It's a big day for little Yonville - the town fair. Everyone in the town is up early to set up for it. Binet, who doubles as the captain of the fire brigade, is all gussied up. The whole town is looking its best. The only person who's not too thrilled about all of this is Madame Lefrancois. Homais stops to chat with her, and she cheers up a little when she finds out that he's on the fair advisory committee . Homais keeps talking, but his audience is not listening. We follow Madame Lefrancois' gaze and see what has put her in such a foul mood - the town's other tavern, her rival, is full of singing people. These good days won't last too long, though; she tells Homais that she heard that Tellier, the barkeep, was in such great debt to Monsieur Lheureux that the tavern was going to be shut down the following week. From the perspective of these gossiping neighbors, we see Emma and Rodolphe a little ways off, talking to Monsieur Lheureux. Rodolphe is obviously planning on making his move already - unlike Leon, he's a pretty smooth operator. Homais goes over to say hello, but Rodolphe manages to avoid him. He regards Emma as they walk along - he's pleased with what he sees. Monsieur Lheureux attempts to follow them and maintain their conversation, but they get rid of him quickly. Rodolphe immediately launches his attack and starts flirting openly with Emma once they're alone. The townspeople are assembled for various agricultural competitions. Rodolphe is supposed to participate in the judging, but he has other things on his mind. He turns all his attention to Emma, who responds eagerly to him. He knows exactly what buttons to push - they talk about the frustrations of provincial life, the loneliness of existence...basically, all of Emma's favorite subjects. Their conversation is interrupted by the entrance of the fire brigade and the start of the awards ceremony. A government official, Monsieur Lieuvain, arrives to dole out the prizes; he gives a long, long, loooong speech about the government, the country. While this is going on, Emma and Rodolphe continue their intimate conversation. Rodolphe claims that the only true duty is to enjoy what's beautiful about life, and reject the conventions of society. Emma feebly tries to argue that society's moral standards are important, but Rodolphe shoots her down promptly. He's the clear winner here; Emma is toast. Monsieur Lieuvain, in the meanwhile, just keeps talking and talking. He's full of governmental rhetoric, but he's basically not talking about anything. Despite this fact, the whole town is enraptured by him. Rodolphe quickly wins Emma over. All of her feelings about Leon, the Viscount at the ball, and her loneliness come rushing back, and re-focus on Rodolphe. She's smitten. Finally, Monsieur Lieuvain wraps up his speech. Another speech begins, and Rodolphe continues to woo Emma all the while. Agricultural prizes are given for things as diverse as pigs, liquid manure , and drainage. Simultaneously , Rodolphe declares his love for Emma. The prizes, and the wooing, conclude with the awarding of a prize for long service, which is awarded to a confused little old woman. Flaubert describes this woman, Catherine Leroux, with rather excruciating detail; she's obviously been broken down by years of hard work. She says that she will give her prize money to the priest, which offends Homais. Following this ludicrous ceremony, a big feast begins. The townspeople, in a frenzy of communal gluttony, all stuff themselves. Rodolphe isn't interested in the food - he's thinking of Emma and of the pleasure he'll get from her in the future. Emma is off with Charles and the Homais family. The grand finale of the festival is a display of fireworks - unfortunately, they're too damp, and they barely go off. The evening ends rather anti-climactically, and everyone drifts back home. Homais proceeds to write an enthusiastic, over-the-top article about the fiesta, and publish it in a Rouen paper.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/18.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_17_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 9

part 2, chapter 9

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-9", "summary": "Six weeks have passed since the fair. Rodolphe hasn't seen Emma again; at first, he just didn't want to show up to see her right away, and decided to go on a hunting trip. However, this trip lasted a lot longer than he'd planned and, now that he's back, he's worried that he missed his window of opportunity. He decides to give it a shot anyway and visit Emma, hoping that absence has indeed made the heart grow fonder. Again, he's right. He can immediately tell that Emma's still totally into him. He plays his absence up melodramatically, claiming that he had to tear himself away from her. Rodolphe is a total drama king , and he theatrically wins Emma over with highfalutin' words and extravagant declarations of passion. Emma is totally swept off her feet by Rodolphe's calculated attack. She allows herself to bask in the glow of his romantic words. However, as he continues to ham it up, they hear Charles arrive at the house. The two lovers immediately switch back into polite neighbor mode. Rodolphe, ever the resourceful one, asks Charles if it might do Emma some good to take up horseback riding to improve her health. Of course, he will accompany her himself. Charles thinks this is a splendid idea, and he and Rodolphe make all the arrangements. Emma, in a contrary mood, resists - however, Charles convinces her by saying that she can order a new riding outfit. The next day, Rodolphe shows up promptly at noon on horseback, with a second horse in tow for Emma. After a brief warning about safety from Monsieur Homais, they're off. The pair ride off into the countryside. They get a good view of the village from up higher - to Emma, Yonville has never looked so small and miserable. They venture deeper and deeper into the forest. They dismount and Rodolphe ties up the horses so they can walk into the woods unhampered. As they go, he keeps his eyes on the sliver of white stocking that show between her skirt and boots - to him, it seems like naked skin. Rodolphe and Emma reach a clearing and, once they're settled down, he starts to woo her once more...this time more seriously. Emma puts up some resistance - but not too much. She gives in to his advances and, as Flaubert says, \"abandons\" herself to him. We all know what that means. After the deed is done, Rodolphe and Emma head back to Yonville slowly. Everything seems different to her now. Rodolphe is legitimately charmed by her - after all, she's quite lovely. Emma feels as though everyone is looking at her as they ride through town. At dinner, Charles tells her that he's purchased a horse of her very own. Little does he know what's really going on... Emma escapes from dinner early and goes upstairs to think over her situation in privacy. She even thinks she looks different - and she feels as though her real life is finally starting. From the next day on, Emma and Rodolphe are committed to each other . They do the stereotypical things people having affairs do - exchange notes, have secret rendezvous, etc. Emma is blissfully happy. She even runs out in the early morning and races over to La Huchette to see her lover. After this risky business goes on for a while, Rodolphe protests that she's getting too careless. Is he really concerned, or can it be that he's getting sick of her? Hmm...", "analysis": ""}

Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he appeared. The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake." And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus-- "If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me again love me more. Let's go on with it!" And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the room, he saw Emma turn pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral. Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first conventional phrases. "I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill." "Seriously?" she cried. "Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it was because I did not want to come back." "Why?" "Can you not guess?" He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing. He went on-- "Emma!" "Sir," she said, drawing back a little. "Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of another!" He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable." It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully at this glowing language. "But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!" She turned towards him with a sob. "Oh, you are good!" she said. "No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one word--only one word!" And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the door of the room was not closed. "How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humour a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles came in. "Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him. The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself together a little. "Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health." Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if riding would not be good. "Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to follow it up." And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness. "I'll call around," said Bovary. "No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient for you." "Ah! very good! I thank you." And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur Boulanger's kind offer?" She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd. "Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong." "And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?" "You must order one," he answered. The riding-habit decided her. When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature. The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle. Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him. Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice. "An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are mettlesome." She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip. "A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all, prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear. As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop. Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her. It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind. By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them. Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy. The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked. Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out. "God protects us!" said Rodolphe. "Do you think so?" she said. "Forward! forward!" he continued. He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks. They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness. She stopped. "I am tired," she said. "Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!" Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves. "But where are we going?" He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy. Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, "Are not our destinies now one?" "Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!" She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said hurriedly-- "Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back." He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated: "Where are the horses? Where are the horses?" Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered: "Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!" "If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He said-- "What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!" And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage herself. He supported her thus as they walked along. But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves. "Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!" He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves. "I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!" "Why? Emma! Emma!" "Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder. The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him-- The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles. They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it. She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening. On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People looked at her from the windows. At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles. "Emma!" he said. "What?" "Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?" She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later-- "Are you going out to-night?" she asked. "Yes. Why?" "Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!" And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up in her room. At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches, Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled. But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover! a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights. Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble. The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to call her again by her name--to say that he loved her They were in the forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated side by side on a bed of dry leaves. From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with as too short. One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break, she was seized with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without looking behind her. Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her lover's house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn. Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at her approach had opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to the corridor. Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry. "You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to come? Ah! your dress is damp." "I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his neck. This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led to the waterside. But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room. The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his breast. Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water. It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma cried. She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out. "What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!" At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself.

Part 2, Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-9

Six weeks have passed since the fair. Rodolphe hasn't seen Emma again; at first, he just didn't want to show up to see her right away, and decided to go on a hunting trip. However, this trip lasted a lot longer than he'd planned and, now that he's back, he's worried that he missed his window of opportunity. He decides to give it a shot anyway and visit Emma, hoping that absence has indeed made the heart grow fonder. Again, he's right. He can immediately tell that Emma's still totally into him. He plays his absence up melodramatically, claiming that he had to tear himself away from her. Rodolphe is a total drama king , and he theatrically wins Emma over with highfalutin' words and extravagant declarations of passion. Emma is totally swept off her feet by Rodolphe's calculated attack. She allows herself to bask in the glow of his romantic words. However, as he continues to ham it up, they hear Charles arrive at the house. The two lovers immediately switch back into polite neighbor mode. Rodolphe, ever the resourceful one, asks Charles if it might do Emma some good to take up horseback riding to improve her health. Of course, he will accompany her himself. Charles thinks this is a splendid idea, and he and Rodolphe make all the arrangements. Emma, in a contrary mood, resists - however, Charles convinces her by saying that she can order a new riding outfit. The next day, Rodolphe shows up promptly at noon on horseback, with a second horse in tow for Emma. After a brief warning about safety from Monsieur Homais, they're off. The pair ride off into the countryside. They get a good view of the village from up higher - to Emma, Yonville has never looked so small and miserable. They venture deeper and deeper into the forest. They dismount and Rodolphe ties up the horses so they can walk into the woods unhampered. As they go, he keeps his eyes on the sliver of white stocking that show between her skirt and boots - to him, it seems like naked skin. Rodolphe and Emma reach a clearing and, once they're settled down, he starts to woo her once more...this time more seriously. Emma puts up some resistance - but not too much. She gives in to his advances and, as Flaubert says, "abandons" herself to him. We all know what that means. After the deed is done, Rodolphe and Emma head back to Yonville slowly. Everything seems different to her now. Rodolphe is legitimately charmed by her - after all, she's quite lovely. Emma feels as though everyone is looking at her as they ride through town. At dinner, Charles tells her that he's purchased a horse of her very own. Little does he know what's really going on... Emma escapes from dinner early and goes upstairs to think over her situation in privacy. She even thinks she looks different - and she feels as though her real life is finally starting. From the next day on, Emma and Rodolphe are committed to each other . They do the stereotypical things people having affairs do - exchange notes, have secret rendezvous, etc. Emma is blissfully happy. She even runs out in the early morning and races over to La Huchette to see her lover. After this risky business goes on for a while, Rodolphe protests that she's getting too careless. Is he really concerned, or can it be that he's getting sick of her? Hmm...

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/19.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_18_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 10

part 2, chapter 10

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-10", "summary": "This warning from Rodolphe begins to worry Emma - and one day, she encounters Binet illegally duck hunting. He has his own worries, since he's breaking the law, but Emma begins to fear that he will tell everyone he saw her gadding about in the wee hours of the morning. She stresses out about this all day. In the evening, Charles insists that they go get something to perk herself up from Monsieur Homais. While they're at the pharmacist's, they happen to run into Binet, who makes a knowing comment about the humid weather, referencing their encounter that morning in the mist. This alarms Emma. She's relieved when Binet leaves. The Binet incident makes Emma and Rodolphe rethink their meeting strategy. They decide that Rodolphe will look for a safe place to meet. In the meanwhile, they meet late at night in the back garden of the Bovarys' house, after Charles has gone to sleep . Leon is all but forgotten by this time. One night, Emma hears someone coming, and worries that it's Charles. She asks Rodolphe if he has pistols with which to defend himself against her husband. Rodolphe finds this concern absurd and in poor taste. In fact, he's beginning to find many of Emma's demands and goings-on rather vulgar. Emma's ridiculously romantic fantasies run wild with Rodolphe. She makes him exchange little tokens of love and locks of hair, and demands that they get a real wedding ring as a symbol of their devotion. All of this irritates Rodolphe, but he's still drawn to her - he can't believe how pretty and charming she can be. However, he stops putting forth as much effort soon enough, and their affair loses its initial quality of excitement and oomph. By the time spring rolls around, the affair has cooled to a markedly un-steamy temperature. The two of them are like a married couple. Monsieur Rouault sends his customary anniversary turkey to celebrate the healing of his broken leg. With it comes a letter - reading it reminds Emma of the days of her childhood in the country. Looking back, those days seem idyllic to her now. She wonders what has made her adult life so difficult. For a brief moment, looking at her innocent young daughter, Emma actually loves little Berthe. Rodolphe is definitely sick of Emma by now. They treat each other indifferently - Emma in an attempt to win him back and Rodolphe because he genuinely feels like their affair is over. Rejected and dejected, Emma repents for her adulterous actions - she even goes so far as to wish she could love Charles. In addition, Homais happens to give Charles the opportunity to become a more interesting man at this fortuitous time...", "analysis": ""}

Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead. One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks. "You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed; "When one sees a gun, one should always give warning." The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation. "It isn't warm; it's nipping." Emma answered nothing. He went on-- "And you're out so early?" "Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my child is." "Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun--" "Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her heel. "Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub. Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag. Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying-- "Please give me half an ounce of vitriol." "Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor," (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now, take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room." And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid. "Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid, isn't it?" Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things. Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying-- "Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp." "Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are people who like it." She was stifling. "And give me--" "Will he never go?" thought she. "Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs." The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared, Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil. "And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais. "Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in his waste-book. "Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice. "Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist. But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh. "How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais. "Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied. So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one. All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the gate, which Charles thought lost. To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too. "Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time." "Yes, I am coming," she answered. Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden. It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Leon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought of him now. The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied vibrations. When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley. "Someone is coming!" she said. He blew out the light. "Have you your pistols?" "Why?" "Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma. "From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger." She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her. Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best of taste. Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon-- "I am sure that above there together they approve of our love." But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed. He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less. She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him. Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame. It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines:-- "My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change, I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood either. Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma." Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while. "For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who, travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the cupboard for her when she comes. "Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best compliments, your loving father. "Theodore Rouault." She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road. But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer. An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter. In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she lent forward, beating the air with both her arms. "Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love you, my poor child! How I love you!" Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness. That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual. "That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:" And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous. "Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!" And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out. Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in time to provide her with an opportunity.

Part 2, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-10

This warning from Rodolphe begins to worry Emma - and one day, she encounters Binet illegally duck hunting. He has his own worries, since he's breaking the law, but Emma begins to fear that he will tell everyone he saw her gadding about in the wee hours of the morning. She stresses out about this all day. In the evening, Charles insists that they go get something to perk herself up from Monsieur Homais. While they're at the pharmacist's, they happen to run into Binet, who makes a knowing comment about the humid weather, referencing their encounter that morning in the mist. This alarms Emma. She's relieved when Binet leaves. The Binet incident makes Emma and Rodolphe rethink their meeting strategy. They decide that Rodolphe will look for a safe place to meet. In the meanwhile, they meet late at night in the back garden of the Bovarys' house, after Charles has gone to sleep . Leon is all but forgotten by this time. One night, Emma hears someone coming, and worries that it's Charles. She asks Rodolphe if he has pistols with which to defend himself against her husband. Rodolphe finds this concern absurd and in poor taste. In fact, he's beginning to find many of Emma's demands and goings-on rather vulgar. Emma's ridiculously romantic fantasies run wild with Rodolphe. She makes him exchange little tokens of love and locks of hair, and demands that they get a real wedding ring as a symbol of their devotion. All of this irritates Rodolphe, but he's still drawn to her - he can't believe how pretty and charming she can be. However, he stops putting forth as much effort soon enough, and their affair loses its initial quality of excitement and oomph. By the time spring rolls around, the affair has cooled to a markedly un-steamy temperature. The two of them are like a married couple. Monsieur Rouault sends his customary anniversary turkey to celebrate the healing of his broken leg. With it comes a letter - reading it reminds Emma of the days of her childhood in the country. Looking back, those days seem idyllic to her now. She wonders what has made her adult life so difficult. For a brief moment, looking at her innocent young daughter, Emma actually loves little Berthe. Rodolphe is definitely sick of Emma by now. They treat each other indifferently - Emma in an attempt to win him back and Rodolphe because he genuinely feels like their affair is over. Rejected and dejected, Emma repents for her adulterous actions - she even goes so far as to wish she could love Charles. In addition, Homais happens to give Charles the opportunity to become a more interesting man at this fortuitous time...

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/22.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_21_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 13

part 2, chapter 13

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-13", "summary": "His mind made up, Rodolphe returns home to La Huchette and sits down to write a farewell letter to Emma. He sifts through the various tokens of love affairs past that he's accumulated through many years of being a ladies' man. All of the women he's had in the past blur together in his mind - now Emma is just one of them. Rodolphe gets down to business. He writes a truly melodramatic, ostentatiously noble letter to Emma, telling her that he can't allow himself to ruin her life, blah blah blah. Suddenly the \"fate\" that supposedly brought them together before is now responsible for tearing them apart. To avoid having to face her again, he writes that he's going on a long trip. The letter finished, Rodolphe is quite proud of himself. He even puts some false tearstains on the paper. This guy is just too much. The next day, Rodolphe wakes up late, and has Girard, one of his servants, take the letter to Emma, concealed in the bottom of a basket of apricots. Upon receiving basket, Emma is overcome with emotion - she finds the letter, immediately understands what its purpose is, and rushes to her room to read it. Charles is there, so she flees madly, running to the attic. There, she forces herself to finish the horrible letter. Her feelings are all over the place - she feels desperately as though she might as well hurl herself out the window onto the pavement below. Fortunately, Charles calls her from downstairs. She returns to herself, shocked that she narrowly avoided death. It's dinnertime. Felicite comes to fetch her mistress; Emma is forced to go downstairs and go through with the farce of eating. It's torture. To make matters worse, Charles even brings up Rodolphe, mentioning that he'd heard from Girard that the gentleman is going on a trip. Then, just when Emma doesn't think that things can possibly be more horrible, Felicite brings in the basket of apricots. Charles eats one, and tries to force Emma to, as well. This is too much to handle - Emma almost swoons. Charles tries to calm her, but then she sees Rodolphe's carriage pass by the window. She passes out. Monsieur Homais runs over when he hears chaos break out in the Bovary house. He brings some vinegar back to revive the unconscious woman. Emma comes back from her faint briefly - Charles, freaking out, tries to get her to hold Berthe. Emma promptly passes out again. Charles puts Emma to bed. He and Homais try and determine what could have possibly brought on this attack. Homais puts it down to the scent of the apricots. Emma stays sick for a really long time. Charles stays by her side for forty-three days in a row - like we said, a really long time. He calls in backup; Dr. Canivet is called, as well as Charles's old teacher, Dr. Lariviere. Emma doesn't say anything or give any indication of what's causing all of this. By the middle of October, Emma feels well enough to sit up in bed - she starts to eat a little bit, and even gets out of bed for a few hours of the day. She recovers slowly, then relapses. Charles worries that she may have cancer. To make it even worse, there's no money.", "analysis": ""}

No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between them. To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other. Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened. Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all. In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to the cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall. "Come," said he, "let's begin." He wrote-- "Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life." "After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her interest; I am honest." "Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!" Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse. "If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went on-- "I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate." "That's a word that always tells," he said to himself. "Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees, certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences." "Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much the worse; it must be stopped!" "The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you. I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers." The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut the window, and when he had sat down again-- "I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt me up." "I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!" And there was a last "adieu" divided into two words! "A Dieu!" which he thought in very excellent taste. "Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "'Yours devotedly?' No! 'Your friend?' Yes, that's it." "Your friend." He re-read his letter. He considered it very good. "Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me harder than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he came upon the one "Amor nel cor." "That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!" After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed. The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late), Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits or game. "If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have gone on a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands. Get along and take care!" Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound galoshes, made his way to Yonville. Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with Felicite. "Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you--from the master." She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Felicite remained. She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her, Emma flew to her room terrified. Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped before the attic door, which was closed. Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no! here," she thought, "I shall be all right." Emma pushed open the door and went in. The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap. Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning. She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the letter with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself, "Come! come!" The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her. "Emma! Emma!" cried Charles. She stopped. "Wherever are you? Come!" The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite. "Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table." And she had to go down to sit at table. She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced these words in a strange manner: "We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems." "Who told you?" she said, shuddering. "Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why, Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe Francais. He has gone on a journey, or is to go." She gave a sob. "What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right, when one has a fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend. He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--" He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles, without noticing his wife's colour, had them brought to him, took one, and bit into it. "Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!" And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently. "Do just smell! What an odour!" he remarked, passing it under her nose several times. "I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the spasm passed; then-- "It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left alone. Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate. Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground. In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the twilight. The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran thither. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and Felicite, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively. "I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the druggist. Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle-- "I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for you!" "Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is your Charles, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!" The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice "No, no! no one!" She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow. Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions of life. "Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the paroxysm is past." "Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching her sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!" Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots. "Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread--" "Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice. "And not only," the druggist went on, "are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?" "Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him. "This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system. With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification. Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked upon?" "In what way? How?" said Bovary. "Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as I lately read in a newspaper." But Emma, awaking, cried out-- "The letter! the letter!" They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had set in. For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere, his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was Emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after all their troubles. About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers, and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the time. They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills. "You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And, pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this seat; you'll be comfortable." "Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice. She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the first signs of cancer. And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.

Part 2, Chapter 13

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-13

His mind made up, Rodolphe returns home to La Huchette and sits down to write a farewell letter to Emma. He sifts through the various tokens of love affairs past that he's accumulated through many years of being a ladies' man. All of the women he's had in the past blur together in his mind - now Emma is just one of them. Rodolphe gets down to business. He writes a truly melodramatic, ostentatiously noble letter to Emma, telling her that he can't allow himself to ruin her life, blah blah blah. Suddenly the "fate" that supposedly brought them together before is now responsible for tearing them apart. To avoid having to face her again, he writes that he's going on a long trip. The letter finished, Rodolphe is quite proud of himself. He even puts some false tearstains on the paper. This guy is just too much. The next day, Rodolphe wakes up late, and has Girard, one of his servants, take the letter to Emma, concealed in the bottom of a basket of apricots. Upon receiving basket, Emma is overcome with emotion - she finds the letter, immediately understands what its purpose is, and rushes to her room to read it. Charles is there, so she flees madly, running to the attic. There, she forces herself to finish the horrible letter. Her feelings are all over the place - she feels desperately as though she might as well hurl herself out the window onto the pavement below. Fortunately, Charles calls her from downstairs. She returns to herself, shocked that she narrowly avoided death. It's dinnertime. Felicite comes to fetch her mistress; Emma is forced to go downstairs and go through with the farce of eating. It's torture. To make matters worse, Charles even brings up Rodolphe, mentioning that he'd heard from Girard that the gentleman is going on a trip. Then, just when Emma doesn't think that things can possibly be more horrible, Felicite brings in the basket of apricots. Charles eats one, and tries to force Emma to, as well. This is too much to handle - Emma almost swoons. Charles tries to calm her, but then she sees Rodolphe's carriage pass by the window. She passes out. Monsieur Homais runs over when he hears chaos break out in the Bovary house. He brings some vinegar back to revive the unconscious woman. Emma comes back from her faint briefly - Charles, freaking out, tries to get her to hold Berthe. Emma promptly passes out again. Charles puts Emma to bed. He and Homais try and determine what could have possibly brought on this attack. Homais puts it down to the scent of the apricots. Emma stays sick for a really long time. Charles stays by her side for forty-three days in a row - like we said, a really long time. He calls in backup; Dr. Canivet is called, as well as Charles's old teacher, Dr. Lariviere. Emma doesn't say anything or give any indication of what's causing all of this. By the middle of October, Emma feels well enough to sit up in bed - she starts to eat a little bit, and even gets out of bed for a few hours of the day. She recovers slowly, then relapses. Charles worries that she may have cancer. To make it even worse, there's no money.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/24.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_23_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 15

part 2, chapter 15

{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-15", "summary": "The opera is Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a tragedy in which an unfortunate heroine is driven mad because she's forced to marry the wrong man. Perhaps not the best choice for Emma... Emma and Charles take a stroll before the opera, and when they finally settle down in their seats, Emma feels satisfied for the first time in a long while. Waiting for the show to start, she admires her fellow audience-members. The opera immediately transports Emma back to the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott she enjoyed as a girl . She feels the music reverberate in her soul - it sounds like the old Emma is back. The famous tenor recommended by Homais, Edgar Lagardy, makes a dramatic entrance onstage. Emma is struck by his appearance, and the whole audience falls for him. Emma sees her own story in the narrative that unfolds before her. She thinks that nobody has ever loved her the way that the hero and heroine love each other. Charles doesn't really get what's going on, and he keeps bugging Emma with questions. She's not amused. A wedding scene unfolds on stage, and Emma thinks of her own wedding - she wishes that she, like the opera's heroine, had resisted and not married Charles. As things get more and more dramatic onstage, they also get more and more dramatic in Emma's mind. She imagines what it would be like to be the lover of Lagardy, the tenor. She is swept up in the fantasy of running away with the singer across Europe when the curtain falls; it's intermission. Charles runs off clumsily to get Emma something to drink. On his way back, he manages to spill the drink on a very upset lady, but makes it back to Emma somehow. Charles has big news. While he was away, he saw someone we haven't encountered for a while: Leon Dupuis. Before Charles even finishes telling Emma about his encounter, Leon himself shows up in their box. He and Emma shake hands and start catching up; just then, Act III of the opera begins. Emma is no longer interested in the drama onstage, now that there's some drama sitting right next to her. All of her pre-Rodolphe feelings start to return. Leon obviously feels something, too - he suggests that they leave the theatre and go elsewhere to talk. Charles, who's actually kind of into the opera now, doesn't want to go, but Emma insists. At a cafe, they eat ice cream and make small talk. Leon attempts to show off by discussing music - he claims that Lagardy isn't all he's cracked up to be. Charles, who's still bummed about missing the end of the performance, suggests that perhaps Emma might like to stay in Rouen by herself for a couple of days and see the opera again. Leon, of course, encourages this. Emma demurely makes no promises - she smiles oddly, knowing that something's up with Leon. She and Charles will decide overnight what she should do. The old friends part ways, with the clerk promising to visit Yonville soon.", "analysis": ""}

The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters "Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they made casks. For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his stomach. Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess. The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing. They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cottons, spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves. Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene. It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared. He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toreador. From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!" The theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords. "But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?" "No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!" "Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?" Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words. "What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!" "Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I like to understand things." "Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently. Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak. His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out, "Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!" The curtain fell. The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her arm-chair with palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water. He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband, who was a millowner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath-- "Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a crowd--SUCH a crowd!" He added-- "Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!" "Leon?" "Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box. He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words. "Ah, good-day! What! you here?" "Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning. "So you are at Rouen?" "Yes." "And since when?" "Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They were silent. But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests, the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the druggist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, the tete-a-tete by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair. "Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly-- "Oh, dear me, no, not much." Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere. "Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is going to be tragic." But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated. "She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening. "Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion. Then with a sigh Leon said-- "The heat is--" "Unbearable! Yes!" "Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary. "Yes, I am stifling; let us go." Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a cafe. First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end. People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma Lucie!*" Then Leon, playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tambourini, Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared with them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere. *Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie. "Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me." "Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance." But Charles replied that they were going back next day. "Unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone, kitten?" And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted-- "You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong if you feel that this is doing you the least good." The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble. "I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you are--" The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat said-- "It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?" Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but that nothing prevented Emma-- "But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure--" "Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel." Then to Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are in our part of the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then." The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover, to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock in the cathedral struck half-past eleven. Part III

Part 2, Chapter 15

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-2-chapter-15

The opera is Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, a tragedy in which an unfortunate heroine is driven mad because she's forced to marry the wrong man. Perhaps not the best choice for Emma... Emma and Charles take a stroll before the opera, and when they finally settle down in their seats, Emma feels satisfied for the first time in a long while. Waiting for the show to start, she admires her fellow audience-members. The opera immediately transports Emma back to the romantic novels of Sir Walter Scott she enjoyed as a girl . She feels the music reverberate in her soul - it sounds like the old Emma is back. The famous tenor recommended by Homais, Edgar Lagardy, makes a dramatic entrance onstage. Emma is struck by his appearance, and the whole audience falls for him. Emma sees her own story in the narrative that unfolds before her. She thinks that nobody has ever loved her the way that the hero and heroine love each other. Charles doesn't really get what's going on, and he keeps bugging Emma with questions. She's not amused. A wedding scene unfolds on stage, and Emma thinks of her own wedding - she wishes that she, like the opera's heroine, had resisted and not married Charles. As things get more and more dramatic onstage, they also get more and more dramatic in Emma's mind. She imagines what it would be like to be the lover of Lagardy, the tenor. She is swept up in the fantasy of running away with the singer across Europe when the curtain falls; it's intermission. Charles runs off clumsily to get Emma something to drink. On his way back, he manages to spill the drink on a very upset lady, but makes it back to Emma somehow. Charles has big news. While he was away, he saw someone we haven't encountered for a while: Leon Dupuis. Before Charles even finishes telling Emma about his encounter, Leon himself shows up in their box. He and Emma shake hands and start catching up; just then, Act III of the opera begins. Emma is no longer interested in the drama onstage, now that there's some drama sitting right next to her. All of her pre-Rodolphe feelings start to return. Leon obviously feels something, too - he suggests that they leave the theatre and go elsewhere to talk. Charles, who's actually kind of into the opera now, doesn't want to go, but Emma insists. At a cafe, they eat ice cream and make small talk. Leon attempts to show off by discussing music - he claims that Lagardy isn't all he's cracked up to be. Charles, who's still bummed about missing the end of the performance, suggests that perhaps Emma might like to stay in Rouen by herself for a couple of days and see the opera again. Leon, of course, encourages this. Emma demurely makes no promises - she smiles oddly, knowing that something's up with Leon. She and Charles will decide overnight what she should do. The old friends part ways, with the clerk promising to visit Yonville soon.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_24_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 1

part 3, chapter 1

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-1", "summary": "A lot of things happened to Leon in Paris. First of all, he studied law. Secondly, he studied women. He's no longer the same shy boy he was before. All along, he held on to a vague hope that someday he and Emma might actually get together, even while he had new experiences with other women. This new Leon is resolved to \"possess\" Emma. He's determined and much craftier than he used to be. He follows Emma and Charles to their inn, then returns the next morning to scout out the situation. He discovers Emma in the hotel room...alone. Leon has become something of a sweet-talker over the past few years. Perhaps he's not at the same level as Rodolphe, but he's getting up there. He and Emma talk and talk about the various sorrows of their lives. Sigh. Same old, same old. Noticeably, Emma doesn't say anything about loving another man, and Leon doesn't say anything about kind of forgetting Emma. Both of them make dramatic claims, each saying that life is miserable without the other. Basically, this love scene is just one big string of complaints - there's nothing romantic about that. Finally, Leon gives in and says out loud that he was in love with her. All of a sudden the tension is broken, and old feelings come rushing out, created anew by their current proximity. Emma is startled by how much she remembers - she feels old and experienced. They talk until night falls. Leon suggests that they could start over again, but Emma, attempting to be noble, says that she's too old and he's too young . It's late - they've even missed the opera. Leon gets up to leave, but convinces Emma to meet him one more time. She makes their meeting point the famous Rouen cathedral. That night, Emma writes a farewell letter of her own, explaining to Leon why they can't be together. However, she can't send it, since she doesn't have his address. She decides to give it to him in person. Before the rendezvous, Leon primps nervously. He even buys Emma flowers, and goes to meet her at the cathedral. There, he's met not by Emma, but by a cathedral guide, who attempts to give Leon a tour. Emma's late, and Leon grows more anxious. Finally, she arrives. She starts to give him the letter, but is seized by the desire to pray. Leon is both charmed and irritated. As they're about to leave, the guide comes up and offers to give them a tour again. Emma, concerned for her virtue, desperately says yes. They follow the guide, not listening, through the cathedral and back to where they started. Before they get to the tower, Leon basically hurls a coin at the poor guide and pulls Emma away with him. The guide doesn't get the picture - he just keeps coming back. The couple flees the cathedral rather comically. Outside, Leon sends a little street kid to find a cab for them. Awkwardly, they wait alone - there's a kind of aggressive tension between them. The cab arrives. They get in as the cathedral guy yells at them from the church door, and Leon tells the driver to go wherever he wants. The following is one of the most famous scenes of the novel. We see the cab rushing through Rouen aimlessly; we can't see inside it, but we can, however, guess what's going on...Leon keeps yelling up to the driver to keep going; he and Emma stay concealed in the cab. The poor cab driver is tired and certainly weirded out. His horses are exhausted, and everyone's demoralized. The passengers, however, give no sign. Around mid-afternoon, a hand is seen throwing scraps of paper out the window; we assume it's Emma bidding farewell to the well-intentioned farewell letter. Finally, in the early evening, the cab stops. Emma calmly steps out of it and walks away.", "analysis": ""}

Monsieur Leon, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the grisettes, who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the best-mannered of the students; he wore his hair neither too long nor too short, didn't spend all his quarter's money on the first day of the month, and kept on good terms with his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained from them, as much from cowardice as from refinement. Often when he stayed in his room to read, or else when sitting of an evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his Code fall to the ground, and the memory of Emma came back to him. But gradually this feeling grew weaker, and other desires gathered over it, although it still persisted through them all. For Leon did not lose all hope; there was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree. Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to possess her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with his gay companions, and he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some illustrious physician, a person driving his carriage and wearing many orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like a child; but here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife of this small doctor he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he would shine. Self-possession depends on its environment. We don't speak on the first floor as on the fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset. On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Leon had followed them through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at the "Croix-Rouge," he turned on his heel, and spent the night meditating a plan. So the next day about five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of the inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and that resolution of cowards that stops at nothing. "The gentleman isn't in," answered a servant. This seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs. She was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she apologised for having neglected to tell him where they were staying. "Oh, I divined it!" said Leon. He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by, instinct. She began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly, Leon told her that he had spent his morning in looking for her in all the hotels in the town one after the other. "So you have made up your mind to stay?" he added. "Yes," she said, "and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom oneself to impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands upon one." "Oh, I can imagine!" "Ah! no; for you, you are a man!" But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off into certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiated much on the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains entombed. To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully bored during the whole course of his studies. The law irritated him, other vocations attracted him, and his mother never ceased worrying him in every one of her letters. As they talked they explained more and more fully the motives of their sadness, working themselves up in their progressive confidence. But they sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did not say that he had forgotten her. Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she ran across the fields in the morning to her lover's house. The noises of the town hardly reached them, and the room seemed small, as if on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Emma, in a dimity dressing-gown, leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the yellow wall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background behind her, and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in the middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her hair. "But pardon me!" she said. "It is wrong of me. I weary you with my eternal complaints." "No, never, never!" "If you knew," she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful eyes, in which a tear was trembling, "all that I had dreamed!" "And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me. In an engraver's shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there continually; I stayed there hours together." Then in a trembling voice, "She resembled you a little." Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips. "Often," he went on, "I wrote you letters that I tore up." She did not answer. He continued-- "I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours." She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption. Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin of them with her toes. At last she sighed. "But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice." He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not satisfy. "I should much like," she said, "to be a nurse at a hospital." "Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor." With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Emma interrupted him to speak of her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be suffering now! Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment. But at this invention of the rug she asked, "But why?" "Why?" He hesitated. "Because I loved you so!" And congratulating himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon watched her face out of the corner of his eyes. It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied-- "I always suspected it." Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence, whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of her house. "And our poor cactuses, where are they?" "The cold killed them this winter." "Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds, and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers." "Poor friend!" she said, holding out her hand to him. Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep breath-- "At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no doubt, do not remember it." "I do," she said; "go on." "You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you. Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's; you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy door that had closed after you." Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed-- "Yes, it is true--true--true!" They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels. They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past, the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills representing four scenes from the "Tour de Nesle," with a motto in Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs. She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then she sat down again. "Well!" said Leon. "Well!" she replied. He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she said to him-- "How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to me?" The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another. "I have sometimes thought of it," she went on. "What a dream!" murmured Leon. And fingering gently the blue binding of her long white sash, he added, "And who prevents us from beginning now?" "No, my friend," she replied; "I am too old; you are too young. Forget me! Others will love you; you will love them." "Not as you!" he cried. "What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it." She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship. Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself know, quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his trembling hands attempted. "Ah! forgive me!" he cried, drawing back. Emma was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous to her than the boldness of Rodolphe when he advanced to her open-armed. No man had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An exquisite candour emanated from his being. He lowered his long fine eyelashes, that curled upwards. His cheek, with the soft skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her person, and Emma felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it. Then, leaning towards the clock as if to see the time-- "Ah! how late it is!" she said; "how we do chatter!" He understood the hint and took up his hat. "It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Bovary has left me here especially for that. Monsieur Lormeaux, of the Rue Grand-Pont, was to take me and his wife." And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day. "Really!" said Leon. "Yes." "But I must see you again," he went on. "I wanted to tell you--" "What?" "Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go; it is impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not understood me; you have not guessed--" "Yet you speak plainly," said Emma. "Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity's sake, let me see you once--only once!" "Well--" She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, "Oh, not here!" "Where you will." "Will you--" She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, "To-morrow at eleven o'clock in the cathedral." "I shall be there," he cried, seizing her hands, which she disengaged. And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Emma with her head bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her neck. "You are mad! Ah! you are mad!" she said, with sounding little laughs, while the kisses multiplied. Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the consent of her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity. Leon stepped back to go out. He stopped on the threshold; then he whispered with a trembling voice, "Tomorrow!" She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the next room. In the evening Emma wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in which she cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not, for the sake of their happiness, meet again. But when the letter was finished, as she did not know Leon's address, she was puzzled. "I'll give it to him myself," she said; "he will come." The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony, Leon himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on white trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent he had into his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he uncurled it again, in order to give it a more natural elegance. "It is still too early," he thought, looking at the hairdresser's cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old fashion journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, thought it was time, and went slowly towards the porch of Notre Dame. It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver plate sparkled in the jeweller's windows, and the light falling obliquely on the cathedral made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock of birds fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil bell-turrets; the square, resounding with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered its pavement, roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly spaced out between moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds; the fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas, amidst melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were twisting paper round bunches of violets. The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought flowers for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled with pride, as if this homage that he meant for another had recoiled upon himself. But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the left doorway, under the "Dancing Marianne," with feather cap, and rapier dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and as shining as a saint on a holy pyx. He came towards Leon, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children-- "The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The gentleman would like to see the curiosities of the church?" "No!" said the other. And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to look at the Place. Emma was not coming yet. He went up again to the choir. The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of the arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the reflections of the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were continued farther on upon the flag-stones, like a many-coloured carpet. The broad daylight from without streamed into the church in three enormous rays from the three opened portals. From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed, making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal lustres hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo reverberating under the lofty vault. Leon with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never seemed so good to him. She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue. The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours. But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards Emma. The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege. But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined cloak--it was she! Leon rose and ran to meet her. Emma was pale. She walked fast. "Read!" she said, holding out a paper to him. "Oh, no!" And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray. The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end. Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart. She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward, hurriedly saying-- "Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to see the curiosities of the church?" "Oh, no!" cried the clerk. "Why not?" said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything. Then, in order to proceed "by rule," the beadle conducted them right to the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscription or carving-- "This," he said majestically, "is the circumference of the beautiful bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy--" "Let us go on," said Leon. The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his espaliers, went on-- "This simple stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465." Leon bit his lips, fuming. "And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval and of Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the 23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below, this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person. It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of annihilation?" Madame Bovary put up her eyeglasses. Leon, motionless, looked at her, no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture, so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of gossip and indifference. The everlasting guide went on-- "Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis thousand gold crowns for the poor." And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that certainly might once have been an ill-made statue. "Truly," he said with a groan, "it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the gargoyle windows." But Leon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma's arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to see. So calling him back, he cried-- "Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!" "No, thank you!" said Leon. "You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--" Leon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier. "But where are we going?" she said. Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Leon turned back. "Sir!" "What is it?" And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works "which treated of the cathedral." "Idiot!" growled Leon, rushing out of the church. A lad was playing about the close. "Go and get me a cab!" The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed. "Ah! Leon! Really--I don't know--if I ought," she whispered. Then with a more serious air, "Do you know, it is very improper--" "How so?" replied the clerk. "It is done at Paris." And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her. Still the cab did not come. Leon was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared. "At all events, go out by the north porch," cried the beadle, who was left alone on the threshold, "so as to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames." "Where to, sir?" asked the coachman. "Where you like," said Leon, forcing Emma into the cab. And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont, crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille. "Go on," cried a voice that came from within. The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop. "No, straight on!" cried the same voice. The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters. It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the isles. But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of the Jardin des Plantes. "Get on, will you?" cried the voice more furiously. And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the Quai'des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills. It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the "Vieille Tour," the "Trois Pipes," and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses. He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression. And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel. Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom. At about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down, and without turning her head.

Part 3, Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-1

A lot of things happened to Leon in Paris. First of all, he studied law. Secondly, he studied women. He's no longer the same shy boy he was before. All along, he held on to a vague hope that someday he and Emma might actually get together, even while he had new experiences with other women. This new Leon is resolved to "possess" Emma. He's determined and much craftier than he used to be. He follows Emma and Charles to their inn, then returns the next morning to scout out the situation. He discovers Emma in the hotel room...alone. Leon has become something of a sweet-talker over the past few years. Perhaps he's not at the same level as Rodolphe, but he's getting up there. He and Emma talk and talk about the various sorrows of their lives. Sigh. Same old, same old. Noticeably, Emma doesn't say anything about loving another man, and Leon doesn't say anything about kind of forgetting Emma. Both of them make dramatic claims, each saying that life is miserable without the other. Basically, this love scene is just one big string of complaints - there's nothing romantic about that. Finally, Leon gives in and says out loud that he was in love with her. All of a sudden the tension is broken, and old feelings come rushing out, created anew by their current proximity. Emma is startled by how much she remembers - she feels old and experienced. They talk until night falls. Leon suggests that they could start over again, but Emma, attempting to be noble, says that she's too old and he's too young . It's late - they've even missed the opera. Leon gets up to leave, but convinces Emma to meet him one more time. She makes their meeting point the famous Rouen cathedral. That night, Emma writes a farewell letter of her own, explaining to Leon why they can't be together. However, she can't send it, since she doesn't have his address. She decides to give it to him in person. Before the rendezvous, Leon primps nervously. He even buys Emma flowers, and goes to meet her at the cathedral. There, he's met not by Emma, but by a cathedral guide, who attempts to give Leon a tour. Emma's late, and Leon grows more anxious. Finally, she arrives. She starts to give him the letter, but is seized by the desire to pray. Leon is both charmed and irritated. As they're about to leave, the guide comes up and offers to give them a tour again. Emma, concerned for her virtue, desperately says yes. They follow the guide, not listening, through the cathedral and back to where they started. Before they get to the tower, Leon basically hurls a coin at the poor guide and pulls Emma away with him. The guide doesn't get the picture - he just keeps coming back. The couple flees the cathedral rather comically. Outside, Leon sends a little street kid to find a cab for them. Awkwardly, they wait alone - there's a kind of aggressive tension between them. The cab arrives. They get in as the cathedral guy yells at them from the church door, and Leon tells the driver to go wherever he wants. The following is one of the most famous scenes of the novel. We see the cab rushing through Rouen aimlessly; we can't see inside it, but we can, however, guess what's going on...Leon keeps yelling up to the driver to keep going; he and Emma stay concealed in the cab. The poor cab driver is tired and certainly weirded out. His horses are exhausted, and everyone's demoralized. The passengers, however, give no sign. Around mid-afternoon, a hand is seen throwing scraps of paper out the window; we assume it's Emma bidding farewell to the well-intentioned farewell letter. Finally, in the early evening, the cab stops. Emma calmly steps out of it and walks away.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/26.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_25_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 2

part 3, chapter 2

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-2", "summary": "Emma returns to the inn, and finds that she's missed the Hirondelle, which was there to pick her up earlier. She hires a cab and catches up to the stagecoach. She returns home. Once there, Felicite sends her next door to the Homais house, saying that it's urgent. It's jam making day in Yonville, a particularly hectic time. At chez Homais, Emma discovers the pharmacist's family in an uproar. It turns out that Justin almost made a fatal mistake - he almost used a pan for jam that was dangerously close to the jar of arsenic. Homais is unbelievably angry; his wife and the children freak out, as though they'd already been poisoned. Emma observes all this, as Homais goes through the whole chain of events again. Poor Justin. Things just go from bad to worse for him. As Homais shakes him back and forth angrily, a book falls out of his pocket. Not just any book...a book called Conjugal Love. With pictures. The children are struck dumb, and Homais snatches it away furiously. At this point, Emma successfully breaks into the conversation. She asks what's wrong. Homais bluntly tells her that her father-in-law, the elder Monsieur Bovary, is dead. Emma goes to find Charles as Homais cools down a bit, still grumbling. Charles has been waiting for his wife, and tearfully greets her with a hug and kiss. Emma, remembering Leon, is grossed out by her husband. She responds with an extraordinary lack of sympathy. Charles, poor man, just thinks that Emma is struck by grief, when in reality, she just doesn't know what to say, and doesn't feel anything. Hippolyte limps in, bringing Emma's bags. Emma is embarrassed as ever by his presence, a symbol of Charles's failures. The next day, Charles's mother arrives. Mother and son are debilitated by grief; Emma is unmoved. Instead, she's daydreaming about Leon. Monsieur Lheureux, who seems to have an incredible radar system for knowing the absolute worst time for stopping by, stops by. The merchant and Emma step aside to discuss business. Lheureux slyly proposes another lending arrangement - knowing that Emma is a fool with money, he wants Charles to give her power of attorney , so he can deal with her. Soon enough, he returns with yards of black fabric for a mourning dress. Lheureux keeps pushing Emma about the whole power of attorney business, which she doesn't really understand. However, she figures things out soon enough. As soon as Charles's mother leaves, Emma goes into financier mode. She has a document drawn up by the notary, which gives her control over the family's money and loans. Charles is amazed by what seems like Emma's common sense. She slyly suggests that they should have someone else look over the notarized document before they sign it - and Charles himself sends her to Rouen to meet with Leon. She's gone for three days.", "analysis": ""}

On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at last started. Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at once the chastisement and atonement of adultery. She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard, hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment inquiring about the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the "Hirondelle" as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix. Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Felicite, who was on the lookout in front of the farrier's shop. Hivert pulled in his horses and, the servant, climbing up to the window, said mysteriously-- "Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais. It's for something important." The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the time for jam-making, and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in front of the chemist's shop one might admire a far larger heap, and that surpassed the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have over ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy. She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the "Fanal de Rouen" lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She pushed open the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with forks in their hands. Justin was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was screaming-- "Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum." "What is it? What is the matter?" "What is it?" replied the druggist. "We are making preserves; they are simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from indolence, from laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key of the Capharnaum." It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses, infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his celebrity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it so, that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the exercise of his predilections, so that Justin's thoughtlessness seemed to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants, he repeated-- "Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and caustic alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions, and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as if a magistrate--" "Now be calm," said Madame Homais. And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried "Papa! papa!" "No, let me alone," went on the druggist "let me alone, hang it! My word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That's it! go it! respect nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste, pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!" "I thought you had--" said Emma. "Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn't you see anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer, articulate something." "I--don't--know," stammered the young fellow. "Ah! you don't know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I have even written 'Dangerous!' And do you know what is in it? Arsenic! And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!" "Next to it!" cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. "Arsenic! You might have poisoned us all." And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in their entrails. "Or poison a patient!" continued the druggist. "Do you want to see me in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what care I take in managing things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles' sword over our heads." Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the druggist went on in breathless phrases-- "That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That is how you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on you! For without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of figuring one day with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull hard at the oar if you're to do that, and get, as, people say, callosities upon your hands. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.*" * The worker lives by working, do what he will. He was so exasperated he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he was in one of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses. And he went on-- "I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up! I should certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you'll never be fit for anything but to herd animals with horns! You have no aptitude for science! You hardly know how to stick on a label! And there you are, dwelling with me snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!" But Emma, turning to Madame Homais, "I was told to come here--" "Oh, dear me!" interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, "how am I to tell you? It is a misfortune!" She could not finish, the druggist was thundering--"Empty it! Clean it! Take it back! Be quick!" And seizing Justin by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of his pocket. The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker, and, having picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth. "CONJUGAL--LOVE!" he said, slowly separating the two words. "Ah! very good! very good! very pretty! And illustrations! Oh, this is too much!" Madame Homais came forward. "No, do not touch it!" The children wanted to look at the pictures. "Leave the room," he said imperiously; and they went out. First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand, rolling his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came straight to his pupil, and, planting himself in front of him with crossed arms-- "Have you every vice, then, little wretch? Take care! you are on a downward path. Did not you reflect that this infamous book might fall in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their minds, tarnish the purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoleon. He is already formed like a man. Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they have not read it? Can you certify to me--" "But really, sir," said Emma, "you wished to tell me--" "Ah, yes! madame. Your father-in-law is dead." In fact, Monsieur Bovary senior had expired the evening before suddenly from an attack of apoplexy as he got up from table, and by way of greater precaution, on account of Emma's sensibility, Charles had begged Homais to break the horrible news to her gradually. Homais had thought over his speech; he had rounded, polished it, made it rhythmical; it was a masterpiece of prudence and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy; but anger had got the better of rhetoric. Emma, giving up all chance of hearing any details, left the pharmacy; for Monsieur Homais had taken up the thread of his vituperations. However, he was growing calmer, and was now grumbling in a paternal tone whilst he fanned himself with his skull-cap. "It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was a doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is not ill a man should know, and I would even venture to say that a man must know. But later--later! At any rate, not till you are man yourself and your temperament is formed." When Emma knocked at the door. Charles, who was waiting for her, came forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his voice-- "Ah! my dear!" And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her face shuddering. But she made answer, "Yes, I know, I know!" He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event without any sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband had not received the consolations of religion, as he had died at Daudeville, in the street, at the door of a cafe after a patriotic dinner with some ex-officers. Emma gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance's sake, she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to try, she resolutely began eating, while Charles opposite her sat motionless in a dejected attitude. Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of distress. Once he sighed, "I should have liked to see him again!" She was silent. At last, understanding that she must say something, "How old was your father?" she asked. "Fifty-eight." "Ah!" And that was all. A quarter of an hour after he added, "My poor mother! what will become of her now?" She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And, shaking off his own-- "Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?" he asked. "Yes." When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher--in a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium seized her. They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards. It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma's luggage. In order to put it down he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump. "He doesn't even remember any more about it," she thought, looking at the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with perspiration. Bovary was searching at the bottom of his purse for a centime, and without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation for him in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a personified reproach to his incurable incapacity. "Hallo! you've a pretty bouquet," he said, noticing Leon's violets on the chimney. "Yes," she replied indifferently; "it's a bouquet I bought just now from a beggar." Charles picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with tears, against them, smelt them delicately. She took them quickly from his hand and put them in a glass of water. The next day Madame Bovary senior arrived. She and her son wept much. Emma, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The following day they had a talk over the mourning. They went and sat down with their workboxes by the waterside under the arbour. Charles was thinking of his father, and was surprised to feel so much affection for this man, whom till then he had thought he cared little about. Madame Bovary senior was thinking of her husband. The worst days of the past seemed enviable to her. All was forgotten beneath the instinctive regret of such a long habit, and from time to time whilst she sewed, a big tear rolled along her nose and hung suspended there a moment. Emma was thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since they had been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to recall the slightest details of that past day. But the presence of her husband and mother-in-law worried her. She would have liked to hear nothing, to see nothing, so as not to disturb the meditation on her love, that, do what she would, became lost in external sensations. She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were scattered around her. Madame Bovary senior was plying her scissor without looking up, and Charles, in his list slippers and his old brown surtout that he used as a dressing-gown, sat with both hands in his pockets, and did not speak either; near them Berthe, in a little white pinafore, was raking sand in the walks with her spade. Suddenly she saw Monsieur Lheureux, the linendraper, come in through the gate. He came to offer his services "under the sad circumstances." Emma answered that she thought she could do without. The shopkeeper was not to be beaten. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but I should like to have a private talk with you." Then in a low voice, "It's about that affair--you know." Charles crimsoned to his ears. "Oh, yes! certainly." And in his confusion, turning to his wife, "Couldn't you, my darling?" She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Charles said to his mother, "It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household trifle." He did not want her to know the story of the bill, fearing her reproaches. As soon as they were alone, Monsieur Lheureux in sufficiently clear terms began to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then to talk of indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest, and of his own health, which was always so-so, always having ups and downs. In fact, he had to work devilish hard, although he didn't make enough, in spite of all people said, to find butter for his bread. Emma let him talk on. She had bored herself so prodigiously the last two days. "And so you're quite well again?" he went on. "Ma foi! I saw your husband in a sad state. He's a good fellow, though we did have a little misunderstanding." She asked what misunderstanding, for Charles had said nothing of the dispute about the goods supplied to her. "Why, you know well enough," cried Lheureux. "It was about your little fancies--the travelling trunks." He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind his back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an unbearable manner. Did he suspect anything? She was lost in all kinds of apprehensions. At last, however, he went on-- "We made it up, all the same, and I've come again to propose another arrangement." This was to renew the bill Bovary had signed. The doctor, of course, would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself, especially just now, when he would have a lot of worry. "And he would do better to give it over to someone else--to you, for example. With a power of attorney it could be easily managed, and then we (you and I) would have our little business transactions together." She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade, Lheureux declared that madame must require something. He would send her a black barege, twelve yards, just enough to make a gown. "The one you've on is good enough for the house, but you want another for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in. I've the eye of an American!" He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to measure it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to make himself agreeable, useful, "enfeoffing himself," as Homais would have said, and always dropping some hint to Emma about the power of attorney. He never mentioned the bill; she did not think of it. Charles, at the beginning of her convalescence, had certainly said something about it to her, but so many emotions had passed through her head that she no longer remembered it. Besides, she took care not to talk of any money questions. Madame Bovary seemed surprised at this, and attributed the change in her ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during her illness. But as soon as she was gone, Emma greatly astounded Bovary by her practical good sense. It would be necessary to make inquiries, to look into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a sale by auction or a liquidation. She quoted technical terms casually, pronounced the grand words of order, the future, foresight, and constantly exaggerated the difficulties of settling his father's affairs so much, that at last one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux's lessons. Charles naively asked her where this paper came from. "Monsieur Guillaumin"; and with the utmost coolness she added, "I don't trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we ought to consult--we only know--no one." "Unless Leon--" replied Charles, who was reflecting. But it was difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make the journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a contest of mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected waywardness-- "No, I will go!" "How good you are!" he said, kissing her forehead. The next morning she set out in the "Hirondelle" to go to Rouen to consult Monsieur Leon, and she stayed there three days.

Part 3, Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-2

Emma returns to the inn, and finds that she's missed the Hirondelle, which was there to pick her up earlier. She hires a cab and catches up to the stagecoach. She returns home. Once there, Felicite sends her next door to the Homais house, saying that it's urgent. It's jam making day in Yonville, a particularly hectic time. At chez Homais, Emma discovers the pharmacist's family in an uproar. It turns out that Justin almost made a fatal mistake - he almost used a pan for jam that was dangerously close to the jar of arsenic. Homais is unbelievably angry; his wife and the children freak out, as though they'd already been poisoned. Emma observes all this, as Homais goes through the whole chain of events again. Poor Justin. Things just go from bad to worse for him. As Homais shakes him back and forth angrily, a book falls out of his pocket. Not just any book...a book called Conjugal Love. With pictures. The children are struck dumb, and Homais snatches it away furiously. At this point, Emma successfully breaks into the conversation. She asks what's wrong. Homais bluntly tells her that her father-in-law, the elder Monsieur Bovary, is dead. Emma goes to find Charles as Homais cools down a bit, still grumbling. Charles has been waiting for his wife, and tearfully greets her with a hug and kiss. Emma, remembering Leon, is grossed out by her husband. She responds with an extraordinary lack of sympathy. Charles, poor man, just thinks that Emma is struck by grief, when in reality, she just doesn't know what to say, and doesn't feel anything. Hippolyte limps in, bringing Emma's bags. Emma is embarrassed as ever by his presence, a symbol of Charles's failures. The next day, Charles's mother arrives. Mother and son are debilitated by grief; Emma is unmoved. Instead, she's daydreaming about Leon. Monsieur Lheureux, who seems to have an incredible radar system for knowing the absolute worst time for stopping by, stops by. The merchant and Emma step aside to discuss business. Lheureux slyly proposes another lending arrangement - knowing that Emma is a fool with money, he wants Charles to give her power of attorney , so he can deal with her. Soon enough, he returns with yards of black fabric for a mourning dress. Lheureux keeps pushing Emma about the whole power of attorney business, which she doesn't really understand. However, she figures things out soon enough. As soon as Charles's mother leaves, Emma goes into financier mode. She has a document drawn up by the notary, which gives her control over the family's money and loans. Charles is amazed by what seems like Emma's common sense. She slyly suggests that they should have someone else look over the notarized document before they sign it - and Charles himself sends her to Rouen to meet with Leon. She's gone for three days.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/27.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_26_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 3

part 3, chapter 3

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-3", "summary": "Those three days are like heaven. Emma and Leon stay in a waterfront hotel, doing nothing but enjoying each other's company. Emma is happier than she's been since Rodolphe. One day, on a boat ride, Emma is actually reminded of Rodolphe - the boatman mentions giving a ride to a gentleman of his appearance. She shudders, but gets over it quickly. The holiday has to end, though. Emma tells Leon to send letters to her to the home of Madame Rollet, the former wetnurse. As Leon makes his way home, having deposited Emma at the stagecoach, he wonders idly why she is so determined to get the power of attorney.", "analysis": ""}

They were three full, exquisite days--a true honeymoon. They were at the Hotel-de-Boulogne, on the harbour; and they lived there, with drawn blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor, and iced syrups were brought them early in the morning. Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the dockyard the caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of vessels. The smoke of the tar rose up between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the water, undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques of Florentine bronze. They rowed down in the midst of moored boats, whose long oblique cables grazed lightly against the bottom of the boat. The din of the town gradually grew distant; the rolling of carriages, the tumult of voices, the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. She took off her bonnet, and they landed on their island. They sat down in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern, at whose door hung black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay down upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and they would fain, like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves; but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the gratification of their desires. At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands. They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in silence. The square oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the stillness, seemed to mark time, like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder that trailed behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water. Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing-- "One night, do you remember, we were sailing," etc. Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds carried off the trills that Leon heard pass like the flapping of wings about him. She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender, taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight. Leon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said-- "Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne, cornets--everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying, 'Now tell us something, Adolphe--Dolpe,' I think." She shivered. "You are in pain?" asked Leon, coming closer to her. "Oh, it's nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air." "And who doesn't want for women, either," softly added the sailor, thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment. Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again. Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his letters to Mere Rollet, and she gave him such precise instructions about a double envelope that he admired greatly her amorous astuteness. "So you can assure me it is all right?" she said with her last kiss. "Yes, certainly." "But why," he thought afterwards as he came back through the streets alone, "is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?"

Part 3, Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-3

Those three days are like heaven. Emma and Leon stay in a waterfront hotel, doing nothing but enjoying each other's company. Emma is happier than she's been since Rodolphe. One day, on a boat ride, Emma is actually reminded of Rodolphe - the boatman mentions giving a ride to a gentleman of his appearance. She shudders, but gets over it quickly. The holiday has to end, though. Emma tells Leon to send letters to her to the home of Madame Rollet, the former wetnurse. As Leon makes his way home, having deposited Emma at the stagecoach, he wonders idly why she is so determined to get the power of attorney.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/28.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_27_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 4

part 3, chapter 4

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-4", "summary": "Leon is just as into the affair as Emma is. He reads her letters voraciously, and gets sick of his job; instead, he thinks about his mistress. One weekend, he misses Emma so much he actually visits Yonville. The townspeople are glad to see him. He stays in the Lion d'Or, Madame Lefrancois's inn, waiting for an opportune moment to see his love. On the second night of his visit, he's finally able to see her - in the same place she used to meet Rodolphe. They lament the difficulty of life...it's so hard to be apart! Emma gets more and more cunning; she meets with Madame Rollet to get her letters, orders tons of new items from Monsieur Lheureux, and even hatches a sly plan to get Charles to send her to Rouen once a week. Under the false pretenses of picking up her music again, she complains about her lack of skill with the piano. She wheedles Charles into agreeing to pay for lessons in Rouen.", "analysis": ""}

Leon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided their company, and completely neglected his work. He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote to her. He called her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories. Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew, so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office. When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that millionaires must experience when they come back to their native village. He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared. Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She thought he "had grown and was thinner," while Artemise, on the contrary, thought him stouter and darker. He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the "Hirondelle," had definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern "was late." Leon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor's door. Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour. The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that evening, nor all the next day. He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes. Their separation was becoming intolerable. "I would rather die!" said Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. "Adieu! adieu! When shall I see you again?" They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of hope. Some money was coming to her. On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had commended; she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn't "drinking the sea," politely undertook to supply her with one. She could no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him, and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not understand either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and even paid her private visits. It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that she seemed seized with great musical fervour. One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing any difference, cried-- "Bravo! very goodl You are wrong to stop. Go on!" "Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty." The next day he begged her to play him something again. "Very well; to please you!" And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes and blundered; then, stopping short-- "Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--" She bit her lips and added, "Twenty francs a lesson, that's too dear!" "Yes, so it is--rather," said Charles, giggling stupidly. "But it seems to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities." "Find them!" said Emma. The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could no longer keep back the words. "How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day. Well, Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who are at La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that from an excellent mistress!" She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But when she passed by it (if Bovary were there), she sighed-- "Ah! my poor piano!" And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them she had given up music, and could not begin again now for important reasons. Then people commiserated her-- "What a pity! she had so much talent!" They even spoke to Bovary about it. They put him to shame, and especially the chemist. "You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madame to study; you are economising on the subsequent musical education of your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau's, still rather new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it, like mothers nursing their own children and vaccination." So Charles returned once more to this question of the piano. Emma replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor piano, that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it go was to Bovary like the indefinable suicide of a part of herself. "If you liked," he said, "a lesson from time to time, that wouldn't after all be very ruinous." "But lessons," she replied, "are only of use when followed up." And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband's permission to go to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month she was even considered to have made considerable progress.

Part 3, Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-4

Leon is just as into the affair as Emma is. He reads her letters voraciously, and gets sick of his job; instead, he thinks about his mistress. One weekend, he misses Emma so much he actually visits Yonville. The townspeople are glad to see him. He stays in the Lion d'Or, Madame Lefrancois's inn, waiting for an opportune moment to see his love. On the second night of his visit, he's finally able to see her - in the same place she used to meet Rodolphe. They lament the difficulty of life...it's so hard to be apart! Emma gets more and more cunning; she meets with Madame Rollet to get her letters, orders tons of new items from Monsieur Lheureux, and even hatches a sly plan to get Charles to send her to Rouen once a week. Under the false pretenses of picking up her music again, she complains about her lack of skill with the piano. She wheedles Charles into agreeing to pay for lessons in Rouen.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/33.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_32_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 9

part 3, chapter 9

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-9", "summary": "Charles throws himself on Emma's corpse, overcome by grief. Homais goes home, invents a story about accidental poisoning to cover up the suicide, and writes it up for the newspaper. When he returns to the Bovarys' house, he finds Charles alone and frightened, Canivet having left him. Homais, with the best of intentions, attempts to distract Charles by talking about the weather. Father Bournisien succeeds in getting Charles to do something about the funeral. He makes extravagantly romantic plans - ones that Emma herself would have appreciated. Charles rebels against God; he curses the heavens for allowing this to happen. The priest and the pharmacist sit up with the corpse all night, holding a vigil for her. The whole time, they argue about religion. Charles's mother arrives in the morning. She attempts to reason with Charles about the expense of the funeral, and he actually stands up to her for the first time. The townspeople come to visit and pay their respects; they're bored, but each is unwilling to be the first to leave. Felicite is hysterical with grief. She, Madame Lefrancois, and old Madame Bovary dress Emma in her wedding gown to prepare her for her coffin. Grotesquely, a stream of black liquid flows out of the dead woman's mouth as they lift her. Homais and Bournisien continue their intellectual discussion. Charles comes in to say his final good bye in private. He reflects upon his memories of their past together, looks at her dead face, and is horrified. The priest and pharmacist lead him away. Homais shakily cuts a few locks of Emma's hair for Charles to keep. Felicite thoughtfully leaves a bottle of brandy and a pastry out for the men - Homais and Father Bournisien need no prompting to drink the alcohol. They part ways after finishing the bottle. Finally, after Emma's body is sealed inside three coffins, her father arrives. He faints immediately.", "analysis": ""}

There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that she did not move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying-- "Farewell! farewell!" Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room. "Restrain yourself!" "Yes." said he, struggling, "I'll be quiet. I'll not do anything. But leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!" And he wept. "Cry," said the chemist; "let nature take her course; that will solace you." Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs into the sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the Place he was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged himself as far as Yonville, in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was asking every passer-by where the druggist lived. "There now! as if I hadn't got other fish to fry. Well, so much the worse; you must come later on." And he entered the shop hurriedly. He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing potion for Bovary, to invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and work it up into an article for the "Fanal," without counting the people who were waiting to get the news from him; and when the Yonvillers had all heard his story of the arsenic that she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla cream. Homais once more returned to Bovary's. He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an arm-chair near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the flags of the floor. "Now," said the chemist, "you ought yourself to fix the hour for the ceremony." "Why? What ceremony?" Then, in a stammering, frightened voice, "Oh, no! not that. No! I want to see her here." Homais, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on the whatnot to water the geraniums. "Ah! thanks," said Charles; "you are good." But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that this action of the druggist recalled to him. Then to distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little horticulture: plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his head in sign of approbation. "Besides, the fine days will soon be here again." "Ah!" said Bovary. The druggist, at his wit's end, began softly to draw aside the small window-curtain. "Hallo! there's Monsieur Tuvache passing." Charles repeated like a machine--- "Monsieur Tuvache passing!" Homais did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him to them. He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after sobbing for some time, wrote-- "I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes, and a wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders. Three coffins, one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no one say anything to me. I shall have strength. Over all there is to be placed a large piece of green velvet. This is my wish; see that it is done." The two men were much surprised at Bovary's romantic ideas. The chemist at once went to him and said-- "This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--" "What's that to you?" cried Charles. "Leave me! You did not love her. Go!" The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He discoursed on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great, was very good: one must submit to his decrees without a murmur; nay, must even thank him. Charles burst out into blasphemies: "I hate your God!" "The spirit of rebellion is still upon you," sighed the ecclesiastic. Bovary was far away. He was walking with great strides along by the wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised to heaven looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf stirred. A fine rain was falling: Charles, whose chest was bare, at last began to shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen. At six o'clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on the Place; it was the "Hirondelle" coming in, and he remained with his forehead against the windowpane, watching all the passengers get out, one after the other. Felicite put down a mattress for him in the drawing-room. He threw himself upon it and fell asleep. Although a philosopher, Monsieur Homais respected the dead. So bearing no grudge to poor Charles, he came back again in the evening to sit up with the body; bringing with him three volumes and a pocket-book for taking notes. Monsieur Bournisien was there, and two large candles were burning at the head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove. The druggist, on whom the silence weighed, was not long before he began formulating some regrets about this "unfortunate young woman." and the priest replied that there was nothing to do now but pray for her. "Yet," Homais went on, "one of two things; either she died in a state of grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need of our prayers; or else she departed impertinent (that is, I believe, the ecclesiastical expression), and then--" Bournisien interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the less necessary to pray. "But," objected the chemist, "since God knows all our needs, what can be the good of prayer?" "What!" cried the ecclesiastic, "prayer! Why, aren't you a Christian?" "Excuse me," said Homais; "I admire Christianity. To begin with, it enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a morality--" "That isn't the question. All the texts-" "Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts have been falsified by the Jesuits." Charles came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the curtains. Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her knees, and then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Charles that infinite masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her. The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Monsieur Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily, and Homais' pen was scratching over the paper. "Come, my good friend," he said, "withdraw; this spectacle is tearing you to pieces." Charles once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their discussions. "Read Voltaire," said the one, "read D'Holbach, read the 'Encyclopaedia'!" "Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews,'" said the other; "read 'The Meaning of Christianity,' by Nicolas, formerly a magistrate." They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without listening to each other. Bournisien was scandalized at such audacity; Homais marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on the point of insulting one another when Charles suddenly reappeared. A fascination drew him. He was continually coming upstairs. He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself in a contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful. He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and he said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might perhaps succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he, and cried in a low voice, "Emma! Emma!" His strong breathing made the flames of the candles tremble against the wall. At daybreak Madame Bovary senior arrived. Charles as he embraced her burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist had done, to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the funeral. He became so angry that she was silent, and he even commissioned her to go to town at once and buy what was necessary. Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe to Madame Homais'; Felicite was in the room upstairs with Madame Lefrancois. In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their hands, unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and formed a large semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered faces, and swinging one leg crossed over the other knee, they uttered deep sighs at intervals; each one was inordinately bored, and yet none would be the first to go. Homais, when he returned at nine o'clock (for the last two days only Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant, Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Bovary senior were busy about Emma, finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil that covered her to her satin shoes. Felicite was sobbing--"Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!" "Look at her," said the landlady, sighing; "how pretty she still is! Now, couldn't you swear she was going to get up in a minute?" Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting, from her mouth. "Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!" cried Madame Lefrancois. "Now, just come and help," she said to the chemist. "Perhaps you're afraid?" "I afraid?" replied he, shrugging his shoulders. "I dare say! I've seen all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science." The cure on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on the reply of the druggist, went on--"The blow, you see, is still too recent." Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people, to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion on the celibacy of priests. "For," said the chemist, "it is unnatural that a man should do without women! There have been crimes--" "But, good heaven!" cried the ecclesiastic, "how do you expect an individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for example?" Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister-- His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the chemist. "Come, take a pinch of snuff," he said to him. "Take it; it'll relieve you." A continual barking was heard in the distance. "Do you hear that dog howling?" said the chemist. "They smell the dead," replied the priest. "It's like bees; they leave their hives on the decease of any person." Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore. They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping. Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he came to bid her farewell. The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in. There were few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the candles fell in great drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles watched them burn, tiring his eyes against the glare of their yellow flame. The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--the silence, the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground. Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard the laughter of the happy boys beneath the apple-trees: the room was filled with the perfume of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like electricity. The dress was still the same. For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes, her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing sea. A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers, palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of horror that awoke the other two. They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Felicite came up to say that he wanted some of her hair. "Cut some off," replied the druggist. And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Homais gave two or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that beautiful black hair. The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each other reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur Bournisien sprinkled the room with holy water and Homais threw a little chlorine water on the floor. Felicite had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And the druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in the morning sighed-- "My word! I should like to take some sustenance." The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say mass, came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a little without knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that comes upon us after times of sadness, and at the last glass the priest said to the druggist, as he clapped him on the shoulder-- "We shall end by understanding one another." In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker's men, who were coming in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture of hearing the hammer resound against the wood. Next day they lowered her into her oak coffin, that was fitted into the other two; but as the bier was too large, they had to fill up the gaps with the wool of a mattress. At last, when the three lids had been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was placed outside in front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the people of Yonville began to flock round. Old Rouault arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the black cloth!

Part 3, Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-9

Charles throws himself on Emma's corpse, overcome by grief. Homais goes home, invents a story about accidental poisoning to cover up the suicide, and writes it up for the newspaper. When he returns to the Bovarys' house, he finds Charles alone and frightened, Canivet having left him. Homais, with the best of intentions, attempts to distract Charles by talking about the weather. Father Bournisien succeeds in getting Charles to do something about the funeral. He makes extravagantly romantic plans - ones that Emma herself would have appreciated. Charles rebels against God; he curses the heavens for allowing this to happen. The priest and the pharmacist sit up with the corpse all night, holding a vigil for her. The whole time, they argue about religion. Charles's mother arrives in the morning. She attempts to reason with Charles about the expense of the funeral, and he actually stands up to her for the first time. The townspeople come to visit and pay their respects; they're bored, but each is unwilling to be the first to leave. Felicite is hysterical with grief. She, Madame Lefrancois, and old Madame Bovary dress Emma in her wedding gown to prepare her for her coffin. Grotesquely, a stream of black liquid flows out of the dead woman's mouth as they lift her. Homais and Bournisien continue their intellectual discussion. Charles comes in to say his final good bye in private. He reflects upon his memories of their past together, looks at her dead face, and is horrified. The priest and pharmacist lead him away. Homais shakily cuts a few locks of Emma's hair for Charles to keep. Felicite thoughtfully leaves a bottle of brandy and a pastry out for the men - Homais and Father Bournisien need no prompting to drink the alcohol. They part ways after finishing the bottle. Finally, after Emma's body is sealed inside three coffins, her father arrives. He faints immediately.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/34.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_33_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 10

part 3, chapter 10

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-10", "summary": "Monsieur Rouault received a letter from the pharmacist after the fact - so Homais attempted to soften the blow by not exactly telling him that his daughter was dead. As a result, Rouault rode desperately to try and see Emma before she died - and arrived far too late. He and Charles cry together, and attempt to be strong for each other. The whole town turns out for the funeral, including Hippolyte and his fancy leg, as well as the dastardly Monsieur Lheureux. After an elaborate procession, Emma is buried by Lestiboudois. On the way back, Homais amuses himself by noting the improper behavior of his fellow townsfolk. After everything's over, Monsieur Rouault heavily says good bye to his son-in-law and the elder Madame Bovary. He immediately goes home to Les Bertaux, and even refuses to see Berthe, since she would make him even sadder. That night, Charles and his mother stay up talking. They make plans for her to move in, and she rejoices inwardly - she's finally defeated Emma. Rodolphe and Leon both sleep calmly in their respective homes, but those who loved Emma, Charles, her father, and Justin, stay awake, thinking of her.", "analysis": ""}

He had only received the chemist's letter thirty-six hours after the event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Homais had so worded it that it was impossible to make out what it was all about. First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next, he understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last, he had put on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to his boots, and set out at full speed; and the whole of the way old Rouault, panting, was torn by anguish. Once even he was obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he heard voices round about him; he felt himself going mad. Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He shuddered, horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles for the church, and that he would go barefooted from the cemetery at Bertaux to the chapel of Vassonville. He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it dashed along. He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors would discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the miraculous cures he had been told about. Then she appeared to him dead. She was there; before his eyes, lying on her back in the middle of the road. He reined up, and the hallucination disappeared. At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of coffee one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in the name in writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it there, but did not dare to open it. At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the jest of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have known it. But no! There was nothing extraordinary about the country; the sky was blue, the trees swayed; a flock of sheep passed. He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great blows, the girths dripping with blood. When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into Bovary's arms: "My girl! Emma! my child! tell me--" The other replied, sobbing, "I don't know! I don't know! It's a curse!" The druggist separated them. "These horrible details are useless. I will tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people coming. Dignity! Come now! Philosophy!" The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several times. "Yes! courage!" "Oh," cried the old man, "so I will have, by God! I'll go along o' her to the end!" The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And seated in a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and repass in front of them continually the three chanting choristers. The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur Bournisien, in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He bowed before the tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his arms. Lestiboudois went about the church with his whalebone stick. The bier stood near the lectern, between four rows of candles. Charles felt inclined to get up and put them out. Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw himself into the hope of a future life in which he should see her again. He imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far away, for a long time. But when he thought of her lying there, and that all was over, that they would lay her in the earth, he was seized with a fierce, gloomy, despairful rage. At times he thought he felt nothing more, and he enjoyed this lull in his pain, whilst at the same time he reproached himself for being a wretch. The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the stones, striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the end of the church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man in a coarse brown jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte, the stable-boy at the "Lion d'Or." He had put on his new leg. One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection, and the coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate. "Oh, make haste! I am in pain!" cried Bovary, angrily throwing him a five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow. They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He remembered that once, in the early times, they had been to mass together, and they had sat down on the other side, on the right, by the wall. The bell began again. There was a great moving of chairs; the bearers slipped their three staves under the coffin, and everyone left the church. Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in again, pale, staggering. People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at the head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with a nod those who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors, stood amidst the crowd. The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a little. The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys recited the De profundis*, and their voices echoed over the fields, rising and falling with their undulations. Sometimes they disappeared in the windings of the path; but the great silver cross rose always before the trees. *Psalm CXXX. The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each of them carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Charles felt himself growing weaker at this continual repetition of prayers and torches, beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of cassocks. A fresh breeze was blowing; the rye and colza were sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at the roadsides and on the hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds filled the air; the jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal running away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris. Charles as he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered mornings like this, when, after visiting some patient, he came out from one and returned to her. The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to time, laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more slowly, and it advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that pitches with every wave. They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in the grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all round; and while the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the sides kept noiselessly slipping down at the corners. Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them. He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up. Then Bournisien took the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois; with his left hand all the time sprinkling water, with the right he vigorously threw in a large spadeful; and the wood of the coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth that dread sound that seems to us the reverberation of eternity. The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his neighbour. This was Homais. He swung it gravely, then handed it to Charles, who sank to his knees in the earth and threw in handfuls of it, crying, "Adieu!" He sent her kisses; he dragged himself towards the grave, to engulf himself with her. They led him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps, like the others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over. Old Rouault on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which Homais in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing. He also noticed that Monsieur Binet had not been present, and that Tuvache had "made off" after mass, and that Theodore, the notary's servant wore a blue coat, "as if one could not have got a black coat, since that is the custom, by Jove!" And to share his observations with others he went from group to group. They were deploring Emma's death, especially Lheureux, who had not failed to come to the funeral. "Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!" The druggist continued, "Do you know that but for me he would have committed some fatal attempt upon himself?" "Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in my shop." "I haven't had leisure," said Homais, "to prepare a few words that I would have cast upon her tomb." Charles on getting home undressed, and old Rouault put on his blue blouse. It was a new one, and as he had often during the journey wiped his eyes on the sleeves, the dye had stained his face, and the traces of tears made lines in the layer of dust that covered it. Madame Bovary senior was with them. All three were silent. At last the old fellow sighed-- "Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you had just lost your first deceased? I consoled you at that time. I thought of something to say then, but now--" Then, with a loud groan that shook his whole chest, "Ah! this is the end for me, do you see! I saw my wife go, then my son, and now to-day it's my daughter." He wanted to go back at once to Bertaux, saying that he could not sleep in this house. He even refused to see his granddaughter. "No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only you'll kiss her many times for me. Good-bye! you're a good fellow! And then I shall never forget that," he said, slapping his thigh. "Never fear, you shall always have your turkey." But when he reached the top of the hill he turned back, as he had turned once before on the road of Saint-Victor when he had parted from her. The windows of the village were all on fire beneath the slanting rays of the sun sinking behind the field. He put his hand over his eyes, and saw in the horizon an enclosure of walls, where trees here and there formed black clusters between white stones; then he went on his way at a gentle trot, for his nag had gone lame. Despite their fatigue, Charles and his mother stayed very long that evening talking together. They spoke of the days of the past and of the future. She would come to live at Yonville; she would keep house for him; they would never part again. She was ingenious and caressing, rejoicing in her heart at gaining once more an affection that had wandered from her for so many years. Midnight struck. The village as usual was silent, and Charles, awake, thought always of her. Rodolphe, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the wood all day, was sleeping quietly in his chateau, and Leon, down yonder, always slept. There was another who at that hour was not asleep. On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees weeping, and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow beneath the load of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night. The gate suddenly grated. It was Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his spade, that he had forgotten. He recognised Justin climbing over the wall, and at last knew who was the culprit who stole his potatoes.

Part 3, Chapter 10

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-10

Monsieur Rouault received a letter from the pharmacist after the fact - so Homais attempted to soften the blow by not exactly telling him that his daughter was dead. As a result, Rouault rode desperately to try and see Emma before she died - and arrived far too late. He and Charles cry together, and attempt to be strong for each other. The whole town turns out for the funeral, including Hippolyte and his fancy leg, as well as the dastardly Monsieur Lheureux. After an elaborate procession, Emma is buried by Lestiboudois. On the way back, Homais amuses himself by noting the improper behavior of his fellow townsfolk. After everything's over, Monsieur Rouault heavily says good bye to his son-in-law and the elder Madame Bovary. He immediately goes home to Les Bertaux, and even refuses to see Berthe, since she would make him even sadder. That night, Charles and his mother stay up talking. They make plans for her to move in, and she rejoices inwardly - she's finally defeated Emma. Rodolphe and Leon both sleep calmly in their respective homes, but those who loved Emma, Charles, her father, and Justin, stay awake, thinking of her.

shmoop

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/35.txt

finished_summaries/shmoop/Madame Bovary/section_34_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 11

part 3, chapter 11

{"name": "Part 3, Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-11", "summary": "After Emma's death, Charles and Berthe sink into greater and greater poverty. Everyone seems to want to get money out of poor Charles; Lheureux comes back for more, as does Emma's fake piano teacher, Mademoiselle Lempereur . Charles refuses to sell any of Emma's belongings; as a result, he fights with his mother and she leaves. Felicite inherits all of Emma's wardrobe, and seeing her in those dresses makes Charles even sadder. Soon enough, she runs off with Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant. Leon, in the meanwhile, gets married and secures a post as a notary. Wandering through the house one day, Charles discovers Emma and Rodolphe's love letters. He is jealous, but still grieves intensely for Emma, regardless of her infidelity. In honor of her memory, he squanders his money on things she would have liked - fancy clothes and moustache wax. To pay for these things, he signs more promissory notes and goes into greater debt. Eventually, Charles has to sell everything and, after a while, all they have left is Emma's bedroom, full of her possessions. Berthe has nothing, and has nobody to care for her. Charles can't manage to actually take care of her. The Homais family breaks off their association with the Bovarys. Monsieur Homais turns his attention to civic matters. He manages to get the blind beggar shipped off to an asylum. This encourages him to expand his sphere of influence; the pharmacist goes on to write many more articles about local goings-on, and shifts his attention to writing a master work on his observations of Yonville. He also maintains his pharmacy, and keeps up with all the latest ridiculous developments. Homais and Charles choose an extravagant design for Emma's tombstone. Charles tries to keep the memory of Emma alive, but she fades from his memory. Eventually everyone, even Father Bournisien, gives up on him. Charles and his mother attempt to reconcile, but when she offers to take Berthe off his hands, they have a final decisive break. Charles is consumed with jealousy for Homais, who seems to have everything he wants. That is, everything but the cross of the Legion of Honor. The pharmacist makes it his top priority to acquire this prize. He starts to suck up to the local authorities. Finally, one day Charles discovers Leon's love letters in Emma's desk. Mad with fury, he rummages around everywhere and discovers a portrait of Rodolphe, as well. Charles totally breaks off communication with the rest of the town. Everyone assumes that he's a drunkard. He occasionally visits Madame Lefrancois to talk about Emma, but she doesn't have time for him. Finally, Charles is forced to sell his horse, the last thing he has. At the market, he runs into Rodolphe. They awkwardly have a beer together. Rodolphe talks about other things to avoid any discussion of Emma. In the end, Charles tells Rodolphe that he doesn't blame the other man, claiming that only fate is responsible for Emma's death. Rodolphe thinks of Charles as a pitiful, weak, meek man. The next day, Charles sits down in the garden. It's a beautiful spring day, and he's struck with emotion. Berthe comes to fetch him for dinner - but he's dead, the lock of Emma's hair in his hand. Berthe is sent away to live with her grandmother, who dies the same year. She's then passed on to a poor aunt, who sends the child to work in a cotton mill. Since Charles's death, three different doctors have all moved to Yonville to take over his practice. None of them succeed, due to the machinations of Monsieur Homais. Finally, the book closes as Monsieur Homais receives the cross of the Legion of Honor.", "analysis": ""}

The next day Charles had the child brought back. She asked for her mamma. They told her she was away; that she would bring her back some playthings. Berthe spoke of her again several times, then at last thought no more of her. The child's gaiety broke Bovary's heart, and he had to bear besides the intolerable consolations of the chemist. Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on anew his friend Vincart, and Charles pledged himself for exorbitant sums; for he would never consent to let the smallest of the things that had belonged to HER be sold. His mother was exasperated with him; he grew even more angry than she did. He had altogether changed. She left the house. Then everyone began "taking advantage" of him. Mademoiselle Lempereur presented a bill for six months' teaching, although Emma had never taken a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had shown Bovary); it was an arrangement between the two women. The man at the circulating library demanded three years' subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due for some twenty letters, and when Charles asked for an explanation, she had the delicacy to reply-- "Oh, I don't know. It was for her business affairs." With every debt he paid Charles thought he had come to the end of them. But others followed ceaselessly. He sent in accounts for professional attendance. He was shown the letters his wife had written. Then he had to apologise. Felicite now wore Madame Bovary's gowns; not all, for he had kept some of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room, locking himself up there; she was about her height, and often Charles, seeing her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and cried out-- "Oh, stay, stay!" But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by Theodore, stealing all that was left of the wardrobe. It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to inform him of the "marriage of Monsieur Leon Dupuis her son, notary at Yvetot, to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of Bondeville." Charles, among the other congratulations he sent him, wrote this sentence-- "How glad my poor wife would have been!" One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up to the attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper. He opened it and read: "Courage, Emma, courage. I would not bring misery into your life." It was Rodolphe's letter, fallen to the ground between the boxes, where it had remained, and that the wind from the dormer window had just blown towards the door. And Charles stood, motionless and staring, in the very same place where, long ago, Emma, in despair, and paler even than he, had thought of dying. At last he discovered a small R at the bottom of the second page. What did this mean? He remembered Rodolphe's attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when they had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of the letter deceived him. "Perhaps they loved one another platonically," he said to himself. Besides, Charles was not of those who go to the bottom of things; he shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the immensity of his woe. Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his despair, and that was boundless, because it was now unrealisable. To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her, signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave. He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom, her own room, remained as before. After his dinner Charles went up there. He pushed the round table in front of the fire, and drew up her armchair. He sat down opposite it. A candle burnt in one of the gilt candlesticks. Berthe by his side was painting prints. He suffered, poor man, at seeing her so badly dressed, with laceless boots, and the arm-holes of her pinafore torn down to the hips; for the charwoman took no care of her. But she was so sweet, so pretty, and her little head bent forward so gracefully, letting the dear fair hair fall over her rosy cheeks, that an infinite joy came upon him, a happiness mingled with bitterness, like those ill-made wines that taste of resin. He mended her toys, made her puppets from cardboard, or sewed up half-torn dolls. Then, if his eyes fell upon the workbox, a ribbon lying about, or even a pin left in a crack of the table, he began to dream, and looked so sad that she became as sad as he. No one now came to see them, for Justin had run away to Rouen, where he was a grocer's assistant, and the druggist's children saw less and less of the child, Monsieur Homais not caring, seeing the difference of their social position, to continue the intimacy. The blind man, whom he had not been able to cure with the pomade, had gone back to the hill of Bois-Guillaume, where he told the travellers of the vain attempt of the druggist, to such an extent, that Homais when he went to town hid himself behind the curtains of the "Hirondelle" to avoid meeting him. He detested him, and wishing, in the interests of his own reputation, to get rid of him at all costs, he directed against him a secret battery, that betrayed the depth of his intellect and the baseness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one could read in the "Fanal de Rouen" editorials such as these-- "All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy have, no doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a wretch suffering from a horrible facial wound. He importunes, persecutes one, and levies a regular tax on all travellers. Are we still living in the monstrous times of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds were permitted to display in our public places leprosy and scrofulas they had brought back from the Crusades?" Or-- "In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to our great towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. Some are seen going about alone, and these are not, perhaps, the least dangerous. What are our ediles about?" Then Homais invented anecdotes-- "Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse--" And then followed the story of an accident caused by the presence of the blind man. He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he was released. He began again, and Homais began again. It was a struggle. Homais won it, for his foe was condemned to life-long confinement in an asylum. This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was no longer a dog run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten in the parish, of which he did not immediately inform the public, guided always by the love of progress and the hate of priests. He instituted comparisons between the elementary and clerical schools to the detriment of the latter; called to mind the massacre of St. Bartholomew a propos of a grant of one hundred francs to the church, and denounced abuses, aired new views. That was his phrase. Homais was digging and delving; he was becoming dangerous. However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism, and soon a book, a work was necessary to him. Then he composed "General Statistics of the Canton of Yonville, followed by Climatological Remarks." The statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with great questions: the social problem, moralisation of the poorer classes, pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at being a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room. He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he was the first to introduce "cocoa" and "revalenta" into the Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi. He had fine ideas about Emma's tomb. First he proposed a broken column with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of rotunda, or else a "mass of ruins." And in all his plans Homais always stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable symbol of sorrow. Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to look at some tombs at a funeral furnisher's, accompanied by an artist, one Vaufrylard, a friend of Bridoux's, who made puns all the time. At last, after having examined some hundred designs, having ordered an estimate and made another journey to Rouen, Charles decided in favour of a mausoleum, which on the two principal sides was to have a "spirit bearing an extinguished torch." As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so fine as Sta viator*, and he got no further; he racked his brain, he constantly repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon Amabilen conjugem calcas**, which was adopted. * Rest traveler. ** Tread upon a loving wife. A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually thinking of Emma, was forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image fading from his memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt of her; it was always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he was about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms. For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up. Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows. In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he was far from being able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux refused to renew any more bills. A distraint became imminent. Then he appealed to his mother, who consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but with a great many recriminations against Emma; and in return for her sacrifice she asked for a shawl that had escaped the depredations of Felicite. Charles refused to give it her; they quarrelled. She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to have the little girl, who could help her in the house, to live with her. Charles consented to this, but when the time for parting came, all his courage failed him. Then there was a final, complete rupture. As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had red spots on her cheeks. Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him in the laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras' table in a breath. He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men. Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais hankered after the cross of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it. "First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense, various works of public utility, such as" (and he recalled his pamphlet entitled, "Cider, its manufacture and effects," besides observation on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); "without counting that I am a member of several learned societies" (he was member of a single one). "In short!" he cried, making a pirouette, "if it were only for distinguishing myself at fires!" Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He secretly did the prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself--in a word, prostituted himself. He even addressed a petition to the sovereign in which he implored him to "do him justice"; he called him "our good king," and compared him to Henri IV. And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from the top to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded arms, meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men. From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day, however, he sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Leon's letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe's portrait flew full in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters. People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one, refused even to visit his patients. Then they said "he shut himself up to drink." Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge, and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as he walked up and down. In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him and led her to the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only light left in the Place was that in Binet's window. The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be able to speak of her. But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the "Favorites du Commerce," and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands, insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening to go over "to the opposition shop." One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse--his last resource--he met Rodolphe. They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Rodolphe, who had only sent his card, first stammered some apologies, then grew bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the public-house. Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would have liked to have been this man. The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Charles was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he followed the succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at last a moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on Rodolphe, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same look of weary lassitude came back to his face. "I don't blame you," he said. Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow-- "No, I don't blame you now." He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made-- "It is the fault of fatality!" Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean. The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart. At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner. His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair. "Come along, papa," she said. And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead. Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Monsieur Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing. When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary's going to her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Rouault was paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living. Since Bovary's death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and public opinion protects him. He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.

Part 3, Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20210422061745/http://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/madame-bovary/summary/part-3-chapter-11

After Emma's death, Charles and Berthe sink into greater and greater poverty. Everyone seems to want to get money out of poor Charles; Lheureux comes back for more, as does Emma's fake piano teacher, Mademoiselle Lempereur . Charles refuses to sell any of Emma's belongings; as a result, he fights with his mother and she leaves. Felicite inherits all of Emma's wardrobe, and seeing her in those dresses makes Charles even sadder. Soon enough, she runs off with Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant. Leon, in the meanwhile, gets married and secures a post as a notary. Wandering through the house one day, Charles discovers Emma and Rodolphe's love letters. He is jealous, but still grieves intensely for Emma, regardless of her infidelity. In honor of her memory, he squanders his money on things she would have liked - fancy clothes and moustache wax. To pay for these things, he signs more promissory notes and goes into greater debt. Eventually, Charles has to sell everything and, after a while, all they have left is Emma's bedroom, full of her possessions. Berthe has nothing, and has nobody to care for her. Charles can't manage to actually take care of her. The Homais family breaks off their association with the Bovarys. Monsieur Homais turns his attention to civic matters. He manages to get the blind beggar shipped off to an asylum. This encourages him to expand his sphere of influence; the pharmacist goes on to write many more articles about local goings-on, and shifts his attention to writing a master work on his observations of Yonville. He also maintains his pharmacy, and keeps up with all the latest ridiculous developments. Homais and Charles choose an extravagant design for Emma's tombstone. Charles tries to keep the memory of Emma alive, but she fades from his memory. Eventually everyone, even Father Bournisien, gives up on him. Charles and his mother attempt to reconcile, but when she offers to take Berthe off his hands, they have a final decisive break. Charles is consumed with jealousy for Homais, who seems to have everything he wants. That is, everything but the cross of the Legion of Honor. The pharmacist makes it his top priority to acquire this prize. He starts to suck up to the local authorities. Finally, one day Charles discovers Leon's love letters in Emma's desk. Mad with fury, he rummages around everywhere and discovers a portrait of Rodolphe, as well. Charles totally breaks off communication with the rest of the town. Everyone assumes that he's a drunkard. He occasionally visits Madame Lefrancois to talk about Emma, but she doesn't have time for him. Finally, Charles is forced to sell his horse, the last thing he has. At the market, he runs into Rodolphe. They awkwardly have a beer together. Rodolphe talks about other things to avoid any discussion of Emma. In the end, Charles tells Rodolphe that he doesn't blame the other man, claiming that only fate is responsible for Emma's death. Rodolphe thinks of Charles as a pitiful, weak, meek man. The next day, Charles sits down in the garden. It's a beautiful spring day, and he's struck with emotion. Berthe comes to fetch him for dinner - but he's dead, the lock of Emma's hair in his hand. Berthe is sent away to live with her grandmother, who dies the same year. She's then passed on to a poor aunt, who sends the child to work in a cotton mill. Since Charles's death, three different doctors have all moved to Yonville to take over his practice. None of them succeed, due to the machinations of Monsieur Homais. Finally, the book closes as Monsieur Homais receives the cross of the Legion of Honor.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_0_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-1", "summary": "At the age of fifteen, Charles Bovary struck his schoolmates as a shy and clumsy country lad. He did not have great intelligence or wit but was a diligent and industrious student. He was quiet; however, he mixed well with the other boys. His father was a former army surgeon who had been forced to leave the service as a result of some scandal. He was a handsome and unscrupulous man who had married Charles' mother in order to get his hands on her large dowry. After the marriage, he wasted most of the money in foolish speculations, drinking, and amorous affairs. He had always been a cruel and unfaithful husband. In middle age he continued to mistreat his wife and was a bitter, stern, and boastful man. He and his wife eventually acquired and lived on a small farm. Charles' mother had once loved her husband deeply, but her unfortunate marriage had cooled this affection and had turned her youthful gaiety and optimism into nervous moodiness and spite. After their son's birth, the two Bovarys had often clashed about his rearing, and Charles' boyhood was one of inconsistencies and contradictions. His mother had been overly fond and doting, while his father had attempted to inure him to the rigors of life through austere treatment. Eventually Charles was sent to a secondary school and then studied medicine. Although he worked hard at first, his lack of great intelligence and a natural tendency to laziness caused him to fail his examinations. His mother attributed this to unfairness on the part of the examiners, and the news was kept a secret from his father. The following semester, after much hard work, Charles was able to pass. While at the university he had his first real taste of freedom and engaged in several typical student adventures. After he became a doctor, Charles' mother found him a practice in the village of Tostes, and a wealthy wife in Heloise, an ugly widow who was several years older than he. Charles had hoped that marriage would bring him freedom, but soon found his wife to be as grasping and domineering as his mother had been. Nevertheless, his medical practice prospered.", "analysis": "Flaubert is presenting in rapid sketches the essential nature and characteristics of some of the background figures and is preparing us for later actions. For example, it is important to see from the very beginning that Charles is a rather ordinary person with no special talents. He must work exceptionally hard for anything that he achieves. Furthermore, we see that Charles is easily ruled by his mother and later by his wife. He is obedient, diligent, and hard working, but possesses no natural talents. Flaubert is going to present a novel about the provincial middle-class society. He is interested in this first chapter with presenting a basic picture of the typical country background against which the story takes place. Note the tremendous contrast between Charles and his father. The father has a dash of charm and imagination that is missing in Charles. The son is more closely aligned with his mother, whose main concern is with meeting the bills and getting by in life. Charles' first marriage is very important in relationship to his later marriage with Emma. First, we see that his wife is able to make him walk a tight line. She is easily able to control him even though she possesses none of the \"loveliness\" of Emma. She was a real shrew who made life very difficult and unpleasant for Charles. She is so antagonistic that Charles will naturally be more receptive to Emma's charms."}

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work. The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice-- "Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age." The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots. We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us. When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the thing." But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone. "Rise," said the master. He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once more. "Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag. There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down again and placed it on his knee. "Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name." The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name. "Again!" The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering 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 his voice as if calling someone in the word "Charbovari." A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing 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 gradually re-established in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of "Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated. "What are you looking for?" asked the master. "My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round him. "Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!" continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow 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 cap again; it hasn't been stolen." *A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat. **I am ridiculous. Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered. In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible. His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a hosier'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 always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours, he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial traveller. Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought he would make money. But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, 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 up all speculation. For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of 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 the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace. His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once, 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 much without complaint at first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders. When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village. He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour. When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions, when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had a very good memory. *A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell. Here, the evening prayer. Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps. Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take his first communion. Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October, at the time of the St. Romain fair. It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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.

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-1

At the age of fifteen, Charles Bovary struck his schoolmates as a shy and clumsy country lad. He did not have great intelligence or wit but was a diligent and industrious student. He was quiet; however, he mixed well with the other boys. His father was a former army surgeon who had been forced to leave the service as a result of some scandal. He was a handsome and unscrupulous man who had married Charles' mother in order to get his hands on her large dowry. After the marriage, he wasted most of the money in foolish speculations, drinking, and amorous affairs. He had always been a cruel and unfaithful husband. In middle age he continued to mistreat his wife and was a bitter, stern, and boastful man. He and his wife eventually acquired and lived on a small farm. Charles' mother had once loved her husband deeply, but her unfortunate marriage had cooled this affection and had turned her youthful gaiety and optimism into nervous moodiness and spite. After their son's birth, the two Bovarys had often clashed about his rearing, and Charles' boyhood was one of inconsistencies and contradictions. His mother had been overly fond and doting, while his father had attempted to inure him to the rigors of life through austere treatment. Eventually Charles was sent to a secondary school and then studied medicine. Although he worked hard at first, his lack of great intelligence and a natural tendency to laziness caused him to fail his examinations. His mother attributed this to unfairness on the part of the examiners, and the news was kept a secret from his father. The following semester, after much hard work, Charles was able to pass. While at the university he had his first real taste of freedom and engaged in several typical student adventures. After he became a doctor, Charles' mother found him a practice in the village of Tostes, and a wealthy wife in Heloise, an ugly widow who was several years older than he. Charles had hoped that marriage would bring him freedom, but soon found his wife to be as grasping and domineering as his mother had been. Nevertheless, his medical practice prospered.

Flaubert is presenting in rapid sketches the essential nature and characteristics of some of the background figures and is preparing us for later actions. For example, it is important to see from the very beginning that Charles is a rather ordinary person with no special talents. He must work exceptionally hard for anything that he achieves. Furthermore, we see that Charles is easily ruled by his mother and later by his wife. He is obedient, diligent, and hard working, but possesses no natural talents. Flaubert is going to present a novel about the provincial middle-class society. He is interested in this first chapter with presenting a basic picture of the typical country background against which the story takes place. Note the tremendous contrast between Charles and his father. The father has a dash of charm and imagination that is missing in Charles. The son is more closely aligned with his mother, whose main concern is with meeting the bills and getting by in life. Charles' first marriage is very important in relationship to his later marriage with Emma. First, we see that his wife is able to make him walk a tight line. She is easily able to control him even though she possesses none of the "loveliness" of Emma. She was a real shrew who made life very difficult and unpleasant for Charles. She is so antagonistic that Charles will naturally be more receptive to Emma's charms.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_1_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-2", "summary": "Late one night Charles was awakened with a request to come 18 miles out in the country and set a broken leg. He sent the messenger on ahead and promised to follow in a couple of hours. At four in the morning, Charles set out on the journey, trying to search his memory for everything he knew about fractures. When he arrived at the farm house, he was admitted by a charming young lady. Upon seeing the patient, he was greatly relieved to find a simple fracture with no complications. Mademoiselle Emma came in and assisted with preparing bandages. Charles was struck by the beauty of her flashing brown eyes which appeared to be almost black. When he had finished, she led him into the dining room where he ate and talked with Mademoiselle Emma about the patient. Upon leaving, he promised to come back in three days. But instead, he found himself returning the next day and went twice a week regularly in spite of the long ride. In about eight weeks, the patient was able to walk about. During the entire episode, Charles never questioned himself as to why he went so often to see the patient, but his wife did. She made inquiries and found out that the patient had a daughter who had been brought up in a convent and was known to give herself airs. After much complaining, nagging, and pleading, Charles' wife finally extracted a promise from him that he would not go there again. As time passed, Charles' mother and wife both began to pick at him incessantly. Suddenly it was learned that the lawyer who had been administering Heloise's estate had absconded with nearly all her money. Furthermore, it was discovered upon investigation that her remaining property was of little value and that the woman had lied about her wealth prior to the wedding. Bovary's parents had a violent argument about this, and Heloise was very upset. About a week later she had a stroke and died.", "analysis": "In this chapter, we meet Mademoiselle Emma. But Flaubert is interested in presenting her from a distant view -- that is, we hear about her first from other viewpoints. He is saving his personal or direct introduction of Emma until a later chapter and is here presenting Charles' and Heloise's view of Emma. This technique is called the delayed emergence. It functions to arouse the reader's interest in the main character. It is a part of Charles' character that he is not even aware of why he went so often to see his patient. It might even be said that he was surprised when his wife accused him of going solely to see Mademoiselle Emma. Denied of the privilege of seeing her, Charles determined that he could then justifiably love her at a distance. Again, note that Charles' present wife is such a shrew, is so bad and so demanding and so ugly , and is so unpleasant that by contrast Emma seems like an angel to Charles. Thus Charles' miserable experiences with his first wife prepare him to be so indulgent and yielding to Emma later in his life. The reader who is not aware of Flaubert's method of evoking a scene is missing a large measure of the greatness of this novel. The reader should select a passage, such as Charles' arrival at his patient's house, and examine the careful way in which Flaubert makes you feel this scene. His choice of language and careful description paints an accurate description of what he is writing about. The technique that Flaubert uses may be compared to that of a camera coming slowly in for a close shot and then moving subtly away for another shot."}

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 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 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. 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 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 sew some pads. As she was a long time before she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails. They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness. The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he left. Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre, was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written in Gothic letters "To dear Papa." First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night. Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full 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 were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she asked. "My whip, if you please," he answered. He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip. Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident. Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen. As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to 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 wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots. She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said "Good-bye"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk. During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called "a good education"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider 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 he puts 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 herself by allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted town misses." And she went on-- "The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess. Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears." For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings. Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. 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 the house. But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-2

Late one night Charles was awakened with a request to come 18 miles out in the country and set a broken leg. He sent the messenger on ahead and promised to follow in a couple of hours. At four in the morning, Charles set out on the journey, trying to search his memory for everything he knew about fractures. When he arrived at the farm house, he was admitted by a charming young lady. Upon seeing the patient, he was greatly relieved to find a simple fracture with no complications. Mademoiselle Emma came in and assisted with preparing bandages. Charles was struck by the beauty of her flashing brown eyes which appeared to be almost black. When he had finished, she led him into the dining room where he ate and talked with Mademoiselle Emma about the patient. Upon leaving, he promised to come back in three days. But instead, he found himself returning the next day and went twice a week regularly in spite of the long ride. In about eight weeks, the patient was able to walk about. During the entire episode, Charles never questioned himself as to why he went so often to see the patient, but his wife did. She made inquiries and found out that the patient had a daughter who had been brought up in a convent and was known to give herself airs. After much complaining, nagging, and pleading, Charles' wife finally extracted a promise from him that he would not go there again. As time passed, Charles' mother and wife both began to pick at him incessantly. Suddenly it was learned that the lawyer who had been administering Heloise's estate had absconded with nearly all her money. Furthermore, it was discovered upon investigation that her remaining property was of little value and that the woman had lied about her wealth prior to the wedding. Bovary's parents had a violent argument about this, and Heloise was very upset. About a week later she had a stroke and died.

In this chapter, we meet Mademoiselle Emma. But Flaubert is interested in presenting her from a distant view -- that is, we hear about her first from other viewpoints. He is saving his personal or direct introduction of Emma until a later chapter and is here presenting Charles' and Heloise's view of Emma. This technique is called the delayed emergence. It functions to arouse the reader's interest in the main character. It is a part of Charles' character that he is not even aware of why he went so often to see his patient. It might even be said that he was surprised when his wife accused him of going solely to see Mademoiselle Emma. Denied of the privilege of seeing her, Charles determined that he could then justifiably love her at a distance. Again, note that Charles' present wife is such a shrew, is so bad and so demanding and so ugly , and is so unpleasant that by contrast Emma seems like an angel to Charles. Thus Charles' miserable experiences with his first wife prepare him to be so indulgent and yielding to Emma later in his life. The reader who is not aware of Flaubert's method of evoking a scene is missing a large measure of the greatness of this novel. The reader should select a passage, such as Charles' arrival at his patient's house, and examine the careful way in which Flaubert makes you feel this scene. His choice of language and careful description paints an accurate description of what he is writing about. The technique that Flaubert uses may be compared to that of a camera coming slowly in for a close shot and then moving subtly away for another shot.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_2_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-3", "summary": "Sometime after, Roualt paid Charles a call to settle his bill and to offer his condolences. He invited Bovary to visit at the farm. Charles accepted the offer and became a frequent guest at the Roualt house. In these circumstances, Bovary's interest in Emma matured, and soon he found himself in love with her. Emma's father had never been a very good farmer. He had debts and constantly drank the best cider rather than sending it to the market. Thus, when he realized that Charles was interested in Emma, he resolved to give his consent, especially since Emma had never been very good around the farm. Thus Charles' proposal was accepted. Charles and Emma decided that the wedding would take place as soon as Charles was out of mourning. He visited often and they discussed the details of the wedding. Emma would have preferred a midnight wedding with torches, but her father would not stand for that. Instead, there was a traditional wedding with a party that lasted sixteen hours.", "analysis": "We should note with what delight Charles observes everything that Emma does. He is charmed with her looks, her way of talking, her actions, and everything about her. He can find no fault with her. This attitude or view toward his future wife will essentially continue during his entire married life, making it easy for Emma to commit her indiscretions. Flaubert begins already to offer little hints as to Emma's character. We see that her father thinks of her as rather useless around the farm and is not sorry to lose her in marriage. Emma's romanticism, which will later be seen to be the cause of her tragic life, is here suggested by her desire to have a midnight wedding with torches. This is the first hint that Emma is a person who seeks something of the strange and marvelous, something that will break the monotony of living in a dull world."}

One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could. "I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit." Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life. Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her. He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked. He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass. One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders. After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass. She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs. She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid! She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering. Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married, and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the Bertaux. Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips. Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid as on the stage. *A mixture of coffee and spirits. When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property," as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said to himself, "I'll give her to him." At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux. The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it-- "Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to you." They stopped. Charles was silent. "Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault, laughing softly. "Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles. "I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge." And he went off. Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging. The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year. The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be entrees. Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following.

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-3

Sometime after, Roualt paid Charles a call to settle his bill and to offer his condolences. He invited Bovary to visit at the farm. Charles accepted the offer and became a frequent guest at the Roualt house. In these circumstances, Bovary's interest in Emma matured, and soon he found himself in love with her. Emma's father had never been a very good farmer. He had debts and constantly drank the best cider rather than sending it to the market. Thus, when he realized that Charles was interested in Emma, he resolved to give his consent, especially since Emma had never been very good around the farm. Thus Charles' proposal was accepted. Charles and Emma decided that the wedding would take place as soon as Charles was out of mourning. He visited often and they discussed the details of the wedding. Emma would have preferred a midnight wedding with torches, but her father would not stand for that. Instead, there was a traditional wedding with a party that lasted sixteen hours.

We should note with what delight Charles observes everything that Emma does. He is charmed with her looks, her way of talking, her actions, and everything about her. He can find no fault with her. This attitude or view toward his future wife will essentially continue during his entire married life, making it easy for Emma to commit her indiscretions. Flaubert begins already to offer little hints as to Emma's character. We see that her father thinks of her as rather useless around the farm and is not sorry to lose her in marriage. Emma's romanticism, which will later be seen to be the cause of her tragic life, is here suggested by her desire to have a midnight wedding with torches. This is the first hint that Emma is a person who seeks something of the strange and marvelous, something that will break the monotony of living in a dull world.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_1_chapters_4_to_5.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_3_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapters 4-5

chapters 4-5

{"name": "Chapters 4-5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapters-45", "summary": "The wedding was a gala affair with many friends and relatives present. There was much good fun; the only unpleasant note was the sullen attitude of Bovary's mother who resented not having had a hand in the plans or preparations. Charles' great happiness was apparent to all who saw him, and Emma too seemed pleased by her marriage. After two days at Roualt's farm, the couple returned to Tostes. Charles proudly led Emma into her new house, the furnishings and arrangement of which are described in great detail. Emma discovered her predecessor's wedding bouquet on display in the bedroom, where Bovary had thoughtlessly left it. She indulged in some morbid thoughts, but her sorrowful mood passed quickly in the excitement of the moment. In the days that followed, Bovary's every thought was with his wife, and all his efforts were devoted to pleasing her. He took her for walks and enjoyed fulfilling her every whim. He had never known that life could be so pleasant. But Emma wondered why she had not attained the happiness she expected from marriage and what happened to such words as \"bliss\" \"passion,\" and \"ecstasy,\" words that had sounded so wonderful when read in books.", "analysis": "Chapter 4 devotes itself to creating a realistic picture of a country wedding. Flaubert, in a few masterful strokes, makes us feel the entire provincial life. Scenes such as these account for Flaubert's title as the first master of perfect realism. In both chapters, the reader should note how utterly Charles dotes on Emma. His dogged devotion accounts for his later blindness to Emma's faults and his later desire to fulfill her every whim. Emma's desire to change the house should not be seen as a touch of individuality on her part. Rather, she will be seen to be constantly desiring a change, thinking that in every change she will find the happiness that she is seeking. The first blow to Emma's romantic nature comes when she sees the still-preserved bridal bouquet held over from Charles' first marriage. This takes away from the sentimentality she is trying to attach to her own bouquet. At the end of Chapter 5, Emma's true nature is beginning to emerge. She is already disillusioned because marriage is not as great in real life as it was in her books. She is disappointed because she has not found all of the \"bliss, passion, and ecstasy\" that she had read about in novels. This idea will now be developed as the main theme of the book. That is, the contrast Emma finds between the realistic world and her dreams of what life should be."}

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to. From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. According to their different social positions they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt. And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs. The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little birds from afar. The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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. 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. 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.

Chapters 4-5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapters-45

The wedding was a gala affair with many friends and relatives present. There was much good fun; the only unpleasant note was the sullen attitude of Bovary's mother who resented not having had a hand in the plans or preparations. Charles' great happiness was apparent to all who saw him, and Emma too seemed pleased by her marriage. After two days at Roualt's farm, the couple returned to Tostes. Charles proudly led Emma into her new house, the furnishings and arrangement of which are described in great detail. Emma discovered her predecessor's wedding bouquet on display in the bedroom, where Bovary had thoughtlessly left it. She indulged in some morbid thoughts, but her sorrowful mood passed quickly in the excitement of the moment. In the days that followed, Bovary's every thought was with his wife, and all his efforts were devoted to pleasing her. He took her for walks and enjoyed fulfilling her every whim. He had never known that life could be so pleasant. But Emma wondered why she had not attained the happiness she expected from marriage and what happened to such words as "bliss" "passion," and "ecstasy," words that had sounded so wonderful when read in books.

Chapter 4 devotes itself to creating a realistic picture of a country wedding. Flaubert, in a few masterful strokes, makes us feel the entire provincial life. Scenes such as these account for Flaubert's title as the first master of perfect realism. In both chapters, the reader should note how utterly Charles dotes on Emma. His dogged devotion accounts for his later blindness to Emma's faults and his later desire to fulfill her every whim. Emma's desire to change the house should not be seen as a touch of individuality on her part. Rather, she will be seen to be constantly desiring a change, thinking that in every change she will find the happiness that she is seeking. The first blow to Emma's romantic nature comes when she sees the still-preserved bridal bouquet held over from Charles' first marriage. This takes away from the sentimentality she is trying to attach to her own bouquet. At the end of Chapter 5, Emma's true nature is beginning to emerge. She is already disillusioned because marriage is not as great in real life as it was in her books. She is disappointed because she has not found all of the "bliss, passion, and ecstasy" that she had read about in novels. This idea will now be developed as the main theme of the book. That is, the contrast Emma finds between the realistic world and her dreams of what life should be.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_4_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-6", "summary": "Emma recalls her thirteenth year, when her father took her to the convent to live. She enjoyed the convent at first; she liked talking with the nuns and she enjoyed answering the difficult questions correctly. But she soon relinquished herself to the languid atmosphere of the convent and found herself admiring the beauty of the chapel rather than listening to the lessons. She gave herself over to romantic notions concerning the church and dreamed of the \"sick lamb\" and the metaphors of a \"betrothed spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting,\" and she listened only to the romantic melancholy of the lamentations. There was an old maid who came to the convent and who would sing romantic ballads to the girls on the sly. Emma then read voraciously from tales of romance involving lonely meetings, secret encounters, gloomy forests, and troubles of the heart. She became enthusiastic over Sir Walter Scott and dreamed of living in some romantic palace where a cavalier with a white plume could come galloping up and rescue her. When her mother died, Emma had a lock of her dead mother's hair mounted and wrote her father that when she died she would like to be buried in the same grave. She gave her time to reading romantic, sentimental poetry and while enjoying the mysteries of the church, she rebelled against the discipline. When her father took her from the convent, she enjoyed managing the servants for a while, but soon tired of it and longed for the convent. When Charles appeared, she found it difficult to believe that the quietness and dullness of her romance was what she had read about in the novels.", "analysis": "The earliest chapters have been concerned with Emma only from an indirect view. Now Flaubert is ready to present his view or analysis of Emma. As pointed out earlier, this technique -- a delayed emergence of the main character -- serves to heighten the reader's interest in hearing about the main character. This chapter presents Emma as an incurable romantic, a person who lives in a dream world, in a world of fiction rather than in the real world. She is a dreamer and a sentimentalist. When young, she had read Paul and Virginia, a highly sentimental and romanticized view of life and love. This novel of idyllic love contributed to Emma's dreamy sentimentalism. The chapter then proceeds to show how a person already endowed with a strong degree of sentimentality was placed in a type of life in the convent which nourished her already excessive tendency toward this type of sentimentalism. In religion she searched for the unusual, the mystic, the dreamy. In the convent, she read stories of romance while being unable to see the real world. She concentrated her attention upon the beautiful and artistic rather than finding the basic elements of a natural life. Novels read on the sly only increased the value of the romance by being forbidden. Thus, left alone with her dreams, she developed into a dreamy girl who wanted all the elements of romantic fiction to come alive in her own life. She longs for old castles, for romantic lovers charging up to a balcony on a white horse, for moonlight meetings in far-away places. She feels the need of excitement and mystery, and cannot tolerate the normal life of everyday living. Thus, when Charles comes calling, she cannot understand why her life wasn't suddenly filled with passion, bliss and ecstasy. Another of Emma's characteristics is suggested in this chapter: Emma's constant need for a change. She at first enjoyed being out of the convent and at home managing the servants, but then grew rapidly tired of this and longed again for the convent. Thus throughout the novel, Emma will begin one project and drop it only to begin another, always in the constant search for something new and exciting."}

She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, 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. Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil. When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the "Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV. In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards. When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-6

Emma recalls her thirteenth year, when her father took her to the convent to live. She enjoyed the convent at first; she liked talking with the nuns and she enjoyed answering the difficult questions correctly. But she soon relinquished herself to the languid atmosphere of the convent and found herself admiring the beauty of the chapel rather than listening to the lessons. She gave herself over to romantic notions concerning the church and dreamed of the "sick lamb" and the metaphors of a "betrothed spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting," and she listened only to the romantic melancholy of the lamentations. There was an old maid who came to the convent and who would sing romantic ballads to the girls on the sly. Emma then read voraciously from tales of romance involving lonely meetings, secret encounters, gloomy forests, and troubles of the heart. She became enthusiastic over Sir Walter Scott and dreamed of living in some romantic palace where a cavalier with a white plume could come galloping up and rescue her. When her mother died, Emma had a lock of her dead mother's hair mounted and wrote her father that when she died she would like to be buried in the same grave. She gave her time to reading romantic, sentimental poetry and while enjoying the mysteries of the church, she rebelled against the discipline. When her father took her from the convent, she enjoyed managing the servants for a while, but soon tired of it and longed for the convent. When Charles appeared, she found it difficult to believe that the quietness and dullness of her romance was what she had read about in the novels.

The earliest chapters have been concerned with Emma only from an indirect view. Now Flaubert is ready to present his view or analysis of Emma. As pointed out earlier, this technique -- a delayed emergence of the main character -- serves to heighten the reader's interest in hearing about the main character. This chapter presents Emma as an incurable romantic, a person who lives in a dream world, in a world of fiction rather than in the real world. She is a dreamer and a sentimentalist. When young, she had read Paul and Virginia, a highly sentimental and romanticized view of life and love. This novel of idyllic love contributed to Emma's dreamy sentimentalism. The chapter then proceeds to show how a person already endowed with a strong degree of sentimentality was placed in a type of life in the convent which nourished her already excessive tendency toward this type of sentimentalism. In religion she searched for the unusual, the mystic, the dreamy. In the convent, she read stories of romance while being unable to see the real world. She concentrated her attention upon the beautiful and artistic rather than finding the basic elements of a natural life. Novels read on the sly only increased the value of the romance by being forbidden. Thus, left alone with her dreams, she developed into a dreamy girl who wanted all the elements of romantic fiction to come alive in her own life. She longs for old castles, for romantic lovers charging up to a balcony on a white horse, for moonlight meetings in far-away places. She feels the need of excitement and mystery, and cannot tolerate the normal life of everyday living. Thus, when Charles comes calling, she cannot understand why her life wasn't suddenly filled with passion, bliss and ecstasy. Another of Emma's characteristics is suggested in this chapter: Emma's constant need for a change. She at first enjoyed being out of the convent and at home managing the servants, but then grew rapidly tired of this and longed again for the convent. Thus throughout the novel, Emma will begin one project and drop it only to begin another, always in the constant search for something new and exciting.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/07.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_5_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 7

chapter 7

{"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-7", "summary": "Emma wondered if the honeymoon was actually to be the finest part of her life. She wondered why she couldn't be standing in a Swiss chalet with a husband in a dashing outfit of velvet, soft boots, peaked hat, and so forth. As Charles' outward attraction for her increased, she began inwardly to detach herself from him. As she observed Charles, she noted that he simply trudged through every day. His talk was dull, he provoked no emotions in her, he had no desire to do or see anything, and he couldn't even explain a riding term in one of her novels. Ideally, she dreamed of a man who would introduce her to a multitude of activities and passions, who would inspire her to live to the fullest. And when she perceived that Charles was perfectly content simply to be with her, she hated him for his placid immobility and contentment. Charles, on the other hand, found no fault with his wife. She was an excellent manager and played the piano with skill. All her acts gave him pleasure, and in every way he was content with his life and good fortune. Whenever Mrs. Bovary visited, however, he was confounded by the coldness between his wife and mother. Emma resented the older woman's advice or interference, and the mother was jealous of her son's affection for his wife. Meanwhile, Emma continued to crave the exalted and passionate love which she sadly felt had been denied her. She criticized herself for ever having married and suffered from envy of the imagined happiness of the girls with whom she had gone to school. One September the Bovarys were invited to a ball at the chateau of the Marquis d'Andervilliers, whom Charles had treated. The Marquis was far above them in social rank but wanted to demonstrate his gratitude for the service Bovary had done him. Emma looked forward to this unique event with great eagerness.", "analysis": "Emma continues her dreaming of another life and another husband. She pictures to herself a fabulous life with another person and begins to detach herself from Charles. The contrast between her dreams and her life is brought out rather concisely in two paragraphs, the first describing Charles' commonplace banalities, his slow plodding ways, his lack of emotional stimulation and his contentment, whereas in her dreams, she sees a man sweeping her off her feet and introducing her to all the intense passions of life. Finally, to observe her dull husband being content with a snack, falling into bed, and snoring fills her with indescribable longings for another life. This chapter begins to depict the complete contrast between Emma and Charles. His plodding nature and his routine ardors and embraces destroyed all the excitement in life for Emma. She becomes increasingly irritated with his coarse ways and his dullness. This chapter marks the beginning of her life of waiting for something exciting to happen. Her entire life will be characterized by her unfilled longing and incessant waiting for some excitement to enter into it. Her disappointment prompted her first words to be spoken in the novel: \"O God, O God, why did I get married?\" Previous to this statement, we have heard about Emma and about her thoughts, but significantly, these are her first spoken words. The excitement that Emma has been waiting for comes in the form of an invitation to La Vaubyessard. This will soon become one of the high points of her life."}

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage. If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him. Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel. A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him. Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand. Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was extended to Bovary. Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife. He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his door in his wool-work slippers. He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored. As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good enough for the country." His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her ways too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger. In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively. Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients. And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved. When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner. A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you. She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?" She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles." Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling. Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl round her shoulders and rose. In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak. But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard. Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it his business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple. On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles held a bandbox between his knees. They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit to show the way for the carriages.

Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-7

Emma wondered if the honeymoon was actually to be the finest part of her life. She wondered why she couldn't be standing in a Swiss chalet with a husband in a dashing outfit of velvet, soft boots, peaked hat, and so forth. As Charles' outward attraction for her increased, she began inwardly to detach herself from him. As she observed Charles, she noted that he simply trudged through every day. His talk was dull, he provoked no emotions in her, he had no desire to do or see anything, and he couldn't even explain a riding term in one of her novels. Ideally, she dreamed of a man who would introduce her to a multitude of activities and passions, who would inspire her to live to the fullest. And when she perceived that Charles was perfectly content simply to be with her, she hated him for his placid immobility and contentment. Charles, on the other hand, found no fault with his wife. She was an excellent manager and played the piano with skill. All her acts gave him pleasure, and in every way he was content with his life and good fortune. Whenever Mrs. Bovary visited, however, he was confounded by the coldness between his wife and mother. Emma resented the older woman's advice or interference, and the mother was jealous of her son's affection for his wife. Meanwhile, Emma continued to crave the exalted and passionate love which she sadly felt had been denied her. She criticized herself for ever having married and suffered from envy of the imagined happiness of the girls with whom she had gone to school. One September the Bovarys were invited to a ball at the chateau of the Marquis d'Andervilliers, whom Charles had treated. The Marquis was far above them in social rank but wanted to demonstrate his gratitude for the service Bovary had done him. Emma looked forward to this unique event with great eagerness.

Emma continues her dreaming of another life and another husband. She pictures to herself a fabulous life with another person and begins to detach herself from Charles. The contrast between her dreams and her life is brought out rather concisely in two paragraphs, the first describing Charles' commonplace banalities, his slow plodding ways, his lack of emotional stimulation and his contentment, whereas in her dreams, she sees a man sweeping her off her feet and introducing her to all the intense passions of life. Finally, to observe her dull husband being content with a snack, falling into bed, and snoring fills her with indescribable longings for another life. This chapter begins to depict the complete contrast between Emma and Charles. His plodding nature and his routine ardors and embraces destroyed all the excitement in life for Emma. She becomes increasingly irritated with his coarse ways and his dullness. This chapter marks the beginning of her life of waiting for something exciting to happen. Her entire life will be characterized by her unfilled longing and incessant waiting for some excitement to enter into it. Her disappointment prompted her first words to be spoken in the novel: "O God, O God, why did I get married?" Previous to this statement, we have heard about Emma and about her thoughts, but significantly, these are her first spoken words. The excitement that Emma has been waiting for comes in the form of an invitation to La Vaubyessard. This will soon become one of the high points of her life.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/08.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_6_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-8", "summary": "The chateau was a building of stately proportions, situated on a large and prosperous estate. The many rooms were filled with expensive and artistic furnishings and decorations. The ball was attended by all the aristocracy and gentry of the surrounding area. Emma was overjoyed at the opportunity of being able to move freely in such noble company. During their stay at the chateau she constantly berated Bovary, whom she felt looked like a country buffoon and whose presence embarrassed her. Emma dressed and attempted to behave as if she too were a great lady and mingled with the other guests. All night she basked in the reflected glory of those around her. The ball and the people at it seemed to be transported from out of the novels and dreams she had long cherished. Emma was so ecstatic she never noticed that most of the guests ignored her. The high point of her evening came when a man known only as \"Vicomte\" danced with her. On the trip home Emma suffered from bitter disappointment that she, who was so obviously entitled to preferment, could not live this way all year round. In her disillusionment she saw Bovary as a clumsy, simple oaf. Back home her frustration caused her to be cross with him, and in a fit of pique she fired the maid, despite the woman's devotion and good service. Each day Emma attempted to recall the great events of the ball, but in time they became vague memories.", "analysis": "This chapter presents in reality all of the grand elegance that Emma had dreamed and read about. Here then are her dreams turning into reality. Everything that she dreamed of is here: the grand dinner, the magnificent ball, the elegant dances, the discussions of faraway people and even an old man who had slept with the queen, and a young lady carrying on an intrigue with a young man. And finally, Emma's being requested to dance with a Viscount testifies to her own superiority over her upbringing. This chapter focuses almost all of the attention on Emma. It is important here to see that Emma does possess the necessary qualities so as to blend in with an aristocratic world. Unlike Charles, who stands limply around for five hours watching a game he doesn't understand, Emma is moving graciously and rather charmingly amid this aristocratic society. Even though she does not attract people to her, she seems to blend in. Her invitation to dance with the Viscount and her ability to learn the dance attest to her acceptance. Thus, Emma's later degradation should be contrasted to the success she attains here, and by the comparison, Emma's later plight will be seen to be more pathetic. Note the cigar box that Charles found. Emma will later dawdle over this as a reminder of her experience at the ball and convince herself that it belonged to the Viscount. Returning to her own drab surroundings, Emma can barely tolerate the dull routine of everyone doing the same dull things. She therefore loses herself in her reveries about the ball."}

The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old chateau. Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule. It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church. Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their strokes. On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black letters. She read: "Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1587." And on another: "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf. The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire. At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness. Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays; bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life. Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses. But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere. The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball. Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers were tight across the belly. "My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said. "Dancing?" repeated Emma. "Yes!" "Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place. Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added. Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish dressing. He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green. Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder. "Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me." One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She went downstairs restraining herself from running. Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She sat down on a form near the door. The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans. Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis d'or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room; then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again. A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress, or face. Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women. A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls. They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus," and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors that had disfigured the name of his horse. The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth. A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing. "Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has fallen behind the sofa?" The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began smelling her bouquet. After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door. *With almond milk At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz. Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a dozen persons. One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well. They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands. When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more. Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others. Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed. Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees were going up into his body." He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots. Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out. The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up. Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep. There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables. Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness room shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall. Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and Marchioness and set out again for Tostes. Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it. They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop. A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces that had broken. But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a carriage. "There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening after dinner." "Why, do you smoke?" she asked. "Sometimes, when I get a chance." He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag. When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper. Nastasie answered rudely. "Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you warning." For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel. Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully. "How good it is to be at home again!" Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place. "Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last. "Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied. Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff. "You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully. He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard. The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced. The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma. Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah! I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance. She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.

Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-8

The chateau was a building of stately proportions, situated on a large and prosperous estate. The many rooms were filled with expensive and artistic furnishings and decorations. The ball was attended by all the aristocracy and gentry of the surrounding area. Emma was overjoyed at the opportunity of being able to move freely in such noble company. During their stay at the chateau she constantly berated Bovary, whom she felt looked like a country buffoon and whose presence embarrassed her. Emma dressed and attempted to behave as if she too were a great lady and mingled with the other guests. All night she basked in the reflected glory of those around her. The ball and the people at it seemed to be transported from out of the novels and dreams she had long cherished. Emma was so ecstatic she never noticed that most of the guests ignored her. The high point of her evening came when a man known only as "Vicomte" danced with her. On the trip home Emma suffered from bitter disappointment that she, who was so obviously entitled to preferment, could not live this way all year round. In her disillusionment she saw Bovary as a clumsy, simple oaf. Back home her frustration caused her to be cross with him, and in a fit of pique she fired the maid, despite the woman's devotion and good service. Each day Emma attempted to recall the great events of the ball, but in time they became vague memories.

This chapter presents in reality all of the grand elegance that Emma had dreamed and read about. Here then are her dreams turning into reality. Everything that she dreamed of is here: the grand dinner, the magnificent ball, the elegant dances, the discussions of faraway people and even an old man who had slept with the queen, and a young lady carrying on an intrigue with a young man. And finally, Emma's being requested to dance with a Viscount testifies to her own superiority over her upbringing. This chapter focuses almost all of the attention on Emma. It is important here to see that Emma does possess the necessary qualities so as to blend in with an aristocratic world. Unlike Charles, who stands limply around for five hours watching a game he doesn't understand, Emma is moving graciously and rather charmingly amid this aristocratic society. Even though she does not attract people to her, she seems to blend in. Her invitation to dance with the Viscount and her ability to learn the dance attest to her acceptance. Thus, Emma's later degradation should be contrasted to the success she attains here, and by the comparison, Emma's later plight will be seen to be more pathetic. Note the cigar box that Charles found. Emma will later dawdle over this as a reminder of her experience at the ball and convince herself that it belonged to the Viscount. Returning to her own drab surroundings, Emma can barely tolerate the dull routine of everyone doing the same dull things. She therefore loses herself in her reveries about the ball.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/09.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_7_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 9

chapter 9

{"name": "Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-9", "summary": "Emma buried herself in her fantasies and dreamed of living in Paris, among the nobility. She visualized life in the capital as a constant round of balls, parties, amours, and other exciting things. She read novels and travel books voraciously and studied maps of the city. Much of her time was spent planning imaginary trips, adventures, secret meetings, and visits to the theater or opera. The reality of life at Tostes became unbearable to her, and she was even more critical of Bovary. At first Emma attempted to add little touches of elegance to her humdrum life, such as fancy lampshades and silver, but this soon became an unsatisfactory solution to her craving, even though it pleased Charles. Emma's despair became more intense when she finally was forced to realize that there would be no further invitations to the chateau, and in her depression she gave up her music, sketching, and other pursuits. She was often sad and lonely, and during the long winter her plight became worse. She seemed to cultivate her unhappiness and self-pity by concentrating on her unattainable aspirations, and by finding so little with which to occupy herself. Most of her time was now spent staring down from her window at the village street. She was sullen and rarely spoke to Charles. As her condition became even worse, Emma's moods began to fluctuate between extreme forms of behavior. Sometimes she was very active, sometimes lethargic and slovenly, sometimes nervous and stingy, sometimes capricious and temperamental, but always she was unpredictable and difficult to get along with. Soon she became physically ill. None of Charles' worried efforts to cure her were successful, and he took her to Rouen, to see the medical professor under whom he had studied. This learned doctor recommended a change of scene for the sake of Emma's health, since it was evidently a nervous disorder and she complained so much of disliking Tostes. Despite the fact that he had built a flourishing practice in the village, Charles was willing to sacrifice all for Emma's welfare. After making some inquiries, he decided to move to the town of Yonville, which was located in a nice area and where a doctor was needed. While Emma was helping with the packing, she pricked her hand on her old bridal bouquet, which was now dried up, frayed and yellow with dust. She threw it into the fire and watched it burn. By the time they moved to the new town, Emma was pregnant.", "analysis": "Perhaps no chapter in the novel presents Flaubert's essential theme and meaning as well as does this concluding chapter of Part One. Flaubert vividly depicts the exhausting and enervating results of a woman who expends all her energy in dreams and futile longings. The chapter opens with Emma's recalling the events of the ball, reliving certain episodes and then progressing to envisioning new incidents which might have happened. She wastes, then, her energies in imagining that the cigar case belonged to the Viscount, that he is now in Paris and is pursuing a life of intrigue and excitement. She fritters away her time and energy by tracing walks through Paris on a map she bought, she imagines shopping in Paris, she subscribes to Paris magazines and she dreams of the Viscount. But Flaubert is able to make us all see that Emma's frustrated longing for a different type of life is a quality that we all possess. Thus he universalizes Emma's longings so as to make an indirect comment concerning this type of wasted and futile activity. Emma constantly contrasts her real environment and surroundings with those she conjectures in her dreams. The real seems completely intolerable: \"The nearer home things came, the more she shrank from all thought of them.\" In her dreams, new and exciting things happen every day, but in her real life in Tostes, the same things happen over and over again, so that \"the whole of her immediate environment -- dull countryside, imbecile petty bourgeois, life in its ordinariness -- seemed a freak, a particular piece of bad luck that had seized on her.\" Therefore, she tries to introduce some elegance into her life; she hires a fourteen-year-old girl and tries to teach her how to become a \"lady's maid.\" Emma's frustration and longings cause her to give up her piano, her needlework, drawing, care for the house and all other useful activity. Instead, she fritters away her time in daydreaming. Rather than making herself useful in some way, she drains herself of all her energy by these longings for another life. In waiting for something to happen, she becomes a pathetic case of a woman who exhausts herself in these futile longings until she is physically sick. In other words, she indulges in her own misery until her self-indulgences cause her sickness. She has had a fleeting glimpse at emotions that transcend the dull routine life at Tostes, and her intense longings for these more sublime emotions cause her sickness. The pathos of Emma's life is that she does possess enough sensitivity to be aware of feelings and emotions greater than those of Charles, but is unable to find a suitable outlet for these emotions. Emma's plight is symbolically depicted in the discovery and burning of her bridal bouquet. What was once to be the symbol of a new and exciting life filled with new emotions now is seen as a faded, frayed, dusty object on which she pricks her finger. Thus, the burning of the bridal bouquet signifies the end of her marriage and prepares us for her promiscuity later on. It is not just the end of a marriage, but also the end of her life at Tostes, because now that they are moving, Emma can perhaps be reawakened to a different life."}

Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case. She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odour of the lining--a mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her pomade-pots. At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to herself. And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into which her dream died. She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles of theatres. She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires. Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened out beyond, lighting up her other dreams. Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries. The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could into the manger. To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard, Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone in her bed after she had said her prayers. Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris. Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous her chemise. She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life. He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established. The country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children, never went to the public house, and, moreover, his morals inspired confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath, or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the "devil's own wrist." Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "La Ruche Medicale," a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat? She could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition. An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself. "What a man! What a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips. Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples. Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation. Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock. At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow. Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea. From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or visits. After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast. She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her? Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing irritated her. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling. How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away over the fields. But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn. The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass, sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp had to be lighted. On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white scabs on his face. Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame restrained her. Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the bell of a public house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the theatre--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church, sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skullcap over his ears and his vest of lasting. Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room, the head of a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of a finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going. But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point of her knife. She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman did not interfere again. Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal hands. Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes. Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which made her husband open his eyes widely. Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these must surely yield. She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart. Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more. On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms. As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere. From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite. It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and "when he was beginning to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed. After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market town called Yonville-l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's health did not improve. One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney. When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant. Part II

Chapter 9

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-i-chapter-9

Emma buried herself in her fantasies and dreamed of living in Paris, among the nobility. She visualized life in the capital as a constant round of balls, parties, amours, and other exciting things. She read novels and travel books voraciously and studied maps of the city. Much of her time was spent planning imaginary trips, adventures, secret meetings, and visits to the theater or opera. The reality of life at Tostes became unbearable to her, and she was even more critical of Bovary. At first Emma attempted to add little touches of elegance to her humdrum life, such as fancy lampshades and silver, but this soon became an unsatisfactory solution to her craving, even though it pleased Charles. Emma's despair became more intense when she finally was forced to realize that there would be no further invitations to the chateau, and in her depression she gave up her music, sketching, and other pursuits. She was often sad and lonely, and during the long winter her plight became worse. She seemed to cultivate her unhappiness and self-pity by concentrating on her unattainable aspirations, and by finding so little with which to occupy herself. Most of her time was now spent staring down from her window at the village street. She was sullen and rarely spoke to Charles. As her condition became even worse, Emma's moods began to fluctuate between extreme forms of behavior. Sometimes she was very active, sometimes lethargic and slovenly, sometimes nervous and stingy, sometimes capricious and temperamental, but always she was unpredictable and difficult to get along with. Soon she became physically ill. None of Charles' worried efforts to cure her were successful, and he took her to Rouen, to see the medical professor under whom he had studied. This learned doctor recommended a change of scene for the sake of Emma's health, since it was evidently a nervous disorder and she complained so much of disliking Tostes. Despite the fact that he had built a flourishing practice in the village, Charles was willing to sacrifice all for Emma's welfare. After making some inquiries, he decided to move to the town of Yonville, which was located in a nice area and where a doctor was needed. While Emma was helping with the packing, she pricked her hand on her old bridal bouquet, which was now dried up, frayed and yellow with dust. She threw it into the fire and watched it burn. By the time they moved to the new town, Emma was pregnant.

Perhaps no chapter in the novel presents Flaubert's essential theme and meaning as well as does this concluding chapter of Part One. Flaubert vividly depicts the exhausting and enervating results of a woman who expends all her energy in dreams and futile longings. The chapter opens with Emma's recalling the events of the ball, reliving certain episodes and then progressing to envisioning new incidents which might have happened. She wastes, then, her energies in imagining that the cigar case belonged to the Viscount, that he is now in Paris and is pursuing a life of intrigue and excitement. She fritters away her time and energy by tracing walks through Paris on a map she bought, she imagines shopping in Paris, she subscribes to Paris magazines and she dreams of the Viscount. But Flaubert is able to make us all see that Emma's frustrated longing for a different type of life is a quality that we all possess. Thus he universalizes Emma's longings so as to make an indirect comment concerning this type of wasted and futile activity. Emma constantly contrasts her real environment and surroundings with those she conjectures in her dreams. The real seems completely intolerable: "The nearer home things came, the more she shrank from all thought of them." In her dreams, new and exciting things happen every day, but in her real life in Tostes, the same things happen over and over again, so that "the whole of her immediate environment -- dull countryside, imbecile petty bourgeois, life in its ordinariness -- seemed a freak, a particular piece of bad luck that had seized on her." Therefore, she tries to introduce some elegance into her life; she hires a fourteen-year-old girl and tries to teach her how to become a "lady's maid." Emma's frustration and longings cause her to give up her piano, her needlework, drawing, care for the house and all other useful activity. Instead, she fritters away her time in daydreaming. Rather than making herself useful in some way, she drains herself of all her energy by these longings for another life. In waiting for something to happen, she becomes a pathetic case of a woman who exhausts herself in these futile longings until she is physically sick. In other words, she indulges in her own misery until her self-indulgences cause her sickness. She has had a fleeting glimpse at emotions that transcend the dull routine life at Tostes, and her intense longings for these more sublime emotions cause her sickness. The pathos of Emma's life is that she does possess enough sensitivity to be aware of feelings and emotions greater than those of Charles, but is unable to find a suitable outlet for these emotions. Emma's plight is symbolically depicted in the discovery and burning of her bridal bouquet. What was once to be the symbol of a new and exciting life filled with new emotions now is seen as a faded, frayed, dusty object on which she pricks her finger. Thus, the burning of the bridal bouquet signifies the end of her marriage and prepares us for her promiscuity later on. It is not just the end of a marriage, but also the end of her life at Tostes, because now that they are moving, Emma can perhaps be reawakened to a different life.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_1_to_2.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_8_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 1-2

chapters 1-2

{"name": "Chapters 1-2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-12", "summary": "Yonville was a market town located in the center of a farming district, not far from Rouen. The main features of the surrounding region and of the town itself are described in some detail. Various inhabitants of Yonville, including Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper, Hivert and Artemise, her servants, Binet, the tax collector, and Homais, the apothecary, make their first appearances in this chapter. Homais, with whom Bovary had corresponded before deciding to move to Yonville, was an outspoken and pretentious fellow of some education and status. He was always eager to impress people with his knowledge and sophistication, although in fact he did not possess much of either. The Bovarys and Felicite, their new maid, arrived in Yonville after a very tiring trip and an accident in which Emma lost her pet greyhound. She was in her usual irritable mood. Bovary and his wife dined at the inn. They were joined at the table by Homais and his boarder, Leon, a shy young man who was the town lawyer's clerk. During the meal Homais devoted most of his attention to Bovary, seeking to awe him by his extensive acquaintance with science and local affairs. Meanwhile, Emma and Leon fell into conversation. He shared many of her romanticized notions and was also an avid reader of sentimental novels. An immediate rapport sprang up between them. Their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations. Later on, the Bovarys took possession of their new house. Emma recalled the other places in which she had lived and been unhappy. She hoped that the future would bring an improvement in her life.", "analysis": "Flaubert's masterful description and rendition of the town is a masterpiece of realistic writing. It captures all of the mediocrity of a small town. And what Flaubert never says directly, but depicts through his descriptions is that this town is just about the same as was Tostes. Yonville is just as monotonous, routine, and boring as was Tostes. Here, nothing has changed in years and nothing will change. So suddenly, we realize that this town will depress Emma as much as did Tostes. We meet the chemist Homais for the first time. He will develop into a stereotype. It will suffice here to begin to note certain characteristics which make up the stereotype. 1) He is the man who professes to keep up with the times. 2) He feels it is his duty to ridicule the church, therefore aligning himself with the advanced thinkers of the world. 3) He has accumulated many facts which he enjoys reciting, but the reader should note that his facts are of a trivial nature. Emma's first meeting with Leon is an exciting event for her. For the first time in her life, she has met a person who shares the same interest in literature, music, and related subjects. She immediately feels that they are kindred spirits and an immediate rapport sprang up between them. But the reader should note that their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations."}

Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen, between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays. We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver. Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country. Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France, a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints. Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side. At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the finest in the place. *The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of notaries. The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes. The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr. So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior," overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted. The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other the scales of Justice. But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black ground. Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached. At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials. "You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to him one day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally. Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane. On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks. A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist. "Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand. "That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would buy another." "Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow. "Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!" The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on-- "You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floods--" "It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!" "Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?" "Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!" "Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector." Six o'clock struck. Binet came in. He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois. He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way. "It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady. "He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish and never said a word." "Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society-man." "Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady. "Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it is possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on-- "Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my ear!" Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle" were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic. "What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of Cassis*? A glass of wine?" *Black currant liqueur. The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing. When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe. The landlady took up the defence of her curie. "Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong." "Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals." "Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion." The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them." He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door. It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground. Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the yards. An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to go on. Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town. Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in. Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away. When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney. With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door. On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her silently. As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four. Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza; then, turning to his neighbour-- "Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in our 'Hirondelle.'" "That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like change of place." "It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same places." "If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the saddle"-- "But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added. "Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from Russia." "At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man. "Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset." "I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but especially by the side of the sea." "Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon. "And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?" "It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing site." "You play?" she asked. "No, but I am very fond of music," he replied. "Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais, bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor." Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a good deal of show. Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?" "Oh, German music; that which makes you dream." "Have you been to the opera?" "Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish reading for the bar." "As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the chemist, "with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen. Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be able--" "My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading." "Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?" "What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him. "One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes." "That is true! That is true?" she said. "Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?" "I have experienced it," she replied. "That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." "Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature." "In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords so few resources." "Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a lending library." "If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and vicinity." For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks. Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner. When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started. The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company dispersed. As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows. She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly. This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth. And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.

Chapters 1-2

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-12

Yonville was a market town located in the center of a farming district, not far from Rouen. The main features of the surrounding region and of the town itself are described in some detail. Various inhabitants of Yonville, including Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper, Hivert and Artemise, her servants, Binet, the tax collector, and Homais, the apothecary, make their first appearances in this chapter. Homais, with whom Bovary had corresponded before deciding to move to Yonville, was an outspoken and pretentious fellow of some education and status. He was always eager to impress people with his knowledge and sophistication, although in fact he did not possess much of either. The Bovarys and Felicite, their new maid, arrived in Yonville after a very tiring trip and an accident in which Emma lost her pet greyhound. She was in her usual irritable mood. Bovary and his wife dined at the inn. They were joined at the table by Homais and his boarder, Leon, a shy young man who was the town lawyer's clerk. During the meal Homais devoted most of his attention to Bovary, seeking to awe him by his extensive acquaintance with science and local affairs. Meanwhile, Emma and Leon fell into conversation. He shared many of her romanticized notions and was also an avid reader of sentimental novels. An immediate rapport sprang up between them. Their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations. Later on, the Bovarys took possession of their new house. Emma recalled the other places in which she had lived and been unhappy. She hoped that the future would bring an improvement in her life.

Flaubert's masterful description and rendition of the town is a masterpiece of realistic writing. It captures all of the mediocrity of a small town. And what Flaubert never says directly, but depicts through his descriptions is that this town is just about the same as was Tostes. Yonville is just as monotonous, routine, and boring as was Tostes. Here, nothing has changed in years and nothing will change. So suddenly, we realize that this town will depress Emma as much as did Tostes. We meet the chemist Homais for the first time. He will develop into a stereotype. It will suffice here to begin to note certain characteristics which make up the stereotype. 1) He is the man who professes to keep up with the times. 2) He feels it is his duty to ridicule the church, therefore aligning himself with the advanced thinkers of the world. 3) He has accumulated many facts which he enjoys reciting, but the reader should note that his facts are of a trivial nature. Emma's first meeting with Leon is an exciting event for her. For the first time in her life, she has met a person who shares the same interest in literature, music, and related subjects. She immediately feels that they are kindred spirits and an immediate rapport sprang up between them. But the reader should note that their talk consisted of platitudes and conventionalities, but they each interpreted them as sensitive and profound observations.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/12.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_9_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-3", "summary": "All the next day Leon thought about Emma, for their meeting had been a very special event to him. This was the first time that the bashful youth had ever spoken to a lady at such length, and he was surprised at his own eloquence. In the days that followed, Homais was of great assistance to Bovary in establishing himself, although it must be said that the druggist's motives were partly selfish. Charles was a bit gloomy, because his medical practice was slow in starting and he had financial worries. The cost of moving had been high, he had lost money on the sale of the house at Tostes, and there was now a child on the way. However, the thought of having a \"baby Emma\" to love also, and to watch grow, was a source of great joy to him. Emma had originally been surprised by her pregnancy but was now accustomed to the idea. She was eager to have the child, although all the preparations made her impatient since they could not afford the kind of layette she insisted was necessary. She hoped the baby would be a boy, for she felt that only a man could have the freedom and strength to overcome the constraints that had always so frustrated her. The child was born, and after much discussion the name of \"Berthe\" was selected. There was a spirited christening party, and Bovary's parents visited Yonville for a month. One day Emma decided to visit the baby at the home of its wet nurse. She was still weak after her confinement and was beginning to feel faint, when she encountered Leon. She asked him to accompany her. Leon consented and by nightfall, rumors had spread through the town that Madame Bovary was compromising herself. After seeing the child, Madame Bovary was pestered with lots of trivial requests from the nurse. She quickly consented to give the woman more supplies and even some brandy for the woman's husband. Then she and Leon took a long stroll along the river. Even though they didn't say very much to each other, both were aware of a strange bliss and a deeper communication. After Leon left her, he thought how radiantly she stood out, especially amid all the banalities of Yonville.", "analysis": "When Emma first learned she was pregnant, she thought that this could be a new experience for her, could fill her empty life with excitement, especially if it were a boy. But when the girl was born, she soon lost interest in it. Again this shows Emma's erratic nature, her inability to maintain an interest in any aspect of life. Her reaction differs significantly with Charles' and the difference emphasizes the growing breach between them. Charles thinks that with the birth of the child, he will have been through the entire range of human experience. Emma's indiscretion in asking Leon to accompany her, foreshadows her later promiscuities. We have seen that Emma possesses an impetuous nature, and this quality will also contribute to her series of indiscretions. Emma's encounter with the nurse foreshadows her handlings with the various tradesmen which will later take her so deeply in debt. It seems that Emma would rather give in than discuss the needs of the nurse. Later, her financial troubles are a result of her impetuousness and her failure to consider her needs."}

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and reclosed the window. Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation. At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time as a servant. The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year, according to the taste of the customers. The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it all. He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits. Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him "the paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the Doctor. Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two years. Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity. Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated. As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively. She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains. She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was rising. "It is a girl!" said Charles. She turned her head away and fainted. Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made. Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better. Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders. "Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in fashion just now." But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported, but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour. At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement. Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer. Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne. The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs, or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look out for yourself." Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was not the man to respect anything. One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and, without looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the highroad and the fields. It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing; Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest. At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbouring door with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of the Lheureux's shop under the projecting grey awning. Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was beginning to grow tired. "If--" said Leon, not daring to go on. "Have you any business to attend to?" she asked. And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was compromising herself." To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air. They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country. "Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep." The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door, shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs. Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro. Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who had just been sick over her collar. The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show. "She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of her. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't trouble you then." "Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door. The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights. "I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk." After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned round. It was the nurse. "What is it?" Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year that the captain-- "Oh, be quick!" said Emma. "Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--" "But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You bother me!" "Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him." "Do make haste, Mere Rollet!" "Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue." Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing desk. They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling round her. The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk. They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the Rouen theatre. "Are you going?" she asked. "If I can," he answered. Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know. In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water. When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared. Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went out. He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched the sky through his fingers. "How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!" He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had impressed the clerk. As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown. And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions. But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss. In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-3

All the next day Leon thought about Emma, for their meeting had been a very special event to him. This was the first time that the bashful youth had ever spoken to a lady at such length, and he was surprised at his own eloquence. In the days that followed, Homais was of great assistance to Bovary in establishing himself, although it must be said that the druggist's motives were partly selfish. Charles was a bit gloomy, because his medical practice was slow in starting and he had financial worries. The cost of moving had been high, he had lost money on the sale of the house at Tostes, and there was now a child on the way. However, the thought of having a "baby Emma" to love also, and to watch grow, was a source of great joy to him. Emma had originally been surprised by her pregnancy but was now accustomed to the idea. She was eager to have the child, although all the preparations made her impatient since they could not afford the kind of layette she insisted was necessary. She hoped the baby would be a boy, for she felt that only a man could have the freedom and strength to overcome the constraints that had always so frustrated her. The child was born, and after much discussion the name of "Berthe" was selected. There was a spirited christening party, and Bovary's parents visited Yonville for a month. One day Emma decided to visit the baby at the home of its wet nurse. She was still weak after her confinement and was beginning to feel faint, when she encountered Leon. She asked him to accompany her. Leon consented and by nightfall, rumors had spread through the town that Madame Bovary was compromising herself. After seeing the child, Madame Bovary was pestered with lots of trivial requests from the nurse. She quickly consented to give the woman more supplies and even some brandy for the woman's husband. Then she and Leon took a long stroll along the river. Even though they didn't say very much to each other, both were aware of a strange bliss and a deeper communication. After Leon left her, he thought how radiantly she stood out, especially amid all the banalities of Yonville.

When Emma first learned she was pregnant, she thought that this could be a new experience for her, could fill her empty life with excitement, especially if it were a boy. But when the girl was born, she soon lost interest in it. Again this shows Emma's erratic nature, her inability to maintain an interest in any aspect of life. Her reaction differs significantly with Charles' and the difference emphasizes the growing breach between them. Charles thinks that with the birth of the child, he will have been through the entire range of human experience. Emma's indiscretion in asking Leon to accompany her, foreshadows her later promiscuities. We have seen that Emma possesses an impetuous nature, and this quality will also contribute to her series of indiscretions. Emma's encounter with the nurse foreshadows her handlings with the various tradesmen which will later take her so deeply in debt. It seems that Emma would rather give in than discuss the needs of the nurse. Later, her financial troubles are a result of her impetuousness and her failure to consider her needs.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_4_to_5.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_10_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 4-5

chapters 4-5

{"name": "Chapters 4-5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-45", "summary": "During the winter Emma's favorite pursuit was to sit at the window and watch the street. She often saw Leon as he passed, and she had a new and unknown feeling at those moments. Homais lived across the street and was a frequent caller, especially at mealtimes. He enjoyed gossiping about Bovary's patients and discussing science, philosophy, and politics with the doctor. It was the druggist who always did most of the talking. On Sundays the Bovarys usually visited the Homais family. Leon was always there, and a bond rapidly developed between him and Emma. They used to sit together and discuss fashions or books while the others played cards or dozed. Leon began to grow confused and was tormented by these meetings. He was uncertain whether Emma responded to his feelings for her. He was afraid to displease her by remaining silent about his love, but he did not have the courage to declare himself. One Sunday in February, Homais and his children, the Bovarys, and Leon went on an outdoor excursion. Emma watched the men with interest and decided that she was disgusted by Charles' commonplace appearance and personality. That night she suddenly realized that Leon loved her. This novel idea pleased her, and she began to complain to herself about the cruel fate which had separated the two of them. Later that week Leon paid her a visit, on some weak pretext. They were both shy and their conversation was stilted, for they feared to express their real feelings to each other. As time passed Emma began to lose weight through worry. She found a delicious pleasure in contemplating her affection for Leon and contrasting it with her sensible, though unsatisfying role of the virtuous wife. She felt that she was a martyr to marital fidelity. Emma became irritable again and was exasperated by Bovary's placid ignorance of her torments. She blamed him for all her troubles and in addition was overly tolerant in judging herself and her behavior. She dreamed of running away with Leon but then doubted his love for her. She wished that Bovary were a cruel husband so that she would have an excuse to be unfaithful. Her nervousness and tension often caused her to engage in fits of weeping. One day while she was dreaming of Leon, Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, paid her a visit in order to show her some of his wares, especially scarves and little ornaments. He then slyly let her know that he was also a moneylender in case she ever needed to borrow a little money. As Emma came to the realization of her love for Leon, she tried to compensate for her frustrated love by being the ideal wife, mother and housekeeper. But while she was being the model wife, \"she was all desire and rage and hatred.\"", "analysis": "In these chapters, Flaubert is developing the love between Emma and Leon, a love that will not be consummated until the third part of the novel. Emma's love causes her to despise her husband, then she turns into the model wife trying to compensate for her lack of love, and finally turns to moods of despair. This again emphasizes Emma's lack of stability and her constant fluctuation between opposite extremes. These moods foreshadow her later sickness and ultimately her suicide. Monsieur Lheureux is here introduced. He is the moneylender who will unscrupulously play on Emma's weaknesses and will be the cause of her suicide. His portrayal here already suggests his obsequious personality."}

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see the villagers pass along the pavement. Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past. She would get up and order the table to be laid. Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase, "Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at the table between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked of "what was in the paper." Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him. Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning. He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines. At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop. Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite was there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house. "The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!" But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs, and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too large. Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow. First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice. Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the ground. When Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one. When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration". She had brought her ladies' journal with her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six. Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading. Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances with their balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard. Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it. On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard hairs. She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers at their windows. Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard at the Lion d'Or. One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his lover. He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him-- "What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?" He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred. Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it. It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling. They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder. Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind. Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use. Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer. While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored. "Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist. And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his. "Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like a peasant." The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville. In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down there, Leon standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss-- "Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but with whom? With me?" All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms. Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had not willed it! And why not? What prevented it?" When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening. "Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early." She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a new delight. The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others. What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who invites. After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract a "fashionable lady"; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered collars from the box. Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she said. Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little stars. "How much are they?" "A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no hurry; whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews." She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly-- "Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!" Emma smiled. "I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some, if need be." She made a gesture of surprise. "Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go far to find you some, rely on that." And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the "Cafe Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending. "What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off." And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's patients. "It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor, "that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble servant." And he closed the door gently. Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with her. "How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves. She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy. The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech. "Poor fellow!" she thought. "How have I displeased her?" he asked himself. At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these days, to go to Rouen on some office business. "Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?" "No," she replied. "Why?" "Because--" And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread. This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it. "Then you are giving it up?" he went on. "What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?" She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!" The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises, which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist. "Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma. "Certainly," replied the clerk. And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance generally made them laugh. "What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does not trouble about her appearance." Then she relapsed into silence. It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity. She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de Paris." When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his forehead: "What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!" And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices. Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist said-- "She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a sub-prefecture." The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the poor her charity. But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended in sorrow. Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this. What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making. Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home. What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides. On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires. She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed. Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul. "Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me? What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?" She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with flowing tears. "Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in during these crises. "It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would worry him." "Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say." "But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began."

Chapters 4-5

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-45

During the winter Emma's favorite pursuit was to sit at the window and watch the street. She often saw Leon as he passed, and she had a new and unknown feeling at those moments. Homais lived across the street and was a frequent caller, especially at mealtimes. He enjoyed gossiping about Bovary's patients and discussing science, philosophy, and politics with the doctor. It was the druggist who always did most of the talking. On Sundays the Bovarys usually visited the Homais family. Leon was always there, and a bond rapidly developed between him and Emma. They used to sit together and discuss fashions or books while the others played cards or dozed. Leon began to grow confused and was tormented by these meetings. He was uncertain whether Emma responded to his feelings for her. He was afraid to displease her by remaining silent about his love, but he did not have the courage to declare himself. One Sunday in February, Homais and his children, the Bovarys, and Leon went on an outdoor excursion. Emma watched the men with interest and decided that she was disgusted by Charles' commonplace appearance and personality. That night she suddenly realized that Leon loved her. This novel idea pleased her, and she began to complain to herself about the cruel fate which had separated the two of them. Later that week Leon paid her a visit, on some weak pretext. They were both shy and their conversation was stilted, for they feared to express their real feelings to each other. As time passed Emma began to lose weight through worry. She found a delicious pleasure in contemplating her affection for Leon and contrasting it with her sensible, though unsatisfying role of the virtuous wife. She felt that she was a martyr to marital fidelity. Emma became irritable again and was exasperated by Bovary's placid ignorance of her torments. She blamed him for all her troubles and in addition was overly tolerant in judging herself and her behavior. She dreamed of running away with Leon but then doubted his love for her. She wished that Bovary were a cruel husband so that she would have an excuse to be unfaithful. Her nervousness and tension often caused her to engage in fits of weeping. One day while she was dreaming of Leon, Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, paid her a visit in order to show her some of his wares, especially scarves and little ornaments. He then slyly let her know that he was also a moneylender in case she ever needed to borrow a little money. As Emma came to the realization of her love for Leon, she tried to compensate for her frustrated love by being the ideal wife, mother and housekeeper. But while she was being the model wife, "she was all desire and rage and hatred."

In these chapters, Flaubert is developing the love between Emma and Leon, a love that will not be consummated until the third part of the novel. Emma's love causes her to despise her husband, then she turns into the model wife trying to compensate for her lack of love, and finally turns to moods of despair. This again emphasizes Emma's lack of stability and her constant fluctuation between opposite extremes. These moods foreshadow her later sickness and ultimately her suicide. Monsieur Lheureux is here introduced. He is the moneylender who will unscrupulously play on Emma's weaknesses and will be the cause of her suicide. His portrayal here already suggests his obsequious personality.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/15.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_11_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-6", "summary": "One evening the tolling of church bells made Emma recall her childhood and school days. She mused about the solace she had often found then through religious devotions and set out for the church, hoping that there she might resolve her present problems and gain some inner peace. She met the cure, Abbe Bournisien, near the entrance, where he was attempting to control the mischievous children of his catechism class. Emma attempted to explain to the priest her need for spiritual help, but the priest's attention focused more on the young boys who were misbehaving. He was also more interested in telling Emma about his problems within the parish than he was in listening to her. After several attempts on Emma's part to explain her dilemma, she finally sighed in despair: \"O God, O God!\" The Abbe immediately thinks she has some physical ailment and advises her to go home immediately and have a cup of tea. Then \"it suddenly struck him: 'there was something you were asking me. What was it, now? I can't recall.'\" Emma responds that it was nothing and then leaves as the Abbe goes in to teach catechism to the group of boys. She continued to be very jumpy and tense. That same evening, in a fit of nervous annoyance, she pushed the baby away from her. Berthe fell and cut herself. Emma screamed for help and claimed that the child had been hurt accidentally while playing. After some confused excitement, Bovary and Homais managed to calm her and take care of Berthe. Leon found that his position in Yonville remained perplexing and intolerable. He adored Emma, but saw no future in his love for a married woman. He decided to go to Paris to study law, something he had long spoken of doing. The idea of being alone in the capital frightened him, but he saw no other alternative. After a while, though, he began to imagine with great joy the Bohemian adventures he would have there. Leon made his arrangements and the day finally came for his departure. When he bid farewell to Emma, they were both restrained and shy, although their eyes and gestures communicated a wealth of emotional meanings. After he had gone, Homais and Bovary discussed the dangers and temptations of life in the city. Emma listened silently.", "analysis": "When Emma thinks of the consolation she had at the convent, she fails to remember that she was also terribly dissatisfied there. Emma is actually looking for some experience that will fill her void and occupy her so that she will not think about her misery. In other words, she is using religion as a substitute for real experiences and as a way of forgetting her present misery. In this brief scene between Emma and the priest, Flaubert offers a masterful condemnation of the church in a very subtle way. The priest is so occupied with his own insignificant occupation that he does not have time to perceive Emma's distress. In fact, he thinks that she needs a cup of tea rather than spiritual guidance. His devout devotion to details renders him incapable of recognizing Emma's spiritual need and thus he fails in his greater mission as a priest. This chapter presents the departure of Leon without a physical consummation of their love. But the length of this mutual attraction and Emma's many reflections about it make her more receptive for her next encounter. In other words, she regrets her timidity in not letting Leon know of her love so that now she is emotionally prepared to respond more openly to the advances of Rodolphe. It can also be said that both Emma and Leon have progressed in their education so that when they next meet, they will not be so bashful and timid."}

One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the Angelus ringing. It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond the river seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation. With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it. On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour. Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom. The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners. "Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it. "He is just coming," he answered. And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church. "These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!" Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with is foot, "They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognise you." He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers. The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily. "How are you?" he added. "Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill." "Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days weaken one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?" "He!" she said with a gesture of contempt. "What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe something for you?" "Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need." But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards. "I should like to know--" she went on. "You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma, "He's Boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I even say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?" She seemed not to hear him. And he went on-- "Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a thick laugh, "and I of the soul." She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you solace all sorrows." "Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me! Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?" And with a bound he ran into the church. The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there. "Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are much to be pitied." "Others, too," she replied. "Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example." "It is not they--" "Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread." "But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--" "Fire in the winter," said the priest. "Oh, what does that matter?" "What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and food--for, after all--" "My God! my God!" she sighed. "It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a little moist sugar." "Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream. "Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were asking me something? What was it? I really don't remember." "I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma. And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking. "Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after Ascension Day I keep them recta* an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband." *On the straight and narrow path. And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached the door. Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with a heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two hands half-open behind him. Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot, and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her. "Are you a Christian?" "Yes, I am a Christian." "What is a Christian?" "He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--" She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an arm-chair. The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations. The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her apron-strings. "Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand. The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron. "Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably. Her face frightened the child, who began to scream. "Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow. Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame Bovary sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might, and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It was the dinner-hour; he had come home. "Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down while she was playing, and has hurt herself." Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for some sticking plaster. Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little. Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed. Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely. "It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!" When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle. "I assure you it's nothing." he said, kissing her on the forehead. "Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill." He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to "keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homais, in spite of their spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais'; her husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went so far as to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?" Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation. "I should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him. "Can he suspect anything?" Leon asked himself. His heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises. At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes. It was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know "how much it would be." The inquiries would not put Monsieur Leon out, since he went to town almost every week. Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was after no love-making. He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he "wasn't paid by the police." All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely of life. "It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector. "What recreation?" "If I were you I'd have a lathe." "But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk. "Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction. Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him. This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented him? And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's head on the guitar above them. The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course, then, Leon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She consented. He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and when Leon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation. When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage. The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary. When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out of breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary arose hurriedly. "It is I again!" said Leon. "I was sure of it!" She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot. "The doctor is not here?" he went on. "He is out." She repeated, "He is out." Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts. "I should like to kiss Berthe," said Leon. Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite. He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of a string. Leon kissed her several times on the neck. "Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!" And he gave her back to her mother. "Take her away," she said. They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh. "It is going to rain," said Emma. "I have a cloak," he answered. "Ah!" She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what Emma was seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself. "Well, good-bye," he sighed. She raised her head with a quick movement. "Yes, good-bye--go!" They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated. "In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh. Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared. When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon set off running. From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were talking. They were waiting for him. "Embrace me," said the druggist with tears in his eyes. "Here is your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself." "Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary. Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs uttered these three sad words-- "A pleasant journey!" "Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head." They set out, and Homais went back. Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves. Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia. "Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought. Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner. "Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!" "So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; "Any news at home?" "Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours." "Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he get used to it?" Madame Bovary sighed. "Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly enough, I assure you." "I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary. "Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with actresses. Besides, students are thought a great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches." "But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--" "You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom one would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house, introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three-fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into some pernicious step. "That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the provinces." Emma shuddered. "Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the professors." And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted. "Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out for a minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling. What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By the way, do you know the news?" "What news?" "That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious expression, "that the agricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the round. This morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you; Justin has the lantern."

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-6

One evening the tolling of church bells made Emma recall her childhood and school days. She mused about the solace she had often found then through religious devotions and set out for the church, hoping that there she might resolve her present problems and gain some inner peace. She met the cure, Abbe Bournisien, near the entrance, where he was attempting to control the mischievous children of his catechism class. Emma attempted to explain to the priest her need for spiritual help, but the priest's attention focused more on the young boys who were misbehaving. He was also more interested in telling Emma about his problems within the parish than he was in listening to her. After several attempts on Emma's part to explain her dilemma, she finally sighed in despair: "O God, O God!" The Abbe immediately thinks she has some physical ailment and advises her to go home immediately and have a cup of tea. Then "it suddenly struck him: 'there was something you were asking me. What was it, now? I can't recall.'" Emma responds that it was nothing and then leaves as the Abbe goes in to teach catechism to the group of boys. She continued to be very jumpy and tense. That same evening, in a fit of nervous annoyance, she pushed the baby away from her. Berthe fell and cut herself. Emma screamed for help and claimed that the child had been hurt accidentally while playing. After some confused excitement, Bovary and Homais managed to calm her and take care of Berthe. Leon found that his position in Yonville remained perplexing and intolerable. He adored Emma, but saw no future in his love for a married woman. He decided to go to Paris to study law, something he had long spoken of doing. The idea of being alone in the capital frightened him, but he saw no other alternative. After a while, though, he began to imagine with great joy the Bohemian adventures he would have there. Leon made his arrangements and the day finally came for his departure. When he bid farewell to Emma, they were both restrained and shy, although their eyes and gestures communicated a wealth of emotional meanings. After he had gone, Homais and Bovary discussed the dangers and temptations of life in the city. Emma listened silently.

When Emma thinks of the consolation she had at the convent, she fails to remember that she was also terribly dissatisfied there. Emma is actually looking for some experience that will fill her void and occupy her so that she will not think about her misery. In other words, she is using religion as a substitute for real experiences and as a way of forgetting her present misery. In this brief scene between Emma and the priest, Flaubert offers a masterful condemnation of the church in a very subtle way. The priest is so occupied with his own insignificant occupation that he does not have time to perceive Emma's distress. In fact, he thinks that she needs a cup of tea rather than spiritual guidance. His devout devotion to details renders him incapable of recognizing Emma's spiritual need and thus he fails in his greater mission as a priest. This chapter presents the departure of Leon without a physical consummation of their love. But the length of this mutual attraction and Emma's many reflections about it make her more receptive for her next encounter. In other words, she regrets her timidity in not letting Leon know of her love so that now she is emotionally prepared to respond more openly to the advances of Rodolphe. It can also be said that both Emma and Leon have progressed in their education so that when they next meet, they will not be so bashful and timid.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/16.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_12_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 7

chapter 7

{"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-7", "summary": "After Leon had gone, Emma began a period of secret mourning. She drifted about aimlessly and was often melancholy. She saw Leon in her imagination as the hero of all her dreams and remembered their walks and conversations. She reproached herself for not having responded to his love, and he became the center of all her thoughts. In her misery, she began again the strange and unpredictable behavior that had marked her in Tostes. Her moods constantly changed, and she was often giddy and nervous. One day Rodolphe Boulanger, a handsome and wealthy landowner, brought one of his servants to be treated by Bovary. While there he saw Emma and was immediately attracted by her good looks and ladylike bearing. Boulanger was a suave bachelor, both coarse and shrewd. At once his thoughts turned to Emma's seduction, and he began to lay his plans.", "analysis": "Emma's long melancholy and regret over not having seized her opportunity with Leon actually cause her to become sick. She then goes into one of her spending sprees, justifying her spending by feeling she has sacrificed so much by being faithful to Charles. These are the same types of spending sprees which will later lead her into heavy debts. Note again Emma's erratic actions. She would take something up, leave it, go to something else only to leave it. It seems that nothing fulfills her. Flaubert's description of Emma's actions and looks implies that Emma fits ironically into the tradition of the courtly love. The \"vaporish airs,\" the fact that she was \"pale all over, white as a sheet,\" and given to spells of dizziness are all characteristics of the courtly love tradition or are signs of disappointed or unfulfilled love. Emma is, after all, essentially middle-class, but she is also more than this. In a sense, she raises herself above the town because unlike others, she is vaguely aware that there are emotions of a higher and purer nature than those with which she finds herself surrounded. This realization does raise Emma in our estimation although this is also the ultimate cause of her tragedy. Note that Rodolphe is able to see through Emma immediately. He sees her boredom, recognizes that she dislikes her husband and her present life, and realizes that she is \"gasping for love\" and is ready for a love affair. What we know is that this is true, but partly because she regrets not having an affair with Leon."}

The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Everything seemed to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything was done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on. As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. Leon reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to hold his shadow. She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. The river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery banks. They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been! What happy afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbour. Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happiness when it came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with both knees, when it was about to flee from her? And she cursed herself for not having loved Leon. She thirsted for his lips. The wish took possession of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, "It is I; I am yours." But Emma recoiled beforehand at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret, became only the more acute. Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire travellers have left on the snow of a Russian steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything that could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined, her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost hopes, the domestic tete-a-tete--she gathered it all up, took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy. The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up too much. Love, little by little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. In the supineness of her conscience she even took her repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her. Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now far more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty that it would not end. A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves, and wore it knotted around her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch in this garb. She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la Chinoise, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in on one side and rolled it under like a man's. She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history, and philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke up with a start, thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming," he stammered; and it was the noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But her reading fared like her piece of embroidery, all of which, only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to other books. She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop. In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples, she talked much of her old age. She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Charles fussed around her showing his anxiety-- "Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?" Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table, sitting in an arm-chair at his bureau under the phrenological head. Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they had many long consultations together on the subject of Emma. What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all medical treatment? "Do you know what your wife wants?" replied Madame Bovary senior. "She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have these vapours, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in which she lives." "Yet she is always busy," said Charles. "Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works against religion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Anyone who has no religion always ends by turning out badly." So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. The enterprise did not seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she passed through Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Emma had discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in the evening before going to bed. Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at Yonville. The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses from the church to the inn. On the other side there were canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw stuck out. Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the shop front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations. So great was Homais' reputation in the neighbouring villages. His robust aplomb had fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than all the doctors. Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, she was amusing herself with watching the crowd of boors when she saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant walking with a bent head and quite a thoughtful air. "Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on the doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a servant of the house--"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is here." It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of La Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known. La Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just bought the chateau and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however, troubling very much about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed to have "at least fifteen thousand francs a year." Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over." "That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning. So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Justin to hold it. Then addressing the peasant, who was already pale-- "Don't be afraid, my lad." "No, no, sir," said the other; "get on." And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass. "Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles. "Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign, isn't it?" "Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution like this man." 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. "That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur Boulanger; "but some people are very susceptible. Thus in a duel, I have seen a second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols." "For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would make me faint if I reflected upon it too much." Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over. "It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added, and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out. He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects. "She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from? Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?" Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband. "I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He has dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored! She would like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman! She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table. With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be tender, charming. Yes; but how to get rid of her afterwards?" Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated-- "Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher. Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so finiky about her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns." The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe only heard the regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with a cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He again saw Emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her. "Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political part of the enterprise. He asked himself-- "Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be having the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbours, and husband, all sorts of worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it." Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a gimlet. And that pale complexion! I adore pale women!" When he reached the top of the Arguiel hills he had made up his mind. "It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in now and then. I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if need be. We shall become friends; I'll invite them to my place. By Jove!" added he, "there's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. I shall see her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way."

Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-7

After Leon had gone, Emma began a period of secret mourning. She drifted about aimlessly and was often melancholy. She saw Leon in her imagination as the hero of all her dreams and remembered their walks and conversations. She reproached herself for not having responded to his love, and he became the center of all her thoughts. In her misery, she began again the strange and unpredictable behavior that had marked her in Tostes. Her moods constantly changed, and she was often giddy and nervous. One day Rodolphe Boulanger, a handsome and wealthy landowner, brought one of his servants to be treated by Bovary. While there he saw Emma and was immediately attracted by her good looks and ladylike bearing. Boulanger was a suave bachelor, both coarse and shrewd. At once his thoughts turned to Emma's seduction, and he began to lay his plans.

Emma's long melancholy and regret over not having seized her opportunity with Leon actually cause her to become sick. She then goes into one of her spending sprees, justifying her spending by feeling she has sacrificed so much by being faithful to Charles. These are the same types of spending sprees which will later lead her into heavy debts. Note again Emma's erratic actions. She would take something up, leave it, go to something else only to leave it. It seems that nothing fulfills her. Flaubert's description of Emma's actions and looks implies that Emma fits ironically into the tradition of the courtly love. The "vaporish airs," the fact that she was "pale all over, white as a sheet," and given to spells of dizziness are all characteristics of the courtly love tradition or are signs of disappointed or unfulfilled love. Emma is, after all, essentially middle-class, but she is also more than this. In a sense, she raises herself above the town because unlike others, she is vaguely aware that there are emotions of a higher and purer nature than those with which she finds herself surrounded. This realization does raise Emma in our estimation although this is also the ultimate cause of her tragedy. Note that Rodolphe is able to see through Emma immediately. He sees her boredom, recognizes that she dislikes her husband and her present life, and realizes that she is "gasping for love" and is ready for a love affair. What we know is that this is true, but partly because she regrets not having an affair with Leon.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/17.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_13_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-8", "summary": "At the time of this story, the annual Agricultural Show for the Prefecture of the Seine-Inferieure was held at Yonville. Everyone looked forward to the fair with great enthusiasm; when the long-awaited day finally arrived, Yonville was crowded with visitors from all the surrounding farms and towns. There were exhibits and contests of many kinds, and everything had a carnival aspect. The most important event of the day was the speech and presentation of awards by a representative of the Prefect. According to his carefully calculated plan, Rodolphe took advantage of the excitement of the day to renew his acquaintance with Emma. They went walking together and spoke about a variety of things. Rodolphe took every opportunity to drop some hint about his love for Emma. He gradually leads her toward the city hall so that they can be alone. Meanwhile the representative from the Prefect arrived, and even though the people expected the Prefect himself, they were still honored by this man. However, in trying to pay homage to him, the battalion of men confused their orders and everything ended in confusion. While he spoke about the government, Rodolphe begins to hint to Emma his affections for her. And while the speech is going on in the background about morality and government, Rodolphe begins to declare his love for Emma and to insist that his feelings are nobler than common morality. He continues to declare his love for her in high-sounding language while the representative of the Prefect awards prizes to various people. After the awarding of the prices, Emma separates from Rodolphe and does not see him again until that night at the banquet and later at the fireworks. She was complimented by his attention but had constantly acted as she thought proper for a respectable, married woman. As the fireworks were being set off, Emma watched Rodolphe. She was not even aware that the fireworks had gotten wet and wouldn't go off. Later, however, Homais wrote a glowing account of the entire day's activities.", "analysis": "The inexperienced reader will often overlook the greatness of this particular chapter. It is often referred to when the subject of Flaubert's greatness is being discussed. It will profit the reader to reread the chapter and observe many of the following factors: the number of things that are contrasted -- the use of subtle irony, especially in passages that seem to be simply description; the elaborately described show, the gold medal won by the old peasant woman, and the subtle but damning description of the pompous dignitaries; and the use of foreshadowing, especially in the way in which Emma is able to see unknowingly her whole pathetic life unfold before her in symbolic events. Use of Contrast and Description: There are so many masterfully descriptive passages, it will suffice to point out only one. In the first part of the chapter, Flaubert is describing all the animals that are gathered together for the show. Most of the details of this description suggest symbolically that this animal world is the same world in which the action of the entire novel is being played. The animals are described in the same manner in which people will later be described. For example, later in the chapter, when Flaubert is describing the feast, the same type of description is used for both the animals and the people. They were both herded into a small place with noses together, sweating and stuffing themselves. One could even maintain that the animals are described in terms of people and the people are described in terms of animals, emphasizing the nature of the people that Flaubert is dealing with. Use of Irony: The speech of the representative of the Prefect is filled with cliches and pompous platitudes. The speaker says only what every other speaker has been saying for years, yet his speech is highly praised. Rodolphe's speech to Emma, delivered against the background of the general prizes being awarded, is a masterpiece of irony. First, we hear about the old peasant woman who is winning a prize for fifty-four years of faithful service and fidelity as a servant. At the same time, Emma is planning on being unfaithful and on beginning a love affair with Rodolphe, whom we know can never be faithful to any person very long. It is a further stroke of irony that his false speeches of passion such as \"I stayed with you, because I couldn't tear myself away\" are spoken during the awarding of the first prize in manure. Subtly speaking, Rodolphe's speech is just so much manure, but Emma is not capable of recognizing it. Foreshadowing: In the discussion of Lheureux's being the cause of the downfall of a certain man, we are warned that Emma will herself get into trouble because of her dealings with this man. He is even described here as a wheedling, grovelling creature. The tremendous waste of human energy in preparing for the show indicates how the energies of Emma are wasted throughout the entire novel. Emma's view of the ancient Hirondelle as it approaches the town, foreshadows her degradation and involvement with Leon later in the novel, as this coach will be instrumental in her love affair. Homais' role in the entire pageant and his essay sent to the paper afterwards reaches the height of the comic absurd. First of all, from all of the description, the entire day was a failure if not a fiasco. The dignitary was late and when he finally arrived he was only a representative of the Prefect; the presentation of arms was sloppy, confused, and ridiculous; the speeches were dull; there were not enough seats; the feast was long and noisy and badly served and too crowded; the fireworks were damp and would not go off, and it rained during the proceedings. But Homais' account of the day written for the newspaper was so frankly false that his exaggerations seem the height of the comic. And ironically speaking, an earlier description of Homais says that he \"had the right form of words for every conceivable occasion.\""}

At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement. As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again. There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses, pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner between their teeth. The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village. People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters. On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To Agriculture"; on the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To the Fine Arts." But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place! Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!" The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown. "Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked where he was going-- "It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese." "What cheese?" asked the landlady. "Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse. To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--" "Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously. "Yes, I am going," replied the druggist, astonished. "Am I not a member of the consulting commission?" Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying with a smile-- "That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you? Do you understand anything about it?" "Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say, a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?" The landlady did not answer. Homais went on-- "Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements." The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and the chemist went on-- "Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied. "Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't last long," she added. "It'll be over before a week." Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and whispered in his ear-- "What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week. It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills." "What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances. Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak." "There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur Boulanger's arm." "Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind. Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone-- "It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist." She pressed his elbow. "What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips. "Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe. Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter into the conversation. "What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!" And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your pardon!" and raised his hat. When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him Madame Bovary. He called out-- "Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently." "How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing. "Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as to-day I have the happiness of being with you--" Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had sprung up again. "Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?" "Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little. "H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe. The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks. The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope. Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said-- "What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?" Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had disappeared-- "Ma foi!*" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his." *Upon my word! And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one side. "Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country--" "It's waste of time," said Emma. "That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!" Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there. "And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression." "You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted." "Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!" "Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them." "My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips. But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration. Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to himself-- "Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!" "Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied." "Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe. "For, after all," she went on, "you are free--" she hesitated, "rich--" "Do not mock me," he replied. And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell towards the village. It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait. At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time. "Present!" shouted Binet. "Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march." And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville. Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of the "Lion d'Or", where a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache. All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows. All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of their heavy boots. The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the platform. "I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty effect." "To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art." Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it was empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other. There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying. At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began-- "Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?" "I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further." "Why?" said Emma. But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary pitch. He declaimed-- "This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations." "Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation--" "Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma. "No! It is dreadful, I assure you." "But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there? Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France breathes once more!" "Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they are right." "How so?" she asked. "What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies." Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on-- "We have not even this distraction, we poor women!" "A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it." "But is it ever found?" she asked. "Yes; one day it comes," he answered. "And this is what you have understood," said the councillor. "You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality, you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!" "It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen each other in dreams!" (And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from darkness into light." And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it fall on Emma's. She took hers away. "And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind, so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty--" "Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us." "Yet--yet--" objected Madame Bovary. "No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?" "But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code." "Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us light." Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief. He continued-- "And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother, lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention." He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness. The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors, and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths. Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly-- "Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other." His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He said--"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. "Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices." Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence. "Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each other." And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it. "For good farming generally!" cried the president. "Just now, for example, when I went to your house." "To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix." "Did I know I should accompany you?" "Seventy francs." "A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained." "Manures!" "And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!" "To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!" "For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a charm." "To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin." "And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you." "For a merino ram!" "But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow." "To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame." "Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I not?" "Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg, sixty francs!" Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a movement with her fingers. He exclaimed-- "Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!" A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering. "Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on: "Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service." Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort, their fingers intertwined. "Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value, twenty-five francs!" "Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor. She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering-- "Go up!" "Don't be afraid!" "Oh, how stupid she is!" "Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache. "Yes; here she is." "Then let her come up!" Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at her. Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of servitude. "Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president; and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!" "Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal! Twenty-five francs! For you!" Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!" "What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary. The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on their horns. The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet. The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of the future. He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and give some advice to Binet. The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma silently nestled against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns. They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head. At this moment the councillor's carriage came out from the inn. His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces. "Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in case of need. But excuse me!" *Specifically for that. And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to see his lathe again. "Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your men, or to go yourself--" "Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!" "Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his friends. "Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest." "Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete." Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very beautiful!" And having bowed to one another, they separated. Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article on the show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning. "Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?" Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on the entry of the councillor, he did not forget "the martial air of our militia;" nor "our most merry village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot. "About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays, Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-8

At the time of this story, the annual Agricultural Show for the Prefecture of the Seine-Inferieure was held at Yonville. Everyone looked forward to the fair with great enthusiasm; when the long-awaited day finally arrived, Yonville was crowded with visitors from all the surrounding farms and towns. There were exhibits and contests of many kinds, and everything had a carnival aspect. The most important event of the day was the speech and presentation of awards by a representative of the Prefect. According to his carefully calculated plan, Rodolphe took advantage of the excitement of the day to renew his acquaintance with Emma. They went walking together and spoke about a variety of things. Rodolphe took every opportunity to drop some hint about his love for Emma. He gradually leads her toward the city hall so that they can be alone. Meanwhile the representative from the Prefect arrived, and even though the people expected the Prefect himself, they were still honored by this man. However, in trying to pay homage to him, the battalion of men confused their orders and everything ended in confusion. While he spoke about the government, Rodolphe begins to hint to Emma his affections for her. And while the speech is going on in the background about morality and government, Rodolphe begins to declare his love for Emma and to insist that his feelings are nobler than common morality. He continues to declare his love for her in high-sounding language while the representative of the Prefect awards prizes to various people. After the awarding of the prices, Emma separates from Rodolphe and does not see him again until that night at the banquet and later at the fireworks. She was complimented by his attention but had constantly acted as she thought proper for a respectable, married woman. As the fireworks were being set off, Emma watched Rodolphe. She was not even aware that the fireworks had gotten wet and wouldn't go off. Later, however, Homais wrote a glowing account of the entire day's activities.

The inexperienced reader will often overlook the greatness of this particular chapter. It is often referred to when the subject of Flaubert's greatness is being discussed. It will profit the reader to reread the chapter and observe many of the following factors: the number of things that are contrasted -- the use of subtle irony, especially in passages that seem to be simply description; the elaborately described show, the gold medal won by the old peasant woman, and the subtle but damning description of the pompous dignitaries; and the use of foreshadowing, especially in the way in which Emma is able to see unknowingly her whole pathetic life unfold before her in symbolic events. Use of Contrast and Description: There are so many masterfully descriptive passages, it will suffice to point out only one. In the first part of the chapter, Flaubert is describing all the animals that are gathered together for the show. Most of the details of this description suggest symbolically that this animal world is the same world in which the action of the entire novel is being played. The animals are described in the same manner in which people will later be described. For example, later in the chapter, when Flaubert is describing the feast, the same type of description is used for both the animals and the people. They were both herded into a small place with noses together, sweating and stuffing themselves. One could even maintain that the animals are described in terms of people and the people are described in terms of animals, emphasizing the nature of the people that Flaubert is dealing with. Use of Irony: The speech of the representative of the Prefect is filled with cliches and pompous platitudes. The speaker says only what every other speaker has been saying for years, yet his speech is highly praised. Rodolphe's speech to Emma, delivered against the background of the general prizes being awarded, is a masterpiece of irony. First, we hear about the old peasant woman who is winning a prize for fifty-four years of faithful service and fidelity as a servant. At the same time, Emma is planning on being unfaithful and on beginning a love affair with Rodolphe, whom we know can never be faithful to any person very long. It is a further stroke of irony that his false speeches of passion such as "I stayed with you, because I couldn't tear myself away" are spoken during the awarding of the first prize in manure. Subtly speaking, Rodolphe's speech is just so much manure, but Emma is not capable of recognizing it. Foreshadowing: In the discussion of Lheureux's being the cause of the downfall of a certain man, we are warned that Emma will herself get into trouble because of her dealings with this man. He is even described here as a wheedling, grovelling creature. The tremendous waste of human energy in preparing for the show indicates how the energies of Emma are wasted throughout the entire novel. Emma's view of the ancient Hirondelle as it approaches the town, foreshadows her degradation and involvement with Leon later in the novel, as this coach will be instrumental in her love affair. Homais' role in the entire pageant and his essay sent to the paper afterwards reaches the height of the comic absurd. First of all, from all of the description, the entire day was a failure if not a fiasco. The dignitary was late and when he finally arrived he was only a representative of the Prefect; the presentation of arms was sloppy, confused, and ridiculous; the speeches were dull; there were not enough seats; the feast was long and noisy and badly served and too crowded; the fireworks were damp and would not go off, and it rained during the proceedings. But Homais' account of the day written for the newspaper was so frankly false that his exaggerations seem the height of the comic. And ironically speaking, an earlier description of Homais says that he "had the right form of words for every conceivable occasion."

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_9_to_10.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_14_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 9-10

chapters 9-10

{"name": "Chapters 9-10", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-910", "summary": "During the next six weeks Rodolphe did not see Emma. This interval was also planned by him, acting on the theory that \"absence makes the heart grow fonder.\" He had carefully analyzed her personality and decided to take advantage of all her frustrations and weaknesses. When Rodolphe finally called at the Bovary house, Emma, who had thought about him often and was insulted by his lack of attention, was unresponsive. But Rodolphe was so eloquent in amorous language that she soon forgot her affected annoyance at his absence and was overcome by sentiment. When Charles came in, Rodolphe suggested that perhaps riding would be good for Emma. He offered to lend them a horse, but Emma refused. After Rodolphe had gone, Charles convinced Emma to accept Rodolphe's offer and even wrote to Rodolphe himself requesting the horse. The next day Emma and Rodolphe went for a ride together. He led her to a beautiful and deserted glade in the nearby forest. When they had dismounted, Rodolphe again spoke of his passion for her. Emma was frightened by his intensity but quickly forgot all her good intentions and gave herself entirely to him. When she returned home that night she was radiant with joy. In her new happiness she identified herself with all the daring and romantic heroines of literature whom she had always envied and admired. She unbelievingly repeated to herself over and over again, \"I have a lover -- a lover.\" From this day on, the affair between Emma and Rodolphe progressed with great speed. They frequently exchanged love letters and had many secret meetings. Rodolphe was always in Emma's thoughts. She often slipped from her house in the early morning while Bovary was still asleep in order to surprise Rodolphe and have a few extra hours with him. After a while, Rodolphe, who was a practical and realistic man, became concerned about Emma's imprudent behavior. He spoke to her about this, claiming to be worried lest she compromise herself, and soon she too became nervous. She began to be troubled by feelings of guilt. The pair took precautions to keep their correspondence hidden and worked out an arrangement so that Rodolphe could meet Emma at night in her garden or even in her house, once Bovary had fallen into his usual deep sleep. Rodolphe began to visit her several times each week. He was sometimes troubled by her wildly romantic fancies and feared that she would do something irrational or impractical, in accord with her silly ideas. He thought of ending their relationship but procrastinated because of the great physical appeal she had for him. So far as Emma's love for him was concerned, Rodolphe cynically doubted her sincerity and had no compunctions about using or abandoning her. Emma, on the other hand, considered him the one great love for whom she had always yearned and surrendered herself to him with complete devotion. As time passed, Emma became unhappy about both her marriage and adultery. She was often negligent of her duties and then, in a moment of guilty realization, would engage in a brief spurt of activity or maternal affection. Her guilt kept bothering her, and for a short period she even decided to repent and reform. She derived a strange pleasure from her masochistic decision to assuage her guilt through self-sacrifice, for her affection for Rodolphe had not lessened. In order to end the affair, she was cold to him and she planned to force herself to love and assist Bovary.", "analysis": "Emma is a woman of romantic longings. We saw earlier that she longed for a man who \"should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activity, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its graces, you into all mysteries\" , and now Rodolphe comes to call after a six weeks' absence, and tells her things she \"had never been told before.\" Here then is the romantic dream come true. But, in reality, he is not the knight in shining armor. He is, after all, a thirty-four-year-old farmer. But to Emma who has lived in boredom so long and who has longed for some type of escape, he is the fulfillment of her dreams. After she surrenders to him, she then thinks of all the heroines of books and compares her shoddy seduction in the woods to those of the romanticized heroines of her novels. She is convinced that her affair has all the \"passion, ecstasy and delirium\" of the fictionalized accounts in romances. Emma then attempts to make her shoddy affair conform to those of fictionalized accounts. She insists that they leave letters for each other in secret hiding places. She comforts him about absurd, insignificant events and when once she thinks she hears Charles coming, she expects Rodolphe to grab his pistol so as to defend himself. She insists upon exchanging miniatures, locks of hair, and even rings. Even Rodolphe realizes the degree of sentimentality that Emma is attaching to their love affair. Emma never realizes that Rodolphe is simply using her for a pretty mistress. Even though they are having their affair now in Charles' consulting room, she fails to realize how shoddy the affair is and continues to force their affair into the pattern of a great love. Ironically, it was Charles who originally assured the success of the love affair by insisting that Emma accept Rodolphe's offer of the riding horse. Of course, we have seen earlier that Charles, due to the horrible disposition of his first wife, can see no fault in Emma. Chapter 9 ends with Rodolphe's admonition to Emma that she is compromising herself by her visits to his cabin. This foreshadows his rejection of Emma. We know from the beginning that this is to be only a brief love affair for him, but as he reminds her of her position, we note already that he is beginning to tire of her."}

Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he appeared. The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake." And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus-- "If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me again love me more. Let's go on with it!" And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the room, he saw Emma turn pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral. Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first conventional phrases. "I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill." "Seriously?" she cried. "Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it was because I did not want to come back." "Why?" "Can you not guess?" He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing. He went on-- "Emma!" "Sir," she said, drawing back a little. "Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of another!" He repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable." It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully at this glowing language. "But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!" She turned towards him with a sob. "Oh, you are good!" she said. "No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one word--only one word!" And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the door of the room was not closed. "How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humour a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles came in. "Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him. The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself together a little. "Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health." Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if riding would not be good. "Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to follow it up." And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness. "I'll call around," said Bovary. "No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient for you." "Ah! very good! I thank you." And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur Boulanger's kind offer?" She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd. "Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong." "And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?" "You must order one," he answered. The riding-habit decided her. When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature. The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle. Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him. Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice. "An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are mettlesome." She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip. "A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all, prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear. As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop. Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her. It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind. By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them. Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy. The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked. Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out. "God protects us!" said Rodolphe. "Do you think so?" she said. "Forward! forward!" he continued. He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks. They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness. She stopped. "I am tired," she said. "Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!" Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves. "But where are we going?" He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy. Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, "Are not our destinies now one?" "Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!" She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said hurriedly-- "Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back." He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated: "Where are the horses? Where are the horses?" Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered: "Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!" "If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He said-- "What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!" And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage herself. He supported her thus as they walked along. But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves. "Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!" He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves. "I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!" "Why? Emma! Emma!" "Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder. The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him-- The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles. They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it. She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening. On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People looked at her from the windows. At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles. "Emma!" he said. "What?" "Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?" She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later-- "Are you going out to-night?" she asked. "Yes. Why?" "Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!" And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up in her room. At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches, Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled. But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover! a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights. Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble. The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to call her again by her name--to say that he loved her They were in the forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated side by side on a bed of dry leaves. From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with as too short. One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break, she was seized with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without looking behind her. Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her lover's house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn. Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at her approach had opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to the corridor. Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry. "You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to come? Ah! your dress is damp." "I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his neck. This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led to the waterside. But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room. The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his breast. Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water. It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma cried. She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out. "What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!" At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself. Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead. One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks. "You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed; "When one sees a gun, one should always give warning." The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation. "It isn't warm; it's nipping." Emma answered nothing. He went on-- "And you're out so early?" "Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my child is." "Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun--" "Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her heel. "Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub. Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag. Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying-- "Please give me half an ounce of vitriol." "Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor," (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now, take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room." And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid. "Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid, isn't it?" Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things. Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying-- "Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp." "Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are people who like it." She was stifling. "And give me--" "Will he never go?" thought she. "Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs." The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared, Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil. "And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais. "Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in his waste-book. "Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice. "Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the druggist. But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh. "How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais. "Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied. So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one. All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the gate, which Charles thought lost. To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too. "Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time." "Yes, I am coming," she answered. Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden. It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Leon had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought of him now. The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied vibrations. When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley. "Someone is coming!" she said. He blew out the light. "Have you your pistols?" "Why?" "Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma. "From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger." She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her. Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best of taste. Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon-- "I am sure that above there together they approve of our love." But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed. He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less. She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him. Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame. It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines:-- "My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change, I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood either. Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma." Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while. "For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who, travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the cupboard for her when she comes. "Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best compliments, your loving father. "Theodore Rouault." She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road. But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer. An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter. In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she lent forward, beating the air with both her arms. "Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love you, my poor child! How I love you!" Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness. That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual. "That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:" And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous. "Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!" And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out. Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in time to provide her with an opportunity.

Chapters 9-10

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-910

During the next six weeks Rodolphe did not see Emma. This interval was also planned by him, acting on the theory that "absence makes the heart grow fonder." He had carefully analyzed her personality and decided to take advantage of all her frustrations and weaknesses. When Rodolphe finally called at the Bovary house, Emma, who had thought about him often and was insulted by his lack of attention, was unresponsive. But Rodolphe was so eloquent in amorous language that she soon forgot her affected annoyance at his absence and was overcome by sentiment. When Charles came in, Rodolphe suggested that perhaps riding would be good for Emma. He offered to lend them a horse, but Emma refused. After Rodolphe had gone, Charles convinced Emma to accept Rodolphe's offer and even wrote to Rodolphe himself requesting the horse. The next day Emma and Rodolphe went for a ride together. He led her to a beautiful and deserted glade in the nearby forest. When they had dismounted, Rodolphe again spoke of his passion for her. Emma was frightened by his intensity but quickly forgot all her good intentions and gave herself entirely to him. When she returned home that night she was radiant with joy. In her new happiness she identified herself with all the daring and romantic heroines of literature whom she had always envied and admired. She unbelievingly repeated to herself over and over again, "I have a lover -- a lover." From this day on, the affair between Emma and Rodolphe progressed with great speed. They frequently exchanged love letters and had many secret meetings. Rodolphe was always in Emma's thoughts. She often slipped from her house in the early morning while Bovary was still asleep in order to surprise Rodolphe and have a few extra hours with him. After a while, Rodolphe, who was a practical and realistic man, became concerned about Emma's imprudent behavior. He spoke to her about this, claiming to be worried lest she compromise herself, and soon she too became nervous. She began to be troubled by feelings of guilt. The pair took precautions to keep their correspondence hidden and worked out an arrangement so that Rodolphe could meet Emma at night in her garden or even in her house, once Bovary had fallen into his usual deep sleep. Rodolphe began to visit her several times each week. He was sometimes troubled by her wildly romantic fancies and feared that she would do something irrational or impractical, in accord with her silly ideas. He thought of ending their relationship but procrastinated because of the great physical appeal she had for him. So far as Emma's love for him was concerned, Rodolphe cynically doubted her sincerity and had no compunctions about using or abandoning her. Emma, on the other hand, considered him the one great love for whom she had always yearned and surrendered herself to him with complete devotion. As time passed, Emma became unhappy about both her marriage and adultery. She was often negligent of her duties and then, in a moment of guilty realization, would engage in a brief spurt of activity or maternal affection. Her guilt kept bothering her, and for a short period she even decided to repent and reform. She derived a strange pleasure from her masochistic decision to assuage her guilt through self-sacrifice, for her affection for Rodolphe had not lessened. In order to end the affair, she was cold to him and she planned to force herself to love and assist Bovary.

Emma is a woman of romantic longings. We saw earlier that she longed for a man who "should know about everything; excel in a multitude of activity, introduce you to passion in all its force, to life in all its graces, you into all mysteries" , and now Rodolphe comes to call after a six weeks' absence, and tells her things she "had never been told before." Here then is the romantic dream come true. But, in reality, he is not the knight in shining armor. He is, after all, a thirty-four-year-old farmer. But to Emma who has lived in boredom so long and who has longed for some type of escape, he is the fulfillment of her dreams. After she surrenders to him, she then thinks of all the heroines of books and compares her shoddy seduction in the woods to those of the romanticized heroines of her novels. She is convinced that her affair has all the "passion, ecstasy and delirium" of the fictionalized accounts in romances. Emma then attempts to make her shoddy affair conform to those of fictionalized accounts. She insists that they leave letters for each other in secret hiding places. She comforts him about absurd, insignificant events and when once she thinks she hears Charles coming, she expects Rodolphe to grab his pistol so as to defend himself. She insists upon exchanging miniatures, locks of hair, and even rings. Even Rodolphe realizes the degree of sentimentality that Emma is attaching to their love affair. Emma never realizes that Rodolphe is simply using her for a pretty mistress. Even though they are having their affair now in Charles' consulting room, she fails to realize how shoddy the affair is and continues to force their affair into the pattern of a great love. Ironically, it was Charles who originally assured the success of the love affair by insisting that Emma accept Rodolphe's offer of the riding horse. Of course, we have seen earlier that Charles, due to the horrible disposition of his first wife, can see no fault in Emma. Chapter 9 ends with Rodolphe's admonition to Emma that she is compromising herself by her visits to his cabin. This foreshadows his rejection of Emma. We know from the beginning that this is to be only a brief love affair for him, but as he reminds her of her position, we note already that he is beginning to tire of her.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/20.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_15_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapter 11

chapter 11

{"name": "Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-11", "summary": "One day it was learned that a doctor in Rouen had published a remarkable new surgical procedure for curing clubfoot. Emma and Homais urged Charles to carry out the new operation on Hippolyte, the crippled servant at the inn. Emma hoped in this way to advance Bovary in his career and thus satisfy her desire to be a good wife; she had many daydreams about the wealth and increased prestige to which his success would entitle them. Homais expected to gain personal repute from his own part in the operation and to bring more business to Yonville as word of the cure spread. Neither Homais nor Emma was particularly concerned with the safety of the operation or the well-being of Hippolyte. Bovary was dubious about the new technique and was unwilling to cooperate, but, under the combined pressure of Emma and Homais, finally gave in. Moreover, nearly everyone in the town, including the mayor, was a staunch advocate of the new operation, for they had all been convinced by Homais of its advantage to them. Their ceaseless prodding continued until Bovary was ready to proceed. Hippolyte was terrified and confused by the whole idea, but he was a simple youth and was induced to volunteer his body for the sake of Yonville and Science. The operation was carried out by Homais and Charles in the local inn. At first it seemed a success, but Hippolyte soon became ill and suffered terrible pain. It was discovered that his leg was infested with gangrene. Bovary was very upset and unable to act; so a consultant was called in from another town. The doctor sternly admonished Bovary for his foolish treatment and amputated the patient's leg. Homais, meanwhile, disclaimed any responsibility, and Emma was disgusted by what she interpreted as a further demonstration of Charles' stupid incompetence. In fact, however, the fault was not entirely Bovary's although no one recognized this. Some of the blame also belonged to the specialist who had published an untested and undependable \"cure.\" Bovary and Emma were both depressed by this incident, although for different reasons. He was ashamed of what he had done and felt that he had been irresponsible. She reproached herself for ever having had faith in him and decided that she was now absolved of any responsibility to her husband. Her passion for Rodolphe flared up again, and she saw him that night for the first time in many days. Charles, in his simplicity, assumed that Emma's depression had been caused by sympathy for him and was gratified by her demonstration of devotion.", "analysis": "This chapter interrupts the progress of the love affair. At the end of the last chapter, Emma had begun to repent of her love for Rodolphe. Now she turns to Charles, and when Homais suggests the operation, she encourages it, thinking that if Charles were famous she could respect him. Through it all, Homais and Emma never give any thought to Charles or to Hippolyte, but instead see in the operation how they could personally benefit from the fame. We know, and later in retrospect Emma realizes, that Charles is not capable of such an operation, and it is only through the goading of Emma and Homais that he ever consents. The operation having failed, Emma now repents of her past virtue. In other words, Charles' ineptitude and stupidity now give her full justification to carry out her affair with no tinge of recrimination. Thus this interlude functions to again convince Emma of Charles' ignorance and to justify her infidelity. The description of the operation, the gangrene with its smell, the interest of the crowd, and the suffering of Hippolyte are all masterfully rendered. And the absurdity of Homais' letter, composed immediately after the operation, should be compared with the equally absurd letter describing the agricultural show in Chapter 8."}

He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot. "For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See--" (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain relief and beautifying of the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator. Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the 'Lion d'Or'? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers, and then" (Homais lowered his voice and looked round him) "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?" In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was not clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by which his reputation and fortune would be increased! She only wished to lean on something more solid than love. Charles, urged by the druggist and by her, allowed himself to be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it. While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say, katastrephopody, endostrephopody, and exostrephopody (or better, the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with the hypostrephopody and anastrephopody), otherwise torsion downwards and upwards, Monsier Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at the inn to submit to the operation. "You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns." Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes. "However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. It's for your sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of your hideous caudication, together with that waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling." Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily. Then he attacked him through his vanity: "Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!" And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science. The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never interfered with other people's business, Madame Lefrancois, Artemise, the neighbours, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache--everyone persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for the operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel. So by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds, and in which iron, wood, sheer-iron, leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared. But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had. He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which, however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus, wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which the black nails looked as if made of iron, the clubfoot ran about like a deer from morn till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place, jumping round the carts, thrusting his limping foot forwards. He seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy; and when he was given some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its fellow. Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon of Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that he did not know. Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of bandages--every bandage to be found at the druggist's. It was Monsieur Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses. "Come, be calm," said the druggist; "later on you will show your gratitude to your benefactor." And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would reappear walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door. She threw herself on his neck; they sat down to table; he ate much, and at dessert he even wanted to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he only permitted himself on Sundays when there was company. The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth. They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de Rouen." He brought it for them to read. "Read it yourself," said Bovary. He read-- "'Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of Europe like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners--'" "Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with emotion. "No, no! not at all! What next!" "'--Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper everyone would not perhaps understand. The masses must--'" "No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!" "I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place d'Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired. Everything tends to show that his convelescence will be brief; and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants! Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour! Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'" This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days after, scared, and crying out-- "Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!" Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who caught sight of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone who was going up the stairs-- "Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?" The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to break it. With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid. Matters were taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mere Lefrancois, had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so that he might at least have some distraction. But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him. She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days, when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled. "How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah! you're not up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You should do this! do that!" And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added-- "You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!" Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing-- "When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! How unfortunate I am!" And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself. "Don't listen to him, my lad," said Mere Lefrancois, "Haven't they tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker. Here! swallow this." And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the strength to put to his lips. Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him. He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven. "For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet at this point I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won't cost you anything. Will you promise me?" The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted with the landlady; and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression of face. His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better than one; it was no risk anyhow. The druggist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte's convalescence, and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism." But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box. Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois, asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet of Neufchatel, who was a celebrity. A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted out in the shop-- "These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do the clever, and they cram you with remedies without, troubling about the consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants, coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not dream of operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!" Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour Monsier Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he did not take up the defence of Bovary; he did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more serious interests of his business. This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as if an execution had been expected. At the grocer's they discussed Hippolyte's illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to see the operator arrive. He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly. After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion d'Or," the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he went into the stable to see that she was eating her oats all right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his gig. People even said about this-- "Ah! Monsieur Canivet's a character!" And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed the smallest of his habits. Homais presented himself. "I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come along!" But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to assist at such an operation. "When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know, is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!" "Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o'clock; I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don't wear flannels, and I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way, now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say, habit! habit!" Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation, in which the druggist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon, it as a sacred office, although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for someone to hold the limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the druggist stayed with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons, and with ears strained towards the door. Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house. He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. "What a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Perhaps, after all, he had made some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves. Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity. Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the floor. "Sit down," she said; "you fidget me." He sat down again. How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that she might have had! And for what? for what? In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another! "But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was meditating. At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised her head in order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked at the other in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed at her with the dull look of a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered. Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral that she had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and what still remained of it rumbled away beneath the furious blows of her pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery. The memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as absent forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about to die and were passing under her eyes. There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up, and through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his hand, and both were going towards the chemist's. Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Charles turned to his wife saying to her-- "Oh, kiss me, my own!" "Leave me!" she said, red with anger. "What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; compose yourself. You know well enough that I love you. Come!" "Enough!" she cried with a terrible look. And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor. Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him. When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss.

Chapter 11

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapter-11

One day it was learned that a doctor in Rouen had published a remarkable new surgical procedure for curing clubfoot. Emma and Homais urged Charles to carry out the new operation on Hippolyte, the crippled servant at the inn. Emma hoped in this way to advance Bovary in his career and thus satisfy her desire to be a good wife; she had many daydreams about the wealth and increased prestige to which his success would entitle them. Homais expected to gain personal repute from his own part in the operation and to bring more business to Yonville as word of the cure spread. Neither Homais nor Emma was particularly concerned with the safety of the operation or the well-being of Hippolyte. Bovary was dubious about the new technique and was unwilling to cooperate, but, under the combined pressure of Emma and Homais, finally gave in. Moreover, nearly everyone in the town, including the mayor, was a staunch advocate of the new operation, for they had all been convinced by Homais of its advantage to them. Their ceaseless prodding continued until Bovary was ready to proceed. Hippolyte was terrified and confused by the whole idea, but he was a simple youth and was induced to volunteer his body for the sake of Yonville and Science. The operation was carried out by Homais and Charles in the local inn. At first it seemed a success, but Hippolyte soon became ill and suffered terrible pain. It was discovered that his leg was infested with gangrene. Bovary was very upset and unable to act; so a consultant was called in from another town. The doctor sternly admonished Bovary for his foolish treatment and amputated the patient's leg. Homais, meanwhile, disclaimed any responsibility, and Emma was disgusted by what she interpreted as a further demonstration of Charles' stupid incompetence. In fact, however, the fault was not entirely Bovary's although no one recognized this. Some of the blame also belonged to the specialist who had published an untested and undependable "cure." Bovary and Emma were both depressed by this incident, although for different reasons. He was ashamed of what he had done and felt that he had been irresponsible. She reproached herself for ever having had faith in him and decided that she was now absolved of any responsibility to her husband. Her passion for Rodolphe flared up again, and she saw him that night for the first time in many days. Charles, in his simplicity, assumed that Emma's depression had been caused by sympathy for him and was gratified by her demonstration of devotion.

This chapter interrupts the progress of the love affair. At the end of the last chapter, Emma had begun to repent of her love for Rodolphe. Now she turns to Charles, and when Homais suggests the operation, she encourages it, thinking that if Charles were famous she could respect him. Through it all, Homais and Emma never give any thought to Charles or to Hippolyte, but instead see in the operation how they could personally benefit from the fame. We know, and later in retrospect Emma realizes, that Charles is not capable of such an operation, and it is only through the goading of Emma and Homais that he ever consents. The operation having failed, Emma now repents of her past virtue. In other words, Charles' ineptitude and stupidity now give her full justification to carry out her affair with no tinge of recrimination. Thus this interlude functions to again convince Emma of Charles' ignorance and to justify her infidelity. The description of the operation, the gangrene with its smell, the interest of the crowd, and the suffering of Hippolyte are all masterfully rendered. And the absurdity of Homais' letter, composed immediately after the operation, should be compared with the equally absurd letter describing the agricultural show in Chapter 8.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_12_to_13.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_16_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 12-13

chapters 12-13

{"name": "Chapters 12-13", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1213", "summary": "The liaison between Emma and Rodolphe began again and now evolved with greater ardor. As her passion for Rodolphe increased, Emma found that she disliked Bovary even more, and she began to speak vaguely of leaving him someday. When she was not with Rodolphe, Emma suffered from boredom and was irritated by all of Charles' mannerisms and acts. She began to feel sorry for herself because of her unhappy marriage and found some solace in catering to her material desires. She fell an easy victim to the wily merchant, Lheureux, who cajoled her into many purchases that she could not afford. Rodolphe, meanwhile, was growing tired of Emma. The novelty of her love was wearing off, and her ridiculous whims annoyed him. Bovary's mother paid the family a visit. She and Emma had their usual fight, though Emma was finally induced by Charles to apologize. She was mortified by this and when she saw Rodolphe that night, Emma asked him to take her away from all her misery. He reminded her of the baby, and, as an afterthought, Emma decided to take the child with her. In the next few days Bovary and his mother were amazed and pleased at the changes that came over Emma; she was quiet and docile now and seemed a new person. But at her secret meetings with Rodolphe, Emma was planning to run away and start her life again. The happiness that such plans gave her added new highlights and softness to her beauty. She was so gentle and lovely that Bovary was reminded of the first days of their marriage, and his love for her and Berthe deepened. Emma's thoughts, though, were always far off, contemplating exotic lands and adventures. Despite Rodolphe's procrastination, the final plans for their departure were made. He and Emma would leave Yonville separately, meet in Rouen, and then go on together to Paris. On the night before the day selected, they met in Emma's garden to make the last arrangements. Emma was in high spirits and seemed more beautiful than ever. Rodolphe was reserved and thoughtful. After leaving her he argued with himself for a while. The problems and burdens of life with Emma, he decided, would not be worth the sensual pleasure she could offer him. That night Rodolphe sat at his desk and mused for a while about the many women he had known. After some trouble he composed a letter which he felt would end their affair with the fewest complications. He wrote her that he loved her very much and that this was why he was abandoning her. He said that the life he could offer would provide her only with pain and indignity, and he could not bear to do this. And, he thought, this was really not too far from the truth after all. Much satisfied with his work, Rodolphe went to sleep. Emma received this note the next morning and became faint from shock. In her confusion she dropped the crumbled up letter in the attic and forgot about it. Rodolphe had told her that he was leaving Yonville to protect her from him, and a few moments later she saw his carriage drive by. This awful reminder of what had just happened was like a blow to her heart. She screamed aloud and fell unconscious. Emma became seriously ill. She had a high fever and delirium for 43 days and was often close to death. Bovary never left her side and neglected all his affairs to care for her. Specialists were called in from Rouen and elsewhere, and every effort was made to cure her, but for a long time nothing had any success. By October, Emma began to regain her strength. She still had fainting spells and weak periods, but she was able to move around a little, and was clearly on the road to recovery.", "analysis": "These two chapters present the passionate renewal of Emma and Rodolphe's love affair after the disappointing interlude connected with Hippolyte's foot. Emma's romanticism now forces her to bring the romance to a climax. She is not satisfied with having an affair with Rodolphe. She insists that they flee together to some strange land. This emphasis on flight is another romantic concept. And while she is insisting that they go away, she begins to go deeper in debt to Lheureux by ordering expensive gifts for Rodolphe and the necessary things for the trip. After Emma receives Rodolphe's letter, she immediately begins to think of suicide. This foreshadows her actual suicide later on. Emma's sickness caused by her betrayal suggests that perhaps she felt a love for Rodolphe that is indeed deeper than that of a common woman. Perhaps Flaubert is here indicating that Emma, in spite of her romanticism, is capable of a deep devotion. But most critics prefer to read this scene as Emma's reaction to the loss of her dream and the realization of the emptiness and uselessness of life without her dream. Her sickness, therefore, is simply a result of the betrayal and the loss of her ideal which bring to her the realization that she must continue the empty life that she had lived before her encounter with Rodolphe. It should be noted here that in spite of Charles' dullness and stupidity, he does possess a dogged devotion to Emma. He gives up his practice and remains by her side during her entire illness. Of course, it could be said that his devotion is the same that an animal would have for his master, but it is, nevertheless, a redeeming characteristic in Charles' otherwise flat personality."}

They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that her husband was odious, her life frightful. "But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently. "Ah! if you would--" She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look lost. "Why, what?" said Rodolphe. She sighed. "We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!" "You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be possible?" She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned the conversation. What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection. Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince. The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her company, watched her at work. With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily watched all these women's clothes spread about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below. "What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes. "Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" Felicite answered laughing. "As if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the same." "Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a meditative air, "As if she were a lady like madame!" But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, was beginning to pay court to her. "Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You'd better be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your chin." "Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots." And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's boots, all coated with mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight. "How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her. Emma had a number in her cupboard that she squandered one after the other, without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork, and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray the expense of this purchase. So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction. It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order; this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have a very handsome ridding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen to give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her table. But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed; all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur Derozeray's account, which he was in the habit of paying every year about Midsummer. She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received. "Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma. "I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the whip. My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me." "No, no!" she said. "Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux. And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an undertone, and with his usual low whistle-- "Good! we shall see! we shall see!" She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from Monsieur Derozeray's." Emma pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen napoleons; it was the account. She heard Charles on the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key. Three days after Lheureux reappeared. "I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "If, instead of the sum agreed on, you would take--" "Here it is," she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand. The tradesman was dumfounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Emma declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. She promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on. "Pshaw!" she thought, "he won't think about it again." Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had received a seal with the motto Amor nel cor* furthermore, a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount's, that Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma had kept. These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and overexacting. *A loving heart. Then she had strange ideas. "When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me." And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal question-- "Do you love me?" "Why, of course I love you," he answered. "A great deal?" "Certainly!" "You haven't loved any others?" "Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing. Emma cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with puns. "Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not live without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again, when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, Where is he? Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he approaches. Oh no; no one else pleases you. There are some more beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!" He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars. But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him who, in no matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights to be got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her quite sans facon.* He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey. *Off-handedly. By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's manners changed. Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in her mouth, "as if to defy the people." At last, those who still doubted doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the "Hirondelle," her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk. Many other things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the house" annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were quarrels, especially one on account of Felicite. Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage, had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped through the kitchen. Then Emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to look after those of one's servants. "Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not perhaps defending her own case. "Leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a bound. "Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile them. But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping her feet as she repeated-- "Oh! what manners! What a peasant!" He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered "She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!" And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologise. So Charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he knelt to her; she ended by saying-- "Very well! I'll go to her." And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity of a marchioness as she said-- "Excuse me, madame." Then, having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow. She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind, so that if by chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry to the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal; she had been waiting three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at the corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and call him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in despair. Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking on the pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He was there outside. She threw herself into his arms. "Do take care!" he said. "Ah! if you knew!" she replied. And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly, exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses that he understood nothing of it. "Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!" "But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love like ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They torture me! I can bear it no longer! Save me!" She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so that he lost his head and said "What is, it? What do you wish?" "Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh, I pray you!" And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the unexpected consent if breathed forth in a kiss. "But--" Rodolphe resumed. "What?" "Your little girl!" She reflected a few moments, then replied-- "We will take her! It can't be helped!" "What a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. For she had run into the garden. Someone was calling her. On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much surprised at the change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact, was showing herself more docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for pickling gherkins. Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort of voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the things she was about to leave? But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as lost in the anticipated delight of her coming happiness. It was an eternal subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She leant on his shoulder murmuring-- "Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it be? It seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if we were rising in a balloon, as if we were setting out for the clouds. Do you know that I count the hours? And you?" Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her voice now took more mellow infections, her figure also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible. When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed as it were a white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside Charles looked at them. He seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. She would grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to be sent to the boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be done? Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the neighbourhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where; besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen, when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters. He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her gaiety. At last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy; this would last for ever. Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her side she awakened to other dreams. To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a new land, whence they would return no more. They went on and on, their arms entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a mountain there suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose pointed steeples were storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace because of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonised, azure, and bathed in sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored more loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn whitened the windows, and when little Justin was already in the square taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop. She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him-- "I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar." "You are going on a journey?" he asked. "No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?" He bowed. "Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--handy." "Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they are being made just now." "And a travelling bag." "Decidedly," thought Lheureux, "there's a row on here." "And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take this; you can pay yourself out of it." But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another; did he doubt her? What childishness! She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and Lheureux had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him back. "You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak"--she seemed to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's address, and tell him to have it ready for me." It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen. Rodolphe would have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux whence it would be taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it. He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill; next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September--a Monday. At length the Saturday before arrived. Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual. "Everything is ready?" she asked him. "Yes." Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall. "You are sad," said Emma. "No; why?" And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion. "It is because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!" "How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms. "Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me? Swear it then!" "Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love." The moon, full and purple-coloured, was rising right out of the earth at the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the branches of the poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a heedless serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together. The soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches. Emma, her eyes half closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass. Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach falling all alone from the espalier. "Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe. "We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if speaking to herself: "Yet, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my heart be so heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or rather--? No; it is the excess of happiness. How weak I am, am I not? Forgive me!" "There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps you may repent!" "Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: "What ill could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not traverse with you. The longer we live together the more it will be like an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. There will be nothing to trouble us, no cares, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally. Oh, speak! Answer me!" At regular intervals he answered, "Yes--Yes--" She had passed her hands through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little Rodolphe!" Midnight struck. "Midnight!" said she. "Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!" He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay air-- "You have the passports?" "Yes." "You are forgetting nothing?" "No." "Are you sure?" "Certainly." "It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at midday?" He nodded. "Till to-morrow then!" said Emma in a last caress; and she watched him go. He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes-- "To-morrow!" she cried. He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across the meadow. After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall. "What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! She was a pretty mistress!" And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her. "For, after all," he exclaimed, gesticulating, "I can't exile myself--have a child on my hands." He was saying these things to give himself firmness. "And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand times no! That would be too stupid." No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between them. To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other. Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened. Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all. In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to the cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall. "Come," said he, "let's begin." He wrote-- "Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life." "After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her interest; I am honest." "Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!" Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse. "If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went on-- "I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate." "That's a word that always tells," he said to himself. "Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees, certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences." "Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much the worse; it must be stopped!" "The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you. I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers." The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut the window, and when he had sat down again-- "I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt me up." "I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!" And there was a last "adieu" divided into two words! "A Dieu!" which he thought in very excellent taste. "Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "'Yours devotedly?' No! 'Your friend?' Yes, that's it." "Your friend." He re-read his letter. He considered it very good. "Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me harder than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he came upon the one "Amor nel cor." "That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!" After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed. The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late), Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits or game. "If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have gone on a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands. Get along and take care!" Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound galoshes, made his way to Yonville. Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with Felicite. "Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you--from the master." She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Felicite remained. She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her, Emma flew to her room terrified. Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped before the attic door, which was closed. Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no! here," she thought, "I shall be all right." Emma pushed open the door and went in. The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap. Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning. She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the letter with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself, "Come! come!" The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her. "Emma! Emma!" cried Charles. She stopped. "Wherever are you? Come!" The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite. "Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table." And she had to go down to sit at table. She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced these words in a strange manner: "We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems." "Who told you?" she said, shuddering. "Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why, Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe Francais. He has gone on a journey, or is to go." She gave a sob. "What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right, when one has a fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend. He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--" He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles, without noticing his wife's colour, had them brought to him, took one, and bit into it. "Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!" And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently. "Do just smell! What an odour!" he remarked, passing it under her nose several times. "I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the spasm passed; then-- "It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left alone. Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate. Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground. In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the twilight. The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran thither. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and Felicite, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively. "I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the druggist. Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle-- "I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for you!" "Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is your Charles, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!" The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice "No, no! no one!" She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow. Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions of life. "Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the paroxysm is past." "Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching her sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!" Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots. "Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread--" "Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice. "And not only," the druggist went on, "are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?" "Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him. "This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system. With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification. Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked upon?" "In what way? How?" said Bovary. "Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as I lately read in a newspaper." But Emma, awaking, cried out-- "The letter! the letter!" They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had set in. For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere, his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was Emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after all their troubles. About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers, and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the time. They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills. "You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And, pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this seat; you'll be comfortable." "Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice. She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the first signs of cancer. And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.

Chapters 12-13

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1213

The liaison between Emma and Rodolphe began again and now evolved with greater ardor. As her passion for Rodolphe increased, Emma found that she disliked Bovary even more, and she began to speak vaguely of leaving him someday. When she was not with Rodolphe, Emma suffered from boredom and was irritated by all of Charles' mannerisms and acts. She began to feel sorry for herself because of her unhappy marriage and found some solace in catering to her material desires. She fell an easy victim to the wily merchant, Lheureux, who cajoled her into many purchases that she could not afford. Rodolphe, meanwhile, was growing tired of Emma. The novelty of her love was wearing off, and her ridiculous whims annoyed him. Bovary's mother paid the family a visit. She and Emma had their usual fight, though Emma was finally induced by Charles to apologize. She was mortified by this and when she saw Rodolphe that night, Emma asked him to take her away from all her misery. He reminded her of the baby, and, as an afterthought, Emma decided to take the child with her. In the next few days Bovary and his mother were amazed and pleased at the changes that came over Emma; she was quiet and docile now and seemed a new person. But at her secret meetings with Rodolphe, Emma was planning to run away and start her life again. The happiness that such plans gave her added new highlights and softness to her beauty. She was so gentle and lovely that Bovary was reminded of the first days of their marriage, and his love for her and Berthe deepened. Emma's thoughts, though, were always far off, contemplating exotic lands and adventures. Despite Rodolphe's procrastination, the final plans for their departure were made. He and Emma would leave Yonville separately, meet in Rouen, and then go on together to Paris. On the night before the day selected, they met in Emma's garden to make the last arrangements. Emma was in high spirits and seemed more beautiful than ever. Rodolphe was reserved and thoughtful. After leaving her he argued with himself for a while. The problems and burdens of life with Emma, he decided, would not be worth the sensual pleasure she could offer him. That night Rodolphe sat at his desk and mused for a while about the many women he had known. After some trouble he composed a letter which he felt would end their affair with the fewest complications. He wrote her that he loved her very much and that this was why he was abandoning her. He said that the life he could offer would provide her only with pain and indignity, and he could not bear to do this. And, he thought, this was really not too far from the truth after all. Much satisfied with his work, Rodolphe went to sleep. Emma received this note the next morning and became faint from shock. In her confusion she dropped the crumbled up letter in the attic and forgot about it. Rodolphe had told her that he was leaving Yonville to protect her from him, and a few moments later she saw his carriage drive by. This awful reminder of what had just happened was like a blow to her heart. She screamed aloud and fell unconscious. Emma became seriously ill. She had a high fever and delirium for 43 days and was often close to death. Bovary never left her side and neglected all his affairs to care for her. Specialists were called in from Rouen and elsewhere, and every effort was made to cure her, but for a long time nothing had any success. By October, Emma began to regain her strength. She still had fainting spells and weak periods, but she was able to move around a little, and was clearly on the road to recovery.

These two chapters present the passionate renewal of Emma and Rodolphe's love affair after the disappointing interlude connected with Hippolyte's foot. Emma's romanticism now forces her to bring the romance to a climax. She is not satisfied with having an affair with Rodolphe. She insists that they flee together to some strange land. This emphasis on flight is another romantic concept. And while she is insisting that they go away, she begins to go deeper in debt to Lheureux by ordering expensive gifts for Rodolphe and the necessary things for the trip. After Emma receives Rodolphe's letter, she immediately begins to think of suicide. This foreshadows her actual suicide later on. Emma's sickness caused by her betrayal suggests that perhaps she felt a love for Rodolphe that is indeed deeper than that of a common woman. Perhaps Flaubert is here indicating that Emma, in spite of her romanticism, is capable of a deep devotion. But most critics prefer to read this scene as Emma's reaction to the loss of her dream and the realization of the emptiness and uselessness of life without her dream. Her sickness, therefore, is simply a result of the betrayal and the loss of her ideal which bring to her the realization that she must continue the empty life that she had lived before her encounter with Rodolphe. It should be noted here that in spite of Charles' dullness and stupidity, he does possess a dogged devotion to Emma. He gives up his practice and remains by her side during her entire illness. Of course, it could be said that his devotion is the same that an animal would have for his master, but it is, nevertheless, a redeeming characteristic in Charles' otherwise flat personality.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_2_chapters_14_to_15.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_17_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 2.chapters 14-15

chapters 14-15

{"name": "Chapters 14-15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1415", "summary": "In addition to his concern about Emma, Charles was also bothered by financial worries. The illness had been very expensive, and other bills were piling up. Moreover, Lheureux suddenly presented him with a statement of Emma's debts. Not knowing what else to do, Bovary borrowed money from Lheureux and signed several notes at a high rate of interest. All through the winter months Emma's convalescence continued. During a crisis in her illness, Emma's religious sentiments had reawakened. Now she was very devout and spent much of her time reading religious books or conversing with the priest. By spring Emma was relatively strong again and returned to her household duties. Her religious feelings remained firm, and everyone was surprised by her new generosity, spirituality, and stern principles. One day at Homais' suggestion, Bovary decided to take Emma to the theater at Rouen. He hoped that such an outing would be good for her health. Emma was not eager to go, but Bovary was so persistent that she agreed. On the day of the trip they excitedly left for the city. Emma was embarrassed and upset by Charles' behavior and appearance all that afternoon. She wanted very much to seem a sophisticated, cosmopolitan lady, and she felt that he was just a country bumpkin. She was tense and self-conscious wherever they went. Despite this, however, Emma enjoyed the opera, Lucie de Lammermoor, very much. She found that the story reminded her of events in her own life. During the intermission they were both surprised to encounter Leon, who now lived and worked in Rouen. The three went to a cafe together, where Bovary and Leon talked at length about Yonville, their mutual friends, and old times. Leon also told them a little about his present position and his experiences at the university. Emma was impressed by Leon's suave, citified manners and dress. When they discussed the opera they had just left, Leon at first ridiculed it until he learned that perhaps Emma could stay over to see the second part again. He then praised the opera so highly that Charles suggested that Emma stay while he return to his practice. In any case, before they separated, the Bovarys and Leon arranged to meet again the next day.", "analysis": "After Emma's recovery from her illness, she falls back into the old, established, neurotic pattern of taking up something only to drop it for something else. She gave herself so completely to religion that even the cure thought she went too far. Then she began charity work even though her own household needed attention. Once at the opera, Emma becomes immersed in the romantic world on the stage. She begins to identify with the heroine and she is entranced with the tenor. Here Flaubert's art is very subtle. The objective description of the artist says little, but implies that the artist is false. Like Emma, he misrepresents art. He uses tricks to cover up for his lack of art. There is \"something of the hair dresser and the toreador\" about him. Thus, Emma is lost in this false and sentimental world of cheap art. The scene at the opera prepares the reader and also Emma for the reintroduction of Leon. The romantic elements of the opera provide an apt meeting place to rekindle their attraction to each other."}

To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an obligation. Then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was mistress, became terrible. Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux especially harassed him. In fact, at the height of Emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them. The tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his goods. Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop. Felicite forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more about them. Monsieur Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns threatening and whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a bill at six months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux. So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them, adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. Lheureux ran off to his shop, brought back the money, and dictated another bill, by which Bovary undertook to pay to his order on the 1st of September next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus lending at six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission: and the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. He hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag. Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for a supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Monsieur Guillaumin promised him some shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil and Rouen, which no doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion d'Or," and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville. Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to be constantly thinking of her. The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When it was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle" in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices answered, while Hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one after the other. It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion, in a coaxing little prattle that was not without its charm. The mere thought of his cassock comforted her. One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the night table covered with syrups into an altar, and while Felicite was strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms. This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in the place of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening. The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he thought, might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor, to send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." The bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up, pellmell, everything that was then the fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World at Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de ***, decorated with many Orders"; "The Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," etc. Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive. As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than a king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic dupery. This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more, and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to those grand ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La Valliere, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded. Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes for the poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one day, on coming home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her illness her husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach her to read; even when Berthe cried, she was not vexed. She had made up her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, "Is your stomach-ache better, my angel?" Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen; but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even stayed there till after Easter, to escape the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never failed on Good Friday to order chitterlings. Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, Emma almost every day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron, Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to see her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom, and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even Madame Bovary; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him. Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity. She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext. Then suddenly-- "So you love him?" she said. And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was blushing, she added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!" In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end, despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family, successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented church less assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said to her in a friendly way-- "You were going in a bit for the cassock!" As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's complete restoration. Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles. "You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at restaurants." But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this joke-- "Its goodness strikes the eye!" He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even scandalised at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature. But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue. "'Castigat ridendo mores,'* Monsieur Bournisien! Thus consider the greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections, that made them a vast school of morals and diplomacy for the people." *It corrects customs through laughter. "I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the ending--" "Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that imprisoned Galileo." "I know very well," objected the cure, "that there are good works, good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her decrees." "Why," asked the druggist, "should she excommunicate actors? For formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called 'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency." The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the chemist went on-- "It's like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!" And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien-- "Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie--" "But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the other impatiently, "who recommend the Bible." "No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that in our days, in this century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?" "No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any ideas. The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot a Parthian arrow. "I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers kicking about." "Come, come!" said the cure. "Ah! I've known some!" And separating the words of his sentence, Homais repeated, "I--have--known--some!" "Well, they were wrong," said Bournisien, resigned to anything. "By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the druggist. "Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the druggist was intimidated by them. "I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion." "That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments. Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor-- "That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If anyone could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to England at a high salary. From what I hear, he's a regular dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow." The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling in of Lheureux's bills was still so far off that there was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle." The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go. "Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that you are!" Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with four flounces-- "You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen." The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in the Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers--a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sundayclothes, has a cafe on the street, and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden. Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard. Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the theatre, which were still closed. The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters "Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they made casks. For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his stomach. Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess. The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing. They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cottons, spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves. Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene. It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared. He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toreador. From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!" The theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords. "But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?" "No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!" "Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?" Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words. "What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!" "Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I like to understand things." "Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently. Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak. His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out, "Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!" The curtain fell. The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her arm-chair with palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water. He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband, who was a millowner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath-- "Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a crowd--SUCH a crowd!" He added-- "Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!" "Leon?" "Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box. He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words. "Ah, good-day! What! you here?" "Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning. "So you are at Rouen?" "Yes." "And since when?" "Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They were silent. But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests, the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the druggist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, the tete-a-tete by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair. "Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly-- "Oh, dear me, no, not much." Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere. "Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is going to be tragic." But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated. "She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening. "Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion. Then with a sigh Leon said-- "The heat is--" "Unbearable! Yes!" "Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary. "Yes, I am stifling; let us go." Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a cafe. First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end. People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma Lucie!*" Then Leon, playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tambourini, Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared with them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere. *Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie. "Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me." "Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance." But Charles replied that they were going back next day. "Unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone, kitten?" And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted-- "You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong if you feel that this is doing you the least good." The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble. "I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you are--" The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat said-- "It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?" Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but that nothing prevented Emma-- "But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure--" "Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel." Then to Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are in our part of the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then." The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover, to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock in the cathedral struck half-past eleven. Part III

Chapters 14-15

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-ii-chapters-1415

In addition to his concern about Emma, Charles was also bothered by financial worries. The illness had been very expensive, and other bills were piling up. Moreover, Lheureux suddenly presented him with a statement of Emma's debts. Not knowing what else to do, Bovary borrowed money from Lheureux and signed several notes at a high rate of interest. All through the winter months Emma's convalescence continued. During a crisis in her illness, Emma's religious sentiments had reawakened. Now she was very devout and spent much of her time reading religious books or conversing with the priest. By spring Emma was relatively strong again and returned to her household duties. Her religious feelings remained firm, and everyone was surprised by her new generosity, spirituality, and stern principles. One day at Homais' suggestion, Bovary decided to take Emma to the theater at Rouen. He hoped that such an outing would be good for her health. Emma was not eager to go, but Bovary was so persistent that she agreed. On the day of the trip they excitedly left for the city. Emma was embarrassed and upset by Charles' behavior and appearance all that afternoon. She wanted very much to seem a sophisticated, cosmopolitan lady, and she felt that he was just a country bumpkin. She was tense and self-conscious wherever they went. Despite this, however, Emma enjoyed the opera, Lucie de Lammermoor, very much. She found that the story reminded her of events in her own life. During the intermission they were both surprised to encounter Leon, who now lived and worked in Rouen. The three went to a cafe together, where Bovary and Leon talked at length about Yonville, their mutual friends, and old times. Leon also told them a little about his present position and his experiences at the university. Emma was impressed by Leon's suave, citified manners and dress. When they discussed the opera they had just left, Leon at first ridiculed it until he learned that perhaps Emma could stay over to see the second part again. He then praised the opera so highly that Charles suggested that Emma stay while he return to his practice. In any case, before they separated, the Bovarys and Leon arranged to meet again the next day.

After Emma's recovery from her illness, she falls back into the old, established, neurotic pattern of taking up something only to drop it for something else. She gave herself so completely to religion that even the cure thought she went too far. Then she began charity work even though her own household needed attention. Once at the opera, Emma becomes immersed in the romantic world on the stage. She begins to identify with the heroine and she is entranced with the tenor. Here Flaubert's art is very subtle. The objective description of the artist says little, but implies that the artist is false. Like Emma, he misrepresents art. He uses tricks to cover up for his lack of art. There is "something of the hair dresser and the toreador" about him. Thus, Emma is lost in this false and sentimental world of cheap art. The scene at the opera prepares the reader and also Emma for the reintroduction of Leon. The romantic elements of the opera provide an apt meeting place to rekindle their attraction to each other.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/25.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_18_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-1", "summary": "While attending law school in Paris, Leon was a model student. But he did experience a new way of life even though he remained quiet and respectable. And now that he has returned to Rouen, he has brought with him many of the manners and sophistication that he learned in Paris. He dressed and acted in the Parisian style and felt especially self-confident in Rouen, where he considered himself to be a sophisticate among the local provincials. At first in Paris he had often thought about Emma, but gradually she became a blurred memory. Now his old feelings for her were reawakened. He visited Emma at her hotel the next day while Bovary was out. She and Leon were pleased by this opportunity to see each other in private, and they held an animated conversation for several hours. Their old intimacy was renewed, although both withheld several personal details of their recent experiences. Emma and Leon recalled their sad parting in Yonville and the times they had spent together there and discussed with a new frankness their mutual affection. Before leaving, Leon kissed Emma, and they arranged to have a secret meeting at the cathedral the next day. In the morning, Leon arrived punctually at the place of the rendezvous. Emma was late and tried at first to avoid him, for she hoped to prevent herself from falling in love with him again. She tried to pray but her mind was not on it. Then she readily accepted an invitation from the beadle of the church to see the various parts of the cathedral. Leon suffered the sightseeing as long as possible and then pulled Emma away from the church and into a carriage he had sent for. The carriage driver could not understand why two people would want to ride aimlessly about the countryside on such a pretty day with all the curtains pulled. Every time he made an attempt to stop, he was severely reprimanded by Leon. They were together in the carriage so long that Emma missed the Hirondelle that was to take her back to Yonville. She had to hire a special hack to catch the Hirondelle before it reached Yonville.", "analysis": "Chapter 1 presents Leon's background so as to show how he has changed during the interim. He is no longer so retiring and bashful. Paris has given him a sense of self-assurance which will allow him now to approach Madame Bovary. But we should also note that even though both he and Emma have changed, their talk is still filled with commonplace romantic cliches and platitudes. Flaubert's description of the church where Leon is to meet Emma is a masterpiece of realistic description and subtle suggestion. Flaubert describes the church in terms of a lady's boudoir where the church is waiting to \"gather the confession of her love.\" These descriptions sum up everything about Emma's own religion -- a religion which Emma sees only in her own way. Thus, after Emma enters, she immediately attempts to pray, but her thoughts are not on religion but instead on herself and her relationship with Leon. Throughout the entire scene, it is ironic that both Emma and Leon are seething with a burning passion while the slow, bungling guide shows them through the cold, ancient church. Their view of the huge, magnificent church should be contrasted with the final scene, that of Emma and Leon riding in a small closed carriage while consummating their love. The carriage is even described as being \"sealed tighter than a tomb,\" and if the image is extended, this is the beginning of Emma's last fated episode which will lead to her suicide."}

Monsieur Leon, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the grisettes, who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the best-mannered of the students; he wore his hair neither too long nor too short, didn't spend all his quarter's money on the first day of the month, and kept on good terms with his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained from them, as much from cowardice as from refinement. Often when he stayed in his room to read, or else when sitting of an evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his Code fall to the ground, and the memory of Emma came back to him. But gradually this feeling grew weaker, and other desires gathered over it, although it still persisted through them all. For Leon did not lose all hope; there was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree. Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to possess her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with his gay companions, and he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some illustrious physician, a person driving his carriage and wearing many orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like a child; but here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife of this small doctor he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he would shine. Self-possession depends on its environment. We don't speak on the first floor as on the fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset. On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Leon had followed them through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at the "Croix-Rouge," he turned on his heel, and spent the night meditating a plan. So the next day about five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of the inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and that resolution of cowards that stops at nothing. "The gentleman isn't in," answered a servant. This seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs. She was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she apologised for having neglected to tell him where they were staying. "Oh, I divined it!" said Leon. He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by, instinct. She began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly, Leon told her that he had spent his morning in looking for her in all the hotels in the town one after the other. "So you have made up your mind to stay?" he added. "Yes," she said, "and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom oneself to impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands upon one." "Oh, I can imagine!" "Ah! no; for you, you are a man!" But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off into certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiated much on the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains entombed. To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully bored during the whole course of his studies. The law irritated him, other vocations attracted him, and his mother never ceased worrying him in every one of her letters. As they talked they explained more and more fully the motives of their sadness, working themselves up in their progressive confidence. But they sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did not say that he had forgotten her. Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she ran across the fields in the morning to her lover's house. The noises of the town hardly reached them, and the room seemed small, as if on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Emma, in a dimity dressing-gown, leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the yellow wall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background behind her, and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in the middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her hair. "But pardon me!" she said. "It is wrong of me. I weary you with my eternal complaints." "No, never, never!" "If you knew," she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful eyes, in which a tear was trembling, "all that I had dreamed!" "And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me. In an engraver's shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there continually; I stayed there hours together." Then in a trembling voice, "She resembled you a little." Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips. "Often," he went on, "I wrote you letters that I tore up." She did not answer. He continued-- "I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours." She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption. Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin of them with her toes. At last she sighed. "But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice." He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not satisfy. "I should much like," she said, "to be a nurse at a hospital." "Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor." With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Emma interrupted him to speak of her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be suffering now! Leon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment. But at this invention of the rug she asked, "But why?" "Why?" He hesitated. "Because I loved you so!" And congratulating himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon watched her face out of the corner of his eyes. It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied-- "I always suspected it." Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence, whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of her house. "And our poor cactuses, where are they?" "The cold killed them this winter." "Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds, and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers." "Poor friend!" she said, holding out her hand to him. Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep breath-- "At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no doubt, do not remember it." "I do," she said; "go on." "You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you. Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's; you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy door that had closed after you." Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed-- "Yes, it is true--true--true!" They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels. They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past, the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills representing four scenes from the "Tour de Nesle," with a motto in Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs. She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then she sat down again. "Well!" said Leon. "Well!" she replied. He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she said to him-- "How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to me?" The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another. "I have sometimes thought of it," she went on. "What a dream!" murmured Leon. And fingering gently the blue binding of her long white sash, he added, "And who prevents us from beginning now?" "No, my friend," she replied; "I am too old; you are too young. Forget me! Others will love you; you will love them." "Not as you!" he cried. "What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it." She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship. Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself know, quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his trembling hands attempted. "Ah! forgive me!" he cried, drawing back. Emma was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous to her than the boldness of Rodolphe when he advanced to her open-armed. No man had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An exquisite candour emanated from his being. He lowered his long fine eyelashes, that curled upwards. His cheek, with the soft skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her person, and Emma felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it. Then, leaning towards the clock as if to see the time-- "Ah! how late it is!" she said; "how we do chatter!" He understood the hint and took up his hat. "It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Bovary has left me here especially for that. Monsieur Lormeaux, of the Rue Grand-Pont, was to take me and his wife." And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day. "Really!" said Leon. "Yes." "But I must see you again," he went on. "I wanted to tell you--" "What?" "Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go; it is impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not understood me; you have not guessed--" "Yet you speak plainly," said Emma. "Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity's sake, let me see you once--only once!" "Well--" She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, "Oh, not here!" "Where you will." "Will you--" She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, "To-morrow at eleven o'clock in the cathedral." "I shall be there," he cried, seizing her hands, which she disengaged. And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Emma with her head bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her neck. "You are mad! Ah! you are mad!" she said, with sounding little laughs, while the kisses multiplied. Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the consent of her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity. Leon stepped back to go out. He stopped on the threshold; then he whispered with a trembling voice, "Tomorrow!" She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the next room. In the evening Emma wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in which she cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not, for the sake of their happiness, meet again. But when the letter was finished, as she did not know Leon's address, she was puzzled. "I'll give it to him myself," she said; "he will come." The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony, Leon himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on white trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent he had into his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he uncurled it again, in order to give it a more natural elegance. "It is still too early," he thought, looking at the hairdresser's cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old fashion journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, thought it was time, and went slowly towards the porch of Notre Dame. It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver plate sparkled in the jeweller's windows, and the light falling obliquely on the cathedral made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock of birds fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil bell-turrets; the square, resounding with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered its pavement, roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly spaced out between moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds; the fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas, amidst melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were twisting paper round bunches of violets. The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought flowers for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled with pride, as if this homage that he meant for another had recoiled upon himself. But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the left doorway, under the "Dancing Marianne," with feather cap, and rapier dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and as shining as a saint on a holy pyx. He came towards Leon, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children-- "The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The gentleman would like to see the curiosities of the church?" "No!" said the other. And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to look at the Place. Emma was not coming yet. He went up again to the choir. The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of the arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the reflections of the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were continued farther on upon the flag-stones, like a many-coloured carpet. The broad daylight from without streamed into the church in three enormous rays from the three opened portals. From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed, making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal lustres hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo reverberating under the lofty vault. Leon with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never seemed so good to him. She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue. The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours. But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards Emma. The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege. But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined cloak--it was she! Leon rose and ran to meet her. Emma was pale. She walked fast. "Read!" she said, holding out a paper to him. "Oh, no!" And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray. The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end. Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart. She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward, hurriedly saying-- "Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to see the curiosities of the church?" "Oh, no!" cried the clerk. "Why not?" said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything. Then, in order to proceed "by rule," the beadle conducted them right to the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscription or carving-- "This," he said majestically, "is the circumference of the beautiful bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy--" "Let us go on," said Leon. The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his espaliers, went on-- "This simple stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465." Leon bit his lips, fuming. "And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval and of Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the 23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below, this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person. It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of annihilation?" Madame Bovary put up her eyeglasses. Leon, motionless, looked at her, no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture, so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of gossip and indifference. The everlasting guide went on-- "Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis thousand gold crowns for the poor." And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that certainly might once have been an ill-made statue. "Truly," he said with a groan, "it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the gargoyle windows." But Leon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma's arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to see. So calling him back, he cried-- "Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!" "No, thank you!" said Leon. "You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--" Leon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier. "But where are we going?" she said. Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Leon turned back. "Sir!" "What is it?" And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works "which treated of the cathedral." "Idiot!" growled Leon, rushing out of the church. A lad was playing about the close. "Go and get me a cab!" The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed. "Ah! Leon! Really--I don't know--if I ought," she whispered. Then with a more serious air, "Do you know, it is very improper--" "How so?" replied the clerk. "It is done at Paris." And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her. Still the cab did not come. Leon was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared. "At all events, go out by the north porch," cried the beadle, who was left alone on the threshold, "so as to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames." "Where to, sir?" asked the coachman. "Where you like," said Leon, forcing Emma into the cab. And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont, crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille. "Go on," cried a voice that came from within. The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop. "No, straight on!" cried the same voice. The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters. It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the isles. But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of the Jardin des Plantes. "Get on, will you?" cried the voice more furiously. And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the Quai'des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills. It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the "Vieille Tour," the "Trois Pipes," and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses. He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression. And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel. Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom. At about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down, and without turning her head.

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-1

While attending law school in Paris, Leon was a model student. But he did experience a new way of life even though he remained quiet and respectable. And now that he has returned to Rouen, he has brought with him many of the manners and sophistication that he learned in Paris. He dressed and acted in the Parisian style and felt especially self-confident in Rouen, where he considered himself to be a sophisticate among the local provincials. At first in Paris he had often thought about Emma, but gradually she became a blurred memory. Now his old feelings for her were reawakened. He visited Emma at her hotel the next day while Bovary was out. She and Leon were pleased by this opportunity to see each other in private, and they held an animated conversation for several hours. Their old intimacy was renewed, although both withheld several personal details of their recent experiences. Emma and Leon recalled their sad parting in Yonville and the times they had spent together there and discussed with a new frankness their mutual affection. Before leaving, Leon kissed Emma, and they arranged to have a secret meeting at the cathedral the next day. In the morning, Leon arrived punctually at the place of the rendezvous. Emma was late and tried at first to avoid him, for she hoped to prevent herself from falling in love with him again. She tried to pray but her mind was not on it. Then she readily accepted an invitation from the beadle of the church to see the various parts of the cathedral. Leon suffered the sightseeing as long as possible and then pulled Emma away from the church and into a carriage he had sent for. The carriage driver could not understand why two people would want to ride aimlessly about the countryside on such a pretty day with all the curtains pulled. Every time he made an attempt to stop, he was severely reprimanded by Leon. They were together in the carriage so long that Emma missed the Hirondelle that was to take her back to Yonville. She had to hire a special hack to catch the Hirondelle before it reached Yonville.

Chapter 1 presents Leon's background so as to show how he has changed during the interim. He is no longer so retiring and bashful. Paris has given him a sense of self-assurance which will allow him now to approach Madame Bovary. But we should also note that even though both he and Emma have changed, their talk is still filled with commonplace romantic cliches and platitudes. Flaubert's description of the church where Leon is to meet Emma is a masterpiece of realistic description and subtle suggestion. Flaubert describes the church in terms of a lady's boudoir where the church is waiting to "gather the confession of her love." These descriptions sum up everything about Emma's own religion -- a religion which Emma sees only in her own way. Thus, after Emma enters, she immediately attempts to pray, but her thoughts are not on religion but instead on herself and her relationship with Leon. Throughout the entire scene, it is ironic that both Emma and Leon are seething with a burning passion while the slow, bungling guide shows them through the cold, ancient church. Their view of the huge, magnificent church should be contrasted with the final scene, that of Emma and Leon riding in a small closed carriage while consummating their love. The carriage is even described as being "sealed tighter than a tomb," and if the image is extended, this is the beginning of Emma's last fated episode which will lead to her suicide.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_3_chapters_2_to_4.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_19_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapters 2-4

chapters 2-4

{"name": "Chapters 2-4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-24", "summary": "On her return to Yonville, Emma learned that Bovary's father had died. Charles was very upset, particularly because he had not seen the man in a long time. Emma felt no sorrow but made the usual sympathetic gestures, which her husband misunderstood and appreciated very much. After a while, Mrs. Bovary came to stay with them. Emma was polite and attentive but was annoyed because the necessity for being kind to the mourners distracted her from thoughts of Leon. At about this time Lheureux made another appearance and presented Emma with her unpaid bills. He also managed to sell her some more high-priced merchandise. When Emma expressed a worry about managing to pay, he suggested that she get a power of attorney from Bovary. That way, he said, she would not have to bother her husband with \"petty\" financial matters and could find a convenient method to settle her debts. Emma convinced Bovary of the wisdom of this scheme without too much trouble, since he had no idea of the true amount of their debts. Emma even induced him to use the services of Leon, instead of the local attorney, for drawing up the papers, and Bovary trustingly arranged to send her alone to Rouen to take care of this business. Emma spent the next three days in Rouen with Leon. He rented an expensive hotel room for the occasion, and this short period was like a honeymoon for them. They went to some of the best restaurants and places of entertainment and spent most of their time in lovemaking and romantic pursuits. Leon became completely involved in his affair with Emma; he neglected his work and saw little of his friends. The arrival of her letters became a major event in his life, and he even paid a few visits to Yonville, either in secret or on various false pretexts, to see her. Emma, meanwhile, was getting even more deeply enmeshed in financial obligations to Lheureux. In order to see Leon more often, she began to show a renewed interest in the piano, and soon got Bovary to arrange for her to take a weekly lesson with a teacher in Rouen.", "analysis": "Before Emma can continue with her affair with Leon, she is interrupted by the death of her father-in-law. Then she must think of some plan whereby she can get back to Rouen and Leon. Monsieur Lheureux gives her the pretext. Knowing how easily he can convince Emma to buy things from him, he tells her to get Charles' power of attorney. His plan is to eventually foreclose on everything and thereby make a large profit. But his suggestions offer to Emma a pretext for going to Rouen to consult with Leon. So she convinces Charles that she should handle everything. The very short Chapter 3 covers the three days Emma spent with Leon in Rouen. The three days were described as \"a real honeymoon.\" But the readers should remember that this is the third one. The episode is described in romantic terms of bliss and joy. For these few days, the image of beauty and innocence was restored to Emma, but the scene ends on an uglier note. Amid her renewed joys, she is reminded of her sordid affair with Rodolphe by hearing the boatman relate how Rodolphe had taken the same ride last week with some other lady. The short fourth chapter shows Emma and Leon continuing in their plans to make their meetings definite and to meet at least once a week. This of course means that Emma will have to go deeper in debt."}

On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at last started. Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at once the chastisement and atonement of adultery. She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard, hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment inquiring about the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the "Hirondelle" as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix. Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Felicite, who was on the lookout in front of the farrier's shop. Hivert pulled in his horses and, the servant, climbing up to the window, said mysteriously-- "Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais. It's for something important." The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the time for jam-making, and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in front of the chemist's shop one might admire a far larger heap, and that surpassed the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have over ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy. She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the "Fanal de Rouen" lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She pushed open the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with forks in their hands. Justin was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was screaming-- "Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum." "What is it? What is the matter?" "What is it?" replied the druggist. "We are making preserves; they are simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from indolence, from laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key of the Capharnaum." It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses, infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his celebrity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it so, that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the exercise of his predilections, so that Justin's thoughtlessness seemed to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants, he repeated-- "Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and caustic alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions, and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as if a magistrate--" "Now be calm," said Madame Homais. And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried "Papa! papa!" "No, let me alone," went on the druggist "let me alone, hang it! My word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That's it! go it! respect nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste, pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!" "I thought you had--" said Emma. "Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn't you see anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer, articulate something." "I--don't--know," stammered the young fellow. "Ah! you don't know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I have even written 'Dangerous!' And do you know what is in it? Arsenic! And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!" "Next to it!" cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. "Arsenic! You might have poisoned us all." And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in their entrails. "Or poison a patient!" continued the druggist. "Do you want to see me in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what care I take in managing things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles' sword over our heads." Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the druggist went on in breathless phrases-- "That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That is how you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on you! For without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of figuring one day with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull hard at the oar if you're to do that, and get, as, people say, callosities upon your hands. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.*" * The worker lives by working, do what he will. He was so exasperated he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he was in one of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses. And he went on-- "I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up! I should certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you'll never be fit for anything but to herd animals with horns! You have no aptitude for science! You hardly know how to stick on a label! And there you are, dwelling with me snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!" But Emma, turning to Madame Homais, "I was told to come here--" "Oh, dear me!" interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, "how am I to tell you? It is a misfortune!" She could not finish, the druggist was thundering--"Empty it! Clean it! Take it back! Be quick!" And seizing Justin by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of his pocket. The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker, and, having picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth. "CONJUGAL--LOVE!" he said, slowly separating the two words. "Ah! very good! very good! very pretty! And illustrations! Oh, this is too much!" Madame Homais came forward. "No, do not touch it!" The children wanted to look at the pictures. "Leave the room," he said imperiously; and they went out. First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand, rolling his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came straight to his pupil, and, planting himself in front of him with crossed arms-- "Have you every vice, then, little wretch? Take care! you are on a downward path. Did not you reflect that this infamous book might fall in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their minds, tarnish the purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoleon. He is already formed like a man. Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they have not read it? Can you certify to me--" "But really, sir," said Emma, "you wished to tell me--" "Ah, yes! madame. Your father-in-law is dead." In fact, Monsieur Bovary senior had expired the evening before suddenly from an attack of apoplexy as he got up from table, and by way of greater precaution, on account of Emma's sensibility, Charles had begged Homais to break the horrible news to her gradually. Homais had thought over his speech; he had rounded, polished it, made it rhythmical; it was a masterpiece of prudence and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy; but anger had got the better of rhetoric. Emma, giving up all chance of hearing any details, left the pharmacy; for Monsieur Homais had taken up the thread of his vituperations. However, he was growing calmer, and was now grumbling in a paternal tone whilst he fanned himself with his skull-cap. "It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was a doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is not ill a man should know, and I would even venture to say that a man must know. But later--later! At any rate, not till you are man yourself and your temperament is formed." When Emma knocked at the door. Charles, who was waiting for her, came forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his voice-- "Ah! my dear!" And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her face shuddering. But she made answer, "Yes, I know, I know!" He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event without any sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband had not received the consolations of religion, as he had died at Daudeville, in the street, at the door of a cafe after a patriotic dinner with some ex-officers. Emma gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance's sake, she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to try, she resolutely began eating, while Charles opposite her sat motionless in a dejected attitude. Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of distress. Once he sighed, "I should have liked to see him again!" She was silent. At last, understanding that she must say something, "How old was your father?" she asked. "Fifty-eight." "Ah!" And that was all. A quarter of an hour after he added, "My poor mother! what will become of her now?" She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And, shaking off his own-- "Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?" he asked. "Yes." When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher--in a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium seized her. They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards. It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma's luggage. In order to put it down he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump. "He doesn't even remember any more about it," she thought, looking at the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with perspiration. Bovary was searching at the bottom of his purse for a centime, and without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation for him in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a personified reproach to his incurable incapacity. "Hallo! you've a pretty bouquet," he said, noticing Leon's violets on the chimney. "Yes," she replied indifferently; "it's a bouquet I bought just now from a beggar." Charles picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with tears, against them, smelt them delicately. She took them quickly from his hand and put them in a glass of water. The next day Madame Bovary senior arrived. She and her son wept much. Emma, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The following day they had a talk over the mourning. They went and sat down with their workboxes by the waterside under the arbour. Charles was thinking of his father, and was surprised to feel so much affection for this man, whom till then he had thought he cared little about. Madame Bovary senior was thinking of her husband. The worst days of the past seemed enviable to her. All was forgotten beneath the instinctive regret of such a long habit, and from time to time whilst she sewed, a big tear rolled along her nose and hung suspended there a moment. Emma was thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since they had been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to recall the slightest details of that past day. But the presence of her husband and mother-in-law worried her. She would have liked to hear nothing, to see nothing, so as not to disturb the meditation on her love, that, do what she would, became lost in external sensations. She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were scattered around her. Madame Bovary senior was plying her scissor without looking up, and Charles, in his list slippers and his old brown surtout that he used as a dressing-gown, sat with both hands in his pockets, and did not speak either; near them Berthe, in a little white pinafore, was raking sand in the walks with her spade. Suddenly she saw Monsieur Lheureux, the linendraper, come in through the gate. He came to offer his services "under the sad circumstances." Emma answered that she thought she could do without. The shopkeeper was not to be beaten. "I beg your pardon," he said, "but I should like to have a private talk with you." Then in a low voice, "It's about that affair--you know." Charles crimsoned to his ears. "Oh, yes! certainly." And in his confusion, turning to his wife, "Couldn't you, my darling?" She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Charles said to his mother, "It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household trifle." He did not want her to know the story of the bill, fearing her reproaches. As soon as they were alone, Monsieur Lheureux in sufficiently clear terms began to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then to talk of indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest, and of his own health, which was always so-so, always having ups and downs. In fact, he had to work devilish hard, although he didn't make enough, in spite of all people said, to find butter for his bread. Emma let him talk on. She had bored herself so prodigiously the last two days. "And so you're quite well again?" he went on. "Ma foi! I saw your husband in a sad state. He's a good fellow, though we did have a little misunderstanding." She asked what misunderstanding, for Charles had said nothing of the dispute about the goods supplied to her. "Why, you know well enough," cried Lheureux. "It was about your little fancies--the travelling trunks." He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind his back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an unbearable manner. Did he suspect anything? She was lost in all kinds of apprehensions. At last, however, he went on-- "We made it up, all the same, and I've come again to propose another arrangement." This was to renew the bill Bovary had signed. The doctor, of course, would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself, especially just now, when he would have a lot of worry. "And he would do better to give it over to someone else--to you, for example. With a power of attorney it could be easily managed, and then we (you and I) would have our little business transactions together." She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade, Lheureux declared that madame must require something. He would send her a black barege, twelve yards, just enough to make a gown. "The one you've on is good enough for the house, but you want another for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in. I've the eye of an American!" He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to measure it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to make himself agreeable, useful, "enfeoffing himself," as Homais would have said, and always dropping some hint to Emma about the power of attorney. He never mentioned the bill; she did not think of it. Charles, at the beginning of her convalescence, had certainly said something about it to her, but so many emotions had passed through her head that she no longer remembered it. Besides, she took care not to talk of any money questions. Madame Bovary seemed surprised at this, and attributed the change in her ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during her illness. But as soon as she was gone, Emma greatly astounded Bovary by her practical good sense. It would be necessary to make inquiries, to look into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a sale by auction or a liquidation. She quoted technical terms casually, pronounced the grand words of order, the future, foresight, and constantly exaggerated the difficulties of settling his father's affairs so much, that at last one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux's lessons. Charles naively asked her where this paper came from. "Monsieur Guillaumin"; and with the utmost coolness she added, "I don't trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we ought to consult--we only know--no one." "Unless Leon--" replied Charles, who was reflecting. But it was difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make the journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a contest of mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected waywardness-- "No, I will go!" "How good you are!" he said, kissing her forehead. The next morning she set out in the "Hirondelle" to go to Rouen to consult Monsieur Leon, and she stayed there three days. They were three full, exquisite days--a true honeymoon. They were at the Hotel-de-Boulogne, on the harbour; and they lived there, with drawn blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor, and iced syrups were brought them early in the morning. Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the dockyard the caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of vessels. The smoke of the tar rose up between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the water, undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques of Florentine bronze. They rowed down in the midst of moored boats, whose long oblique cables grazed lightly against the bottom of the boat. The din of the town gradually grew distant; the rolling of carriages, the tumult of voices, the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. She took off her bonnet, and they landed on their island. They sat down in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern, at whose door hung black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay down upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and they would fain, like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves; but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the gratification of their desires. At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands. They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in silence. The square oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the stillness, seemed to mark time, like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder that trailed behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water. Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing-- "One night, do you remember, we were sailing," etc. Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds carried off the trills that Leon heard pass like the flapping of wings about him. She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender, taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight. Leon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said-- "Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne, cornets--everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying, 'Now tell us something, Adolphe--Dolpe,' I think." She shivered. "You are in pain?" asked Leon, coming closer to her. "Oh, it's nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air." "And who doesn't want for women, either," softly added the sailor, thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment. Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again. Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his letters to Mere Rollet, and she gave him such precise instructions about a double envelope that he admired greatly her amorous astuteness. "So you can assure me it is all right?" she said with her last kiss. "Yes, certainly." "But why," he thought afterwards as he came back through the streets alone, "is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?" Leon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided their company, and completely neglected his work. He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote to her. He called her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories. Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew, so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office. When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that millionaires must experience when they come back to their native village. He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared. Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She thought he "had grown and was thinner," while Artemise, on the contrary, thought him stouter and darker. He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the "Hirondelle," had definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern "was late." Leon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor's door. Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour. The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that evening, nor all the next day. He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes. Their separation was becoming intolerable. "I would rather die!" said Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. "Adieu! adieu! When shall I see you again?" They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of hope. Some money was coming to her. On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had commended; she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn't "drinking the sea," politely undertook to supply her with one. She could no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him, and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not understand either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and even paid her private visits. It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that she seemed seized with great musical fervour. One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing any difference, cried-- "Bravo! very goodl You are wrong to stop. Go on!" "Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty." The next day he begged her to play him something again. "Very well; to please you!" And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes and blundered; then, stopping short-- "Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--" She bit her lips and added, "Twenty francs a lesson, that's too dear!" "Yes, so it is--rather," said Charles, giggling stupidly. "But it seems to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities." "Find them!" said Emma. The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could no longer keep back the words. "How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day. Well, Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who are at La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that from an excellent mistress!" She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But when she passed by it (if Bovary were there), she sighed-- "Ah! my poor piano!" And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them she had given up music, and could not begin again now for important reasons. Then people commiserated her-- "What a pity! she had so much talent!" They even spoke to Bovary about it. They put him to shame, and especially the chemist. "You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madame to study; you are economising on the subsequent musical education of your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau's, still rather new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it, like mothers nursing their own children and vaccination." So Charles returned once more to this question of the piano. Emma replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor piano, that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it go was to Bovary like the indefinable suicide of a part of herself. "If you liked," he said, "a lesson from time to time, that wouldn't after all be very ruinous." "But lessons," she replied, "are only of use when followed up." And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband's permission to go to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month she was even considered to have made considerable progress.

Chapters 2-4

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-24

On her return to Yonville, Emma learned that Bovary's father had died. Charles was very upset, particularly because he had not seen the man in a long time. Emma felt no sorrow but made the usual sympathetic gestures, which her husband misunderstood and appreciated very much. After a while, Mrs. Bovary came to stay with them. Emma was polite and attentive but was annoyed because the necessity for being kind to the mourners distracted her from thoughts of Leon. At about this time Lheureux made another appearance and presented Emma with her unpaid bills. He also managed to sell her some more high-priced merchandise. When Emma expressed a worry about managing to pay, he suggested that she get a power of attorney from Bovary. That way, he said, she would not have to bother her husband with "petty" financial matters and could find a convenient method to settle her debts. Emma convinced Bovary of the wisdom of this scheme without too much trouble, since he had no idea of the true amount of their debts. Emma even induced him to use the services of Leon, instead of the local attorney, for drawing up the papers, and Bovary trustingly arranged to send her alone to Rouen to take care of this business. Emma spent the next three days in Rouen with Leon. He rented an expensive hotel room for the occasion, and this short period was like a honeymoon for them. They went to some of the best restaurants and places of entertainment and spent most of their time in lovemaking and romantic pursuits. Leon became completely involved in his affair with Emma; he neglected his work and saw little of his friends. The arrival of her letters became a major event in his life, and he even paid a few visits to Yonville, either in secret or on various false pretexts, to see her. Emma, meanwhile, was getting even more deeply enmeshed in financial obligations to Lheureux. In order to see Leon more often, she began to show a renewed interest in the piano, and soon got Bovary to arrange for her to take a weekly lesson with a teacher in Rouen.

Before Emma can continue with her affair with Leon, she is interrupted by the death of her father-in-law. Then she must think of some plan whereby she can get back to Rouen and Leon. Monsieur Lheureux gives her the pretext. Knowing how easily he can convince Emma to buy things from him, he tells her to get Charles' power of attorney. His plan is to eventually foreclose on everything and thereby make a large profit. But his suggestions offer to Emma a pretext for going to Rouen to consult with Leon. So she convinces Charles that she should handle everything. The very short Chapter 3 covers the three days Emma spent with Leon in Rouen. The three days were described as "a real honeymoon." But the readers should remember that this is the third one. The episode is described in romantic terms of bliss and joy. For these few days, the image of beauty and innocence was restored to Emma, but the scene ends on an uglier note. Amid her renewed joys, she is reminded of her sordid affair with Rodolphe by hearing the boatman relate how Rodolphe had taken the same ride last week with some other lady. The short fourth chapter shows Emma and Leon continuing in their plans to make their meetings definite and to meet at least once a week. This of course means that Emma will have to go deeper in debt.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/31.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_21_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 7

chapter 7

{"name": "Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-7", "summary": "In the morning the sheriff's officers arrived and made a complete inventory of the household furnishings and goods, but Emma managed to maintain a stoic attitude all the time they were there. They left a guard on the premises, but she kept him hidden in the attic where Bovary would not see him. That evening Bovary seemed worried, and Emma fearfully imagined that he knew, but he said nothing. She was particularly resentful that she bore all the responsibility in this matter and that Bovary was innocent. As the night passed, she occupied herself in making plans to raise the money. The next morning Emma went to Rouen and called on several bankers, but they all refused to make a loan to her. She asked Leon for help, but he protested that he could never raise such a large sum and became angry when she suggested that he steal the money from his employer. Finally, in order to quiet her, Leon promised that he would see his friends, and if he could raise the sum she required, he would bring it to Yonville. On Monday, Emma was horrified to discover that a public notice of the sheriff's confiscation and auction had been posted in the market place. She went to see Guillaumin, the town lawyer. He offered to help her, but made it clear that he expected favors from her in return. Emma was insulted by his forwardness, shouted that she was not for sale, and left in a fury. Bovary was not home and still did not know what had taken place. Meanwhile, the entire town watched expectantly to see what would happen next. Emma felt weak and afraid; she kept hoping that Leon would gallop up with the money but really had no confidence in this possibility. She was bitter and frightened. Suddenly an idea came to her -- Rodolphe -- and she set out for his estate. She planned to take advantage of his supposed love for her and get the money from him. It never occurred to her that what she was planning to do was actually prostitution -- exactly what she had so angrily refused when Guillaumin had made the same suggestion.", "analysis": "This chapter presents Emma's frantic efforts to obtain money from almost any source. She first goes to her latest lover, Leon; but since Leon is rather anxious to break with Emma, he proves to be of little help. In fact, he hurriedly gets rid of Emma by promising to do something the next day. Her failure is again represented by the appearance of the blind man. This time Homais gives the man a lecture and Emma throws him a half crown piece, the \"sum of her wealth.\" Now she is totally destitute. At the suggestion of her maid, Emma goes to see the lawyer, Monsieur Guillaumin, who supposedly was infatuated with Emma. He offers to give her the money, but she is expected to sleep with him. Emma is horrified and leaves in disgust. There is here a nobility in Emma's make-up. For all of her love affairs, she has never prostituted herself and totally rejects the idea. All of her love affairs have been an attempt to fulfill her dreams."}

She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff, with two assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up the inventory for the distraint. They began with Bovary's consulting-room, and did not write down the phrenological head, which was considered an "instrument of his profession"; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the saucepans, the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all the nick-nacks on the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room; and her whole existence to its most intimate details, was, like a corpse on whom a post-mortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three men. Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time--"Allow me, madame. You allow me?" Often he uttered exclamations. "Charming! very pretty." Then he began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand. When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a desk there in which Rodolphe's letters were locked. It had to be opened. "Ah! a correspondence," said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet smile. "But allow me, for I must make sure the box contains nothing else." And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she grew angered to see this coarse hand, with fingers red and pulpy like slugs, touching these pages against which her heart had beaten. They went at last. Felicite came back. Emma had sent her out to watch for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly installed the man in possession under the roof, where he swore he would remain. During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched him with a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in every line of his face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the chimney-piece ornamented with Chinese screens, over the large curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had, softened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, that, far from crushing, irritated her passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the fire-dogs. Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise. "Is anyone walking upstairs?" said Charles. "No," she replied; "it is a window that has been left open, and is rattling in the wind." The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the brokers whose names she knew. They were at their country-places or on journeys. She was not discouraged; and those whom she did manage to see she asked for money, declaring she must have some, and that she would pay it back. Some laughed in her face; all refused. At two o'clock she hurried to Leon, and knocked at the door. No one answered. At length he appeared. "What brings you here?" "Do I disturb you?" "No; but--" And he admitted that his landlord didn't like his having "women" there. "I must speak to you," she went on. Then he took down the key, but she stopped him. "No, no! Down there, in our home!" And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne. On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She said to him-- "Leon, you will do me a service?" And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added-- "Listen, I want eight thousand francs." "But you are mad!" "Not yet." And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Leon, he would set about finding this indispensable sum. "How on earth can I?" "What a coward you are!" she cried. Then he said stupidly, "You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps, with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be stopped." All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Leon, could be security instead of her. "Go, try, try! I will love you so!" He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with solemn face-- "I have been to three people with no success." Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners, motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her feet. He heard her murmuring-- "If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some." "But where?" "At your office." And she looked at him. An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any explanation he smote his forehead, crying-- "Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope" (this was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); "and I will bring it you to-morrow," he added. Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected. Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing-- "However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for me, my darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!" He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength left for any sentiment. Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically obeying the force of old habits. The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of a bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock, stood the beadle. Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out before her, less profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil, giddy, staggering, almost fainting. "Take care!" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was thrown open. She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it? She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared. Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep herself from falling. Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good Homais, who was watching a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the "Hirondelle." In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six cheminots for his wife. Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves, that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras and huge boars' heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The druggist's wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the Rue Massacre. "Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the "Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting, and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic. But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he exclaimed-- "I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work. Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are floundering about in mere barbarism." The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed. "This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection." And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque cornea," "sclerotic," "facies," then asked him in a paternal tone-- "My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself." He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last Monsieur Homais opened his purse-- "Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my advice: you'll be the better for it." Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the druggist said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic pomade of his own composition, and he gave his address--"Monsieur Homais, near the market, pretty well known." "Now," said Hivert, "for all this trouble you'll give us your performance." The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back, whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine thus to throw it away. The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant out through the window, crying-- "No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries." The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied, discouraged, almost asleep. "Come what may come!" she said to herself. "And then, who knows? Why, at any moment could not some extraordinary event occur? Lheureux even might die!" At nine o'clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of voices in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a large bill fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was climbing on to a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this moment the rural guard seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais came out of his shop, and Mere Lefrangois, in the midst of the crowd, seemed to be perorating. "Madame! madame!" cried Felicite, running in, "it's abominable!" And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that she had just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all her furniture was for sale. Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and mistress had no secret one from the other. At last Felicite sighed-- "If I were you, madame, I should go to Monsieur Guillaumin." "Do you think--" And this question meant to say-- "You who know the house through the servant, has the master spoken sometimes of me?" "Yes, you'd do well to go there." She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads, and that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the Place), she took the path by the river, outside the village. She reached the notary's gate quite breathless. The sky was sombre, and a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell, Theodore in a red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to open the door almost familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and showed her into the dining-room. A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up the niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the oak-stained paper hung Steuben's "Esmeralda" and Schopin's "Potiphar." The ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs, the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a scrupulous, English cleanliness; the windows were ornamented at each corner with stained glass. "Now this," thought Emma, "is the dining-room I ought to have." The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his breast with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and quickly put on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked on the right side, whence looked out the ends of three fair curls drawn from the back of the head, following the line of his bald skull. After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast, apologising profusely for his rudeness. "I have come," she said, "to beg you, sir--" "What, madame? I am listening." And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin knew it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from whom he always got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was asked to make. So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the bills, small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made out at long dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when, gathering together all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had bidden his friend Vincart take in his own name all the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass for a tiger with his fellow-citizens. She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheureux, to which the notary replied from time to time with some insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a small gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous fashion. But noticing that her feet were damp, he said-- "Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the porcelain." She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a gallant tone-- "Beautiful things spoil nothing." Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her wants. He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without leaving off eating, he had turned completely round towards her, so that his knee brushed against her boot, whose sole curled round as it smoked against the stove. But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and declared he was very sorry he had not had the management of her fortune before, for there were hundreds of ways very convenient, even for a lady, of turning her money to account. They might, either in the turf-peats of Grumesnil or building-ground at Havre, almost without risk, have ventured on some excellent speculations; and he let her consume herself with rage at the thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly have made. "How was it," he went on, "that you didn't come to me?" "I hardly know," she said. "Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary, who ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very devoted to you. You do not doubt that, I hope?" He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss, then held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her fingers whilst he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid voice murmured like a running brook; a light shone in his eyes through the glimmering of his spectacles, and his hand was advancing up Emma's sleeve to press her arm. She felt against her cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed her horribly. She sprang up and said to him-- "Sir, I am waiting." "For what?" said the notary, who suddenly became very pale. "This money." "But--" Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire, "Well, yes!" He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his dressing-gown. "For pity's sake, stay. I love you!" He seized her by her waist. Madame Bovary's face flushed purple. She recoiled with a terrible look, crying-- "You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am to be pitied--not to be sold." And she went out. The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of them at last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an adventure might have carried him too far. "What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!" she said to herself, as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the path. The disappointment of her failure increased the indignation of her outraged modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued her implacably, and, strengthening herself in her pride, she had never felt so much esteem for herself nor so much contempt for others. A spirit of warfare transformed her. She would have liked to strike all men, to spit in their faces, to crush them, and she walked rapidly straight on, pale, quivering, maddened, searching the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes, and as it were rejoicing in the hate that was choking her. When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go on; and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee? Felicite was waiting for her at the door. "Well?" "No!" said Emma. And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the various persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help her. But each time that Felicite named someone Emma replied-- "Impossible! they will not!" "And the master'll soon be in." "I know that well enough. Leave me alone." She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now; and when Charles came in she would have to say to him-- "Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours. In your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and it is I, poor man, who have ruined you." Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly, and at last, the surprise past, he would forgive her. "Yes," she murmured, grinding her teeth, "he will forgive me, he who would give a million if I would forgive him for having known me! Never! never!" This thought of Bovary's superiority to her exasperated her. Then, whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, immediately, to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the same; so she must wait for this horrible scene, and bear the weight of his magnanimity. The desire to return to Lheureux's seized her--what would be the use? To write to her father--it was too late; and perhaps, she began to repent now that she had not yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of a horse in the alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter than the plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to Lestiboudois in front of the church, saw her go in to the tax-collector's. She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up to the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props, stationed themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of Binet's room. He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed out one within the other, the whole as straight as an obelisk, and of no use whatever; and he was beginning on the last piece--he was nearing his goal. In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the two wheels were turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations, which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream. "Ah! there she is!" exclaimed Madame Tuvache. But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was saying. At last these ladies thought they made out the word "francs," and Madame Tuvache whispered in a low voice-- "She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes." "Apparently!" replied the other. They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet stroked his beard with satisfaction. "Do you think she wants to order something of him?" said Madame Tuvache. "Why, he doesn't sell anything," objected her neighbour. The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no longer spoke. "Is she making him advances?" said Madame Tuvache. Binet was scarlet to his very ears. She took hold of his hands. "Oh, it's too much!" And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for the tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at Lutzen, had been through the French campaign, and had even been recommended for the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a serpent, recoiled as far as he could from her, crying-- "Madame! what do you mean?" "Women like that ought to be whipped," said Madame Tuvache. "But where is she?" continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost in conjectures. "Nurse Rollet," she said on reaching the nurse's, "I am choking; unlace me!" She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her with a petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she did not answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax. "Oh, leave off!" she murmured, fancying she heard Binet's lathe. "What's bothering her?" said the nurse to herself. "Why has she come here?" She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from her home. Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw things but vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic persistence. She looked at the scales on the walls, two brands smoking end to end, and a long spider crawling over her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began to collect her thoughts. She remembered--one day--Leon--Oh! how long ago that was--the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon began to recall the day before. "What time is it?" she asked. Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying-- "Nearly three." "Ah! thanks, thanks!" For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would, perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told the nurse to run to her house to fetch him. "Be quick!" "But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!" She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first. Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she already saw herself at Lheureux's spreading out her three bank-notes on his bureau. Then she would have to invent some story to explain matters to Bovary. What should it be? The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no clock in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the length of time. She began walking round the garden, step by step; she went into the path by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping that the woman would have come back by another road. At last, weary of waiting, assailed by fears that she thrust from her, no longer conscious whether she had been here a century or a moment, she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and stopped her ears. The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken Mere Rollet said to her-- "There is no one at your house!" "What?" "Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you; they're looking for you." Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of lightning in a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so generous! And besides, should he hesitate to do her this service, she would know well enough how to constrain him to it by re-waking, in a single moment, their lost love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not seeing that she was hastening to offer herself to that which but a while ago had so angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.

Chapter 7

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-7

In the morning the sheriff's officers arrived and made a complete inventory of the household furnishings and goods, but Emma managed to maintain a stoic attitude all the time they were there. They left a guard on the premises, but she kept him hidden in the attic where Bovary would not see him. That evening Bovary seemed worried, and Emma fearfully imagined that he knew, but he said nothing. She was particularly resentful that she bore all the responsibility in this matter and that Bovary was innocent. As the night passed, she occupied herself in making plans to raise the money. The next morning Emma went to Rouen and called on several bankers, but they all refused to make a loan to her. She asked Leon for help, but he protested that he could never raise such a large sum and became angry when she suggested that he steal the money from his employer. Finally, in order to quiet her, Leon promised that he would see his friends, and if he could raise the sum she required, he would bring it to Yonville. On Monday, Emma was horrified to discover that a public notice of the sheriff's confiscation and auction had been posted in the market place. She went to see Guillaumin, the town lawyer. He offered to help her, but made it clear that he expected favors from her in return. Emma was insulted by his forwardness, shouted that she was not for sale, and left in a fury. Bovary was not home and still did not know what had taken place. Meanwhile, the entire town watched expectantly to see what would happen next. Emma felt weak and afraid; she kept hoping that Leon would gallop up with the money but really had no confidence in this possibility. She was bitter and frightened. Suddenly an idea came to her -- Rodolphe -- and she set out for his estate. She planned to take advantage of his supposed love for her and get the money from him. It never occurred to her that what she was planning to do was actually prostitution -- exactly what she had so angrily refused when Guillaumin had made the same suggestion.

This chapter presents Emma's frantic efforts to obtain money from almost any source. She first goes to her latest lover, Leon; but since Leon is rather anxious to break with Emma, he proves to be of little help. In fact, he hurriedly gets rid of Emma by promising to do something the next day. Her failure is again represented by the appearance of the blind man. This time Homais gives the man a lecture and Emma throws him a half crown piece, the "sum of her wealth." Now she is totally destitute. At the suggestion of her maid, Emma goes to see the lawyer, Monsieur Guillaumin, who supposedly was infatuated with Emma. He offers to give her the money, but she is expected to sleep with him. Emma is horrified and leaves in disgust. There is here a nobility in Emma's make-up. For all of her love affairs, she has never prostituted herself and totally rejects the idea. All of her love affairs have been an attempt to fulfill her dreams.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/32.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_22_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapter 8

chapter 8

{"name": "Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-8", "summary": "Rodolphe was surprised to see Emma. They talked about the past for a while, and she was able, as planned, to arouse his old interest in her. She told him about her debts and asked him to lend her several thousand francs. Rodolphe began to understand the reason for her strange visit and calmly told her that he had no money available. Emma knew he was lying. She lost her temper and left. Now Emma realized that the situation was hopeless. She walked through the fields without seeing and had dazed memories of incidents in her life. Then she became lucid again and decided what she had to do. She ran to Homais' shop and induced the servant, Justin, to let her into the attic. There she opened a jar of arsenic and ate a large quantity of it, while the frightened boy watched. She went home again, for the first time in a long while feeling at peace. Meanwhile, Bovary had learned about the sheriff's confiscation. He searched frantically for Emma, but no one knew her whereabouts. When he returned home, he found her resting in bed. She gave him a letter which he was not to read until the next day. In a short time Emma was torn by spasms of nausea and became violently ill. Despite his concern, she would tell Bovary nothing, so he opened her letter and discovered to his horror that she had poisoned herself. He called for help and soon the news spread through the town. Homais came to his assistance, and they sent for doctors from Rouen and a neighboring town. Bovary was too upset to do anything and sat at Emma's bedside crying. She wept also and for once was tender to him. The other doctors and the priest arrived, but nothing could be done. After a few more hours, Emma died in great pain.", "analysis": "When Emma arrives at Rodolphe's house to ask for money, the reader should remember that they haven't seen each other for over three years. Thus when he first sees Emma, all of his old desires for her are reawakened and Emma is aware that she has some effect on him. Thus in his refusal to give her money, Emma feels that this is again a betrayal of her love. Flaubert intimates that Emma's desire to kill herself comes not from her desperate financial condition and not from the weak Leon's refusal, but from a larger sense of betrayal by Rodolphe. To Emma, who has devoted her life to a search for perfect love, this second betrayal by Rodolphe makes life not worth living. Her reactions and her state of mind immediately after leaving Rodolphe are practically the same as when he first betrayed her. And as she was sick for forty-three days the first time, she decides now to take her life. Thus Emma's suicide is motivated by her sense of betrayal by the one man whom she might have loved. Flaubert perhaps is suggesting that Emma was capable of a profound love. If she was not, then at least, she possessed a dream of love which was worth living for and when this dream was betrayed, there was nothing left but suicide. It is a bit of Flaubert's irony that Justin is directly responsible for Emma's death. This is ironic because he is the one character in the book who has demonstrated a constant, undeviating love for Emma. His love for Emma exists on a plane which Emma herself never felt and never achieved; thus it is ironic that the person who most loved and adored her was also the one responsible for her death. That is, had he not loved her so much, he would never have been intimidated enough so as to give her the keys to the secret room where the arsenic was kept. Emma's death reflects the pathetic misuse of her life. As she has spent her life longing for the unattainable and had failed miserably, so in death she longed for a simple but beautiful death. But instead, her death is one of horrible suffering and ugliness, and the ugliness of her death is emphasized by the appearance of the blind man, the symbol of her degradation in life. Emma's last act is that of taking extreme unction, and this act captures the essence of the novel. Here she returns to the religious fold, but her return is in terms of sensuousness. The kiss that she gives to the crucifix is not one given to God but it is more of an erotic, sensual kiss. And when the priest anoints her, Flaubert subtly reminds the reader that this woman is a sensualist: the priest anoints the eyes \"that had coveted all worldly pomp\" then the nostrils and mouth \"that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness\"; then the hands that \"had delighted in sensual touches,\" and finally the feet which were \"so swift . . . when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more.\" Thus the final picture of Emma is that of the sensualist looking in death for the supreme sensual desire. Many critics have suggested that with the appearance of Dr. Lariviere we have our only admirable character in the novel. Perhaps this characterization is influenced by Flaubert's own father. He does contrast to the other characters, in view of the fact that he is coldly analytical, but yet his presence indicates that he cares for humanity. He does express real sympathy for his patients; and his sense of intelligence, his professional dignity, and his integrity set off all the other characters as being petty and stupid."}

She asked herself as she walked along, "What am I going to say? How shall I begin?" And as she went on she recognised the thickets, the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the chateau yonder. All the sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass. She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She reached the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees. They were swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but brought out no one. She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters that led to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which several doors in a row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right at the end, on the left. When she placed her fingers on the lock her strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost wished he would not be there, though this was her only hope, her last chance of salvation. She collected her thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening herself by the feeling of present necessity, went in. He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe. "What! it is you!" he said, getting up hurriedly. "Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice." And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her lips. "You have not changed; you are charming as ever!" "Oh," she replied bitterly, "they are poor charms since you disdained them." Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in vague terms, in default of being able to invent better. She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him, so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed; in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the honour, the very life of a third person. "No matter!" she said, looking at him sadly. "I have suffered much." He replied philosophically-- "Such is life!" "Has life," Emma went on, "been good to you at least, since our separation?" "Oh, neither good nor bad." "Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted." "Yes, perhaps." "You think so?" she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. "Oh, Rodolphe! if you but knew! I loved you so!" It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she said to him-- "How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you about all that and you will see. And you--you fled from me!" For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Emma went on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing than an amorous kitten-- "You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man; you have everything to make one love you. But we'll begin again, won't we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh, speak!" And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear, like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla. He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand was caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored like a golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips. "Why, you have been crying! What for?" She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an outburst of her love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of resistance, and then he cried out-- "Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it. Tell me!" He was kneeling by her. "Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs." "But--but--" said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave expression. "You know," she went on quickly, "that my husband had placed his whole fortune at a notary's. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don't pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall have the money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand francs, we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very moment, and, counting upon your friendship, I have come to you." "Ah!" thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, "that was what she came for." At last he said with a calm air-- "Dear madame, I have not got them." He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them, although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and most destructive. First she looked at him for some moments. "You have not got them!" she repeated several times. "You have not got them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me. You are no better than the others." She was betraying, ruining herself. Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was "hard up" himself. "Ah! I pity you," said Emma. "Yes--very much." And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against its panoply, "But when one is so poor one doesn't have silver on the butt of one's gun. One doesn't buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell," she went on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, "nor silver-gilt whistles for one's whips," and she touched them, "nor charms for one's watch. Oh, he wants for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself; you live well. You have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that," she cried, taking up two studs from the mantelpiece, "but the least of these trifles, one can get money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!" And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain breaking as it struck against the wall. "But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all, worked for you with my hands, I would have begged on the highroads for a smile, for a look, to hear you say 'Thanks!' And you sit there quietly in your arm-chair, as if you had not made me suffer enough already! But for you, and you know it, I might have lived happily. What made you do it? Was it a bet? Yet you loved me--you said so. And but a moment since--Ah! it would have been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with your kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years you held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our plans for the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your letter! it tore my heart! And then when I come back to him--to him, rich, happy, free--to implore the help the first stranger would give, a suppliant, and bringing back to him all my tenderness, he repulses me because it would cost him three thousand francs!" "I haven't got them," replied Rodolphe, with that perfect calm with which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield. She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her, and she passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the heaps of dead leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in front of the gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless, almost falling, she stopped. And now turning round, she once more saw the impassive chateau, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the facade. She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of herself than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed to hear bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the fields. The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking into foam. Everything in her head, of memories, ideas, went off at once like a thousand pieces of fireworks. She saw her father, Lheureux's closet, their room at home, another landscape. Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did not in the least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was in, that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as wounded men, dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds. Night was falling, crows were flying about. Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in the air like fulminating balls when they strike, and were whirling, whirling, to melt at last upon the snow between the branches of the trees. In the midst of each of them appeared the face of Rodolphe. They multiplied and drew near her, penetrating, her. It all disappeared; she recognised the lights of the houses that shone through the fog. Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was panting as if her heart would burst. Then in an ecstasy of heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the foot-path, the alley, the market, and reached the chemist's shop. She was about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might come, and slipping in by the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on the stove was burning. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a dish. "Ah! they are dining; I will wait." He returned; she tapped at the window. He went out. "The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the--" "What?" And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her face, that stood out white against the black background of the night. She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a phantom. Without understanding what she wanted, he had the presentiment of something terrible. But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet, melting voice, "I want it; give it to me." As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of the forks on the plates in the dining-room. She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from sleeping. "I must tell master." "No, stay!" Then with an indifferent air, "Oh, it's not worth while; I'll tell him presently. Come, light me upstairs." She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened. Against the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum. "Justin!" called the druggist impatiently. "Let us go up." And he followed her. The key turned in the lock, and she went straight to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue jar, tore out the cork, plunged in her hand, and withdrawing it full of a white powder, she began eating it. "Stop!" he cried, rushing at her. "Hush! someone will come." He was in despair, was calling out. "Say nothing, or all the blame will fall on your master." Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with something of the serenity of one that had performed a duty. When Charles, distracted by the news of the distraint, returned home, Emma had just gone out. He cried aloud, wept, fainted, but she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Felicite to Homais, to Monsieur Tuvache, to Lheureux, to the "Lion d'Or," everywhere, and in the intervals of his agony he saw his reputation destroyed, their fortune lost, Berthe's future ruined. By what?--Not a word! He waited till six in the evening. At last, unable to bear it any longer, and fancying she had gone to Rouen, he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no one, again waited, and returned home. She had come back. "What was the matter? Why? Explain to me." She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter, which she sealed slowly, adding the date and the hour. Then she said in a solemn tone: "You are to read it to-morrow; till then, I pray you, do not ask me a single question. No, not one!" "But--" "Oh, leave me!" She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she felt in her mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and again closed her eyes. She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were not suffering. But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the clock, the crackling of the fire, and Charles breathing as he stood upright by her bed. "Ah! it is but a little thing, death!" she thought. "I shall fall asleep and all will be over." She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall. The frightful taste of ink continued. "I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty," she sighed. "What is it?" said Charles, who was handing her a glass. "It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking." She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly time to draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow. "Take it away," she said quickly; "throw it away." He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, afraid that the slightest movement might make her vomit. But she felt an icy cold creeping from her feet to her heart. "Ah! it is beginning," she murmured. "What did you say?" She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full of agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very heavy were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o'clock the vomiting began again. Charles noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was a sort of white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain. "This is extraordinary--very singular," he repeated. But she said in a firm voice, "No, you are mistaken." Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his hand over her stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back terror-stricken. Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were shaken by a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her unequal pulse was now almost imperceptible. Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed as if rigid in the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered, her dilated eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all questions she replied only with a shake of the head; she even smiled once or twice. Gradually, her moaning grew louder; a hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she was better and that she would get up presently. But she was seized with convulsions and cried out-- "Ah! my God! It is horrible!" He threw himself on his knees by her bed. "Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven's sake!" And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such as she had never seen. "Well, there--there!" she said in a faint voice. He flew to the writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: "Accuse no one." He stopped, passed his hands across his eyes, and read it over again. "What! help--help!" He could only keep repeating the word: "Poisoned! poisoned!" Felicite ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the market-place; Madame Lefrancois heard it at the "Lion d'Or"; some got up to go and tell their neighbours, and all night the village was on the alert. Distraught, faltering, reeling, Charles wandered about the room. He knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never believed that there could be so terrible a sight. He went home to write to Monsieur Canivet and to Doctor Lariviere. He lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough copies. Hippolyte went to Neufchatel, and Justin so spurred Bovary's horse that he left it foundered and three parts dead by the hill at Bois-Guillaume. Charles tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not read it; the lines were dancing. "Be calm," said the druggist; "we have only to administer a powerful antidote. What is the poison?" Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic. "Very well," said Homais, "we must make an analysis." For he knew that in cases of poisoning an analysis must be made; and the other, who did not understand, answered-- "Oh, do anything! save her!" Then going back to her, he sank upon the carpet, and lay there with his head leaning against the edge of her bed, sobbing. "Don't cry," she said to him. "Soon I shall not trouble you any more." "Why was it? Who drove you to it?" She replied. "It had to be, my dear!" "Weren't you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!" "Yes, that is true--you are good--you." And she passed her hand slowly over his hair. The sweetness of this sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being dissolving in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just when she was confessing more love for him than ever. And he could think of nothing; he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent need for some immediate resolution gave the finishing stroke to the turmoil of his mind. So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and meanness, and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated no one now; a twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts, and, of all earthly noises, Emma heard none but the intermittent lamentations of this poor heart, sweet and indistinct like the echo of a symphony dying away. "Bring me the child," she said, raising herself on her elbow. "You are not worse, are you?" asked Charles. "No, no!" The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on the servant's arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the disordered room, and half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the table. They reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year's day and Mid-Lent, when thus awakened early by candle-light she came to her mother's bed to fetch her presents, for she began saying-- "But where is it, mamma?" And as everybody was silent, "But I can't see my little stocking." Felicite held her over the bed while she still kept looking towards the mantelpiece. "Has nurse taken it?" she asked. And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her adulteries and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her head, as at the loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to her mouth. But Berthe remained perched on the bed. "Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma! How pale you are! how hot you are!" Her mother looked at her. "I am frightened!" cried the child, recoiling. Emma took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled. "That will do. Take her away," cried Charles, who was sobbing in the alcove. Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and at every insignificant word, at every respiration a little more easy, he regained hope. At last, when Canivet came in, he threw himself into his arms. "Ah! it is you. Thanks! You are good! But she is better. See! look at her." His colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, as he said of himself, "never beating about the bush," he prescribed, an emetic in order to empty the stomach completely. She soon began vomiting blood. Her lips became drawn. Her limbs were convulsed, her whole body covered with brown spots, and her pulse slipped beneath the fingers like a stretched thread, like a harp-string nearly breaking. After this she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison, railed at it, and implored it to be quick, and thrust away with her stiffened arms everything that Charles, in more agony than herself, tried to make her drink. He stood up, his handkerchief to his lips, with a rattling sound in his throat, weeping, and choked by sobs that shook his whole body. Felicite was running hither and thither in the room. Homais, motionless, uttered great sighs; and Monsieur Canivet, always retaining his self-command, nevertheless began to feel uneasy. "The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the cause ceases--" "The effect must cease," said Homais, "that is evident." "Oh, save her!" cried Bovary. And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing the hypothesis, "It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm," Canivet was about to administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It was Doctor Lariviere. The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled off his skull-cap long before the doctor had come in. He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he was angry; and his students so revered him that they tried, as soon as they were themselves in practice, to imitate him as much as possible. So that in all the towns about they were found wearing his long wadded merino overcoat and black frock-coat, whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny hands--very beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be more ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles, and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along, full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and irreproachable life. He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the cadaverous face of Emma stretched out on her back with her mouth open. Then, while apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his fingers up and down beneath his nostrils, and repeated-- "Good! good!" But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary watched him; they looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he was to the sight of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill. He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed him. "She is very ill, isn't she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything! Oh, think of something, you who have saved so many!" Charles caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly, imploringly, half-fainting against his breast. "Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be done." And Doctor Lariviere turned away. "You are going?" "I will come back." He went out only to give an order to the coachman, with Monsieur Canivet, who did not care either to have Emma die under his hands. The chemist rejoined them on the Place. He could not by temperament keep away from celebrities, so he begged Monsieur Lariviere to do him the signal honour of accepting some breakfast. He sent quickly to the "Lion d'Or" for some pigeons; to the butcher's for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for cream; and to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself aided in the preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she pulled together the strings of her jacket-- "You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn't been told the night before--" "Wine glasses!" whispered Homais. "If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed trotters." "Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!" He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some details as to the catastrophe. "We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then intolerable pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma." "But how did she poison herself?" "I don't know, doctor, and I don't even know where she can have procured the arsenious acid." Justin, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to tremble. "What's the matter?" said the chemist. At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the ground with a crash. "Imbecile!" cried Homais, "awkward lout! block-head! confounded ass!" But suddenly controlling himself-- "I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately introduced a tube--" "You would have done better," said the physician, "to introduce your fingers into her throat." His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a severe lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and so verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day very modest. He smiled without ceasing in an approving manner. Homais dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought of Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the manchineel, vipers. "I have even read that various persons have found themselves under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement fumigation. At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn up by one of our pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de Gassicourt!" Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines that are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make his coffee at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised it, and mixed it himself. "Saccharum, doctor?" said he, offering the sugar. Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the physician's opinion on their constitutions. At last Monsieur Lariviere was about to leave, when Madame Homais asked for a consultation about her husband. He was making his blood too thick by going to sleep every evening after dinner. "Oh, it isn't his blood that's too thick," said the physician. And, smiling a little at his unnoticed joke, the doctor opened the door. But the chemist's shop was full of people; he had the greatest difficulty in getting rid of Monsieur Tuvache, who feared his spouse would get inflammation of the lungs, because she was in the habit of spitting on the ashes; then of Monsieur Binet, who sometimes experienced sudden attacks of great hunger; and of Madame Caron, who suffered from tinglings; of Lheureux, who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had rheumatism; and of Madame Lefrancois, who had heartburn. At last the three horses started; and it was the general opinion that he had not shown himself at all obliging. Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil. Homais, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other. Nevertheless, not shrinking from what he called his mission, he returned to Bovary's in company with Canivet whom Monsieur Lariviere, before leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit; and he would, but for his wife's objections, have taken his two sons with him, in order to accustom them to great occasions; that this might be a lesson, an example, a solemn picture, that should remain in their heads later on. The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix between two lighted candles. Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately wide open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that hideous and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they wanted already to cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue and with eyes red as fire, Charles, not weeping, stood opposite her at the foot of the bed, while the priest, bending one knee, was muttering words in a low voice. She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were beginning. The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more. The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil into the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ and abandon herself to the divine mercy. Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper, but for Monsieur Bournisien would have fallen to the ground. However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of serenity as if the sacrament had cured her. The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Bovary that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered the day when, so near death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to despair, he thought. In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream; then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows. Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue protruded from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler, like the two globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one might have thought her already dead but for the fearful labouring of her ribs, shaken by violent breathing, as if the soul were struggling to free itself. Felicite knelt down before the crucifix, and the druggist himself slightly bent his knees, while Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at the Place. Bournisien had again begun to pray, his face bowed against the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a passing bell. Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that sang-- "Maids in the warmth of a summer day Dream of love and of love always" Emma raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone, her eyes fixed, staring. "Where the sickle blades have been, Nannette, gathering ears of corn, Passes bending down, my queen, To the earth where they were born." "The blind man!" she cried. And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious, frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a menace. "The wind is strong this summer day, Her petticoat has flown away." She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She was dead.

Chapter 8

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapter-8

Rodolphe was surprised to see Emma. They talked about the past for a while, and she was able, as planned, to arouse his old interest in her. She told him about her debts and asked him to lend her several thousand francs. Rodolphe began to understand the reason for her strange visit and calmly told her that he had no money available. Emma knew he was lying. She lost her temper and left. Now Emma realized that the situation was hopeless. She walked through the fields without seeing and had dazed memories of incidents in her life. Then she became lucid again and decided what she had to do. She ran to Homais' shop and induced the servant, Justin, to let her into the attic. There she opened a jar of arsenic and ate a large quantity of it, while the frightened boy watched. She went home again, for the first time in a long while feeling at peace. Meanwhile, Bovary had learned about the sheriff's confiscation. He searched frantically for Emma, but no one knew her whereabouts. When he returned home, he found her resting in bed. She gave him a letter which he was not to read until the next day. In a short time Emma was torn by spasms of nausea and became violently ill. Despite his concern, she would tell Bovary nothing, so he opened her letter and discovered to his horror that she had poisoned herself. He called for help and soon the news spread through the town. Homais came to his assistance, and they sent for doctors from Rouen and a neighboring town. Bovary was too upset to do anything and sat at Emma's bedside crying. She wept also and for once was tender to him. The other doctors and the priest arrived, but nothing could be done. After a few more hours, Emma died in great pain.

When Emma arrives at Rodolphe's house to ask for money, the reader should remember that they haven't seen each other for over three years. Thus when he first sees Emma, all of his old desires for her are reawakened and Emma is aware that she has some effect on him. Thus in his refusal to give her money, Emma feels that this is again a betrayal of her love. Flaubert intimates that Emma's desire to kill herself comes not from her desperate financial condition and not from the weak Leon's refusal, but from a larger sense of betrayal by Rodolphe. To Emma, who has devoted her life to a search for perfect love, this second betrayal by Rodolphe makes life not worth living. Her reactions and her state of mind immediately after leaving Rodolphe are practically the same as when he first betrayed her. And as she was sick for forty-three days the first time, she decides now to take her life. Thus Emma's suicide is motivated by her sense of betrayal by the one man whom she might have loved. Flaubert perhaps is suggesting that Emma was capable of a profound love. If she was not, then at least, she possessed a dream of love which was worth living for and when this dream was betrayed, there was nothing left but suicide. It is a bit of Flaubert's irony that Justin is directly responsible for Emma's death. This is ironic because he is the one character in the book who has demonstrated a constant, undeviating love for Emma. His love for Emma exists on a plane which Emma herself never felt and never achieved; thus it is ironic that the person who most loved and adored her was also the one responsible for her death. That is, had he not loved her so much, he would never have been intimidated enough so as to give her the keys to the secret room where the arsenic was kept. Emma's death reflects the pathetic misuse of her life. As she has spent her life longing for the unattainable and had failed miserably, so in death she longed for a simple but beautiful death. But instead, her death is one of horrible suffering and ugliness, and the ugliness of her death is emphasized by the appearance of the blind man, the symbol of her degradation in life. Emma's last act is that of taking extreme unction, and this act captures the essence of the novel. Here she returns to the religious fold, but her return is in terms of sensuousness. The kiss that she gives to the crucifix is not one given to God but it is more of an erotic, sensual kiss. And when the priest anoints her, Flaubert subtly reminds the reader that this woman is a sensualist: the priest anoints the eyes "that had coveted all worldly pomp" then the nostrils and mouth "that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness"; then the hands that "had delighted in sensual touches," and finally the feet which were "so swift . . . when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more." Thus the final picture of Emma is that of the sensualist looking in death for the supreme sensual desire. Many critics have suggested that with the appearance of Dr. Lariviere we have our only admirable character in the novel. Perhaps this characterization is influenced by Flaubert's own father. He does contrast to the other characters, in view of the fact that he is coldly analytical, but yet his presence indicates that he cares for humanity. He does express real sympathy for his patients; and his sense of intelligence, his professional dignity, and his integrity set off all the other characters as being petty and stupid.

cliffnotes

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/part_3_chapters_9_to_11.txt

finished_summaries/cliffnotes/Madame Bovary/section_23_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 3.chapters 9-11

chapters 9-11

{"name": "Chapters 9-11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-911", "summary": "It took Charles a long time to recover from the initial shock of Emma's death. His mother arrived and helped to put affairs in order and thought that now Emma was gone she would be reinstated in Charles' affection. Emma's father also showed up for the funeral, but was too emotional to be of help. The priest and Homais sat up all night with the body and performed certain rites which they thought appropriate. The priest had a difficult time convincing Charles that the burial should take place soon. Charles gave directions for Emma to be buried in her wedding dress and quarreled with his mother about the expense of some parts of the funeral. As soon as the funeral is over, old Roualt goes home without even seeing little Berthe. Later that night the sexton sees Justin by Emma's grave and thinks that he now knows who has been stealing his potatoes. In the days which followed, Bovary was contacted by all Emma's creditors. Her debts included not merely those of Lheureux, but many bills to business concerns, tradesmen, and other people. Their total constituted a vast amount. Bovary tried to collect the fees due him in an effort to pay but learned that Emma had already done so. In the meantime, Leon became engaged to a young woman of good family. Bovary sent a letter of congratulations to Leon's mother, in which he remarked, innocently, that the news would have pleased his late wife. One night Bovary came across the letter from Rodolphe that Emma had lost in the attic a long time before. He read it, but assumed that there had been a platonic affection between them and was not concerned. He idealized Emma's memory and was pleased to learn that another had also admired her. In an attempt to pay his debts, Bovary had to sell nearly all the furniture, but even this amount was not sufficient. For sentimental reasons, though, he refrained from taking anything from her bedroom and kept it just the way it was before her death. Mrs. Bovary had come to live with him, but they had a quarrel over the possession of one of Emma's shawls and she left his house. The servant left also, taking most of Emma's wardrobe with her. Bovary began to live in seclusion. He avoided his old friends and neglected his practice. Homais, who had once been so close, and who was now a power in the community, shunned him, claiming that there was too big a gap in their social positions. Bovary often sat in Emma's room, examining her possessions and recalling their life together. One day he opened her desk and discovered the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. He read them with an air of disbelief and was very distressed when he realized their meaning and was forced to acknowledge that Emma had been unfaithful. After this he was always gloomy and seemed a broken man. He rarely left his house and kept away from people. Once he had to go to Rouen to sell his horse in order to raise more money. He met Rodolphe there and the two men had a drink together in a cafe. Rodolphe felt guilty and tried to make small talk. Finally Bovary told him that he knew the truth, but that he no longer held any grudge against him. The fault, Bovary said, was with Destiny. The next day Bovary died quietly while sitting in his garden. His house and remaining property were sold on behalf of his creditors, and there was just enough left over to send Berthe to stay with her grandmother. Mrs. Bovary died later that year and Roualt was seriously ill; Berthe was then sent to an aunt's house. This woman was very poor, and the little girl ended up working in a cotton mill.", "analysis": "The final chapters are concerned with showing the effect of Emma's death on various people. The greatest effect is on Charles, who mourns her death for a long time before he discovers the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. Then he slowly deteriorates in despair and poverty and inertia. Obliquely, Emma's death probably has the greatest effect on little Berthe, since at the age of seven she is sent into the cotton mill to earn her own living. In contrast, the people whom Emma most loved, Rodolphe and Leon, are not at all affected by her death. Justine who loved her with the purest love, is accused of stealing potatoes because he returned to cry at her grave. The last chapter is filled with many ironies. That Charles would want to bury Emma in her wedding dress is ironic in view of Emma's infidelities. The actions of the chemist and the priest are developed to show how their every act is not for someone else's benefit but for their own advancement. Homais' receipt of the cross of the Legion of Honor suggests the pettiness of the society against which Emma revolted. In the final analysis, as seen against the society in which Emma lived, Emma becomes a rather sympathetic character. She was a woman who had a full conviction of her dreams and was willing to risk everything for them. She had a glimpse of a life and of emotions that exist outside this narrow provincial world, but her tragedy lies finally in the fact that she could find no object in this world worthy of her dreams."}

There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that she did not move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying-- "Farewell! farewell!" Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room. "Restrain yourself!" "Yes." said he, struggling, "I'll be quiet. I'll not do anything. But leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!" And he wept. "Cry," said the chemist; "let nature take her course; that will solace you." Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs into the sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the Place he was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged himself as far as Yonville, in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was asking every passer-by where the druggist lived. "There now! as if I hadn't got other fish to fry. Well, so much the worse; you must come later on." And he entered the shop hurriedly. He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing potion for Bovary, to invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and work it up into an article for the "Fanal," without counting the people who were waiting to get the news from him; and when the Yonvillers had all heard his story of the arsenic that she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla cream. Homais once more returned to Bovary's. He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an arm-chair near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the flags of the floor. "Now," said the chemist, "you ought yourself to fix the hour for the ceremony." "Why? What ceremony?" Then, in a stammering, frightened voice, "Oh, no! not that. No! I want to see her here." Homais, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on the whatnot to water the geraniums. "Ah! thanks," said Charles; "you are good." But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that this action of the druggist recalled to him. Then to distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little horticulture: plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his head in sign of approbation. "Besides, the fine days will soon be here again." "Ah!" said Bovary. The druggist, at his wit's end, began softly to draw aside the small window-curtain. "Hallo! there's Monsieur Tuvache passing." Charles repeated like a machine--- "Monsieur Tuvache passing!" Homais did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him to them. He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after sobbing for some time, wrote-- "I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes, and a wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders. Three coffins, one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no one say anything to me. I shall have strength. Over all there is to be placed a large piece of green velvet. This is my wish; see that it is done." The two men were much surprised at Bovary's romantic ideas. The chemist at once went to him and said-- "This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--" "What's that to you?" cried Charles. "Leave me! You did not love her. Go!" The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He discoursed on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great, was very good: one must submit to his decrees without a murmur; nay, must even thank him. Charles burst out into blasphemies: "I hate your God!" "The spirit of rebellion is still upon you," sighed the ecclesiastic. Bovary was far away. He was walking with great strides along by the wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised to heaven looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf stirred. A fine rain was falling: Charles, whose chest was bare, at last began to shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen. At six o'clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on the Place; it was the "Hirondelle" coming in, and he remained with his forehead against the windowpane, watching all the passengers get out, one after the other. Felicite put down a mattress for him in the drawing-room. He threw himself upon it and fell asleep. Although a philosopher, Monsieur Homais respected the dead. So bearing no grudge to poor Charles, he came back again in the evening to sit up with the body; bringing with him three volumes and a pocket-book for taking notes. Monsieur Bournisien was there, and two large candles were burning at the head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove. The druggist, on whom the silence weighed, was not long before he began formulating some regrets about this "unfortunate young woman." and the priest replied that there was nothing to do now but pray for her. "Yet," Homais went on, "one of two things; either she died in a state of grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need of our prayers; or else she departed impertinent (that is, I believe, the ecclesiastical expression), and then--" Bournisien interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the less necessary to pray. "But," objected the chemist, "since God knows all our needs, what can be the good of prayer?" "What!" cried the ecclesiastic, "prayer! Why, aren't you a Christian?" "Excuse me," said Homais; "I admire Christianity. To begin with, it enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a morality--" "That isn't the question. All the texts-" "Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts have been falsified by the Jesuits." Charles came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the curtains. Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her knees, and then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Charles that infinite masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her. The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Monsieur Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily, and Homais' pen was scratching over the paper. "Come, my good friend," he said, "withdraw; this spectacle is tearing you to pieces." Charles once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their discussions. "Read Voltaire," said the one, "read D'Holbach, read the 'Encyclopaedia'!" "Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews,'" said the other; "read 'The Meaning of Christianity,' by Nicolas, formerly a magistrate." They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without listening to each other. Bournisien was scandalized at such audacity; Homais marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on the point of insulting one another when Charles suddenly reappeared. A fascination drew him. He was continually coming upstairs. He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself in a contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful. He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and he said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might perhaps succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he, and cried in a low voice, "Emma! Emma!" His strong breathing made the flames of the candles tremble against the wall. At daybreak Madame Bovary senior arrived. Charles as he embraced her burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist had done, to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the funeral. He became so angry that she was silent, and he even commissioned her to go to town at once and buy what was necessary. Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe to Madame Homais'; Felicite was in the room upstairs with Madame Lefrancois. In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their hands, unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and formed a large semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered faces, and swinging one leg crossed over the other knee, they uttered deep sighs at intervals; each one was inordinately bored, and yet none would be the first to go. Homais, when he returned at nine o'clock (for the last two days only Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant, Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Bovary senior were busy about Emma, finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil that covered her to her satin shoes. Felicite was sobbing--"Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!" "Look at her," said the landlady, sighing; "how pretty she still is! Now, couldn't you swear she was going to get up in a minute?" Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting, from her mouth. "Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!" cried Madame Lefrancois. "Now, just come and help," she said to the chemist. "Perhaps you're afraid?" "I afraid?" replied he, shrugging his shoulders. "I dare say! I've seen all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science." The cure on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on the reply of the druggist, went on--"The blow, you see, is still too recent." Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people, to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion on the celibacy of priests. "For," said the chemist, "it is unnatural that a man should do without women! There have been crimes--" "But, good heaven!" cried the ecclesiastic, "how do you expect an individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for example?" Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister-- His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the chemist. "Come, take a pinch of snuff," he said to him. "Take it; it'll relieve you." A continual barking was heard in the distance. "Do you hear that dog howling?" said the chemist. "They smell the dead," replied the priest. "It's like bees; they leave their hives on the decease of any person." Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore. They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping. Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he came to bid her farewell. The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in. There were few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the candles fell in great drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles watched them burn, tiring his eyes against the glare of their yellow flame. The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--the silence, the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground. Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard the laughter of the happy boys beneath the apple-trees: the room was filled with the perfume of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like electricity. The dress was still the same. For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes, her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing sea. A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers, palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of horror that awoke the other two. They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Felicite came up to say that he wanted some of her hair. "Cut some off," replied the druggist. And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Homais gave two or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that beautiful black hair. The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each other reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur Bournisien sprinkled the room with holy water and Homais threw a little chlorine water on the floor. Felicite had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And the druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in the morning sighed-- "My word! I should like to take some sustenance." The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say mass, came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a little without knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that comes upon us after times of sadness, and at the last glass the priest said to the druggist, as he clapped him on the shoulder-- "We shall end by understanding one another." In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker's men, who were coming in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture of hearing the hammer resound against the wood. Next day they lowered her into her oak coffin, that was fitted into the other two; but as the bier was too large, they had to fill up the gaps with the wool of a mattress. At last, when the three lids had been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was placed outside in front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the people of Yonville began to flock round. Old Rouault arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the black cloth! He had only received the chemist's letter thirty-six hours after the event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Homais had so worded it that it was impossible to make out what it was all about. First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next, he understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last, he had put on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to his boots, and set out at full speed; and the whole of the way old Rouault, panting, was torn by anguish. Once even he was obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he heard voices round about him; he felt himself going mad. Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He shuddered, horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles for the church, and that he would go barefooted from the cemetery at Bertaux to the chapel of Vassonville. He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it dashed along. He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors would discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the miraculous cures he had been told about. Then she appeared to him dead. She was there; before his eyes, lying on her back in the middle of the road. He reined up, and the hallucination disappeared. At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of coffee one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in the name in writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it there, but did not dare to open it. At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the jest of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have known it. But no! There was nothing extraordinary about the country; the sky was blue, the trees swayed; a flock of sheep passed. He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great blows, the girths dripping with blood. When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into Bovary's arms: "My girl! Emma! my child! tell me--" The other replied, sobbing, "I don't know! I don't know! It's a curse!" The druggist separated them. "These horrible details are useless. I will tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people coming. Dignity! Come now! Philosophy!" The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several times. "Yes! courage!" "Oh," cried the old man, "so I will have, by God! I'll go along o' her to the end!" The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And seated in a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and repass in front of them continually the three chanting choristers. The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur Bournisien, in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He bowed before the tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his arms. Lestiboudois went about the church with his whalebone stick. The bier stood near the lectern, between four rows of candles. Charles felt inclined to get up and put them out. Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw himself into the hope of a future life in which he should see her again. He imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far away, for a long time. But when he thought of her lying there, and that all was over, that they would lay her in the earth, he was seized with a fierce, gloomy, despairful rage. At times he thought he felt nothing more, and he enjoyed this lull in his pain, whilst at the same time he reproached himself for being a wretch. The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the stones, striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the end of the church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man in a coarse brown jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte, the stable-boy at the "Lion d'Or." He had put on his new leg. One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection, and the coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate. "Oh, make haste! I am in pain!" cried Bovary, angrily throwing him a five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow. They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He remembered that once, in the early times, they had been to mass together, and they had sat down on the other side, on the right, by the wall. The bell began again. There was a great moving of chairs; the bearers slipped their three staves under the coffin, and everyone left the church. Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in again, pale, staggering. People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at the head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with a nod those who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors, stood amidst the crowd. The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a little. The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys recited the De profundis*, and their voices echoed over the fields, rising and falling with their undulations. Sometimes they disappeared in the windings of the path; but the great silver cross rose always before the trees. *Psalm CXXX. The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each of them carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Charles felt himself growing weaker at this continual repetition of prayers and torches, beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of cassocks. A fresh breeze was blowing; the rye and colza were sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at the roadsides and on the hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds filled the air; the jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal running away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris. Charles as he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered mornings like this, when, after visiting some patient, he came out from one and returned to her. The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to time, laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more slowly, and it advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that pitches with every wave. They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in the grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all round; and while the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the sides kept noiselessly slipping down at the corners. Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them. He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up. Then Bournisien took the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois; with his left hand all the time sprinkling water, with the right he vigorously threw in a large spadeful; and the wood of the coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth that dread sound that seems to us the reverberation of eternity. The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his neighbour. This was Homais. He swung it gravely, then handed it to Charles, who sank to his knees in the earth and threw in handfuls of it, crying, "Adieu!" He sent her kisses; he dragged himself towards the grave, to engulf himself with her. They led him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps, like the others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over. Old Rouault on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which Homais in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing. He also noticed that Monsieur Binet had not been present, and that Tuvache had "made off" after mass, and that Theodore, the notary's servant wore a blue coat, "as if one could not have got a black coat, since that is the custom, by Jove!" And to share his observations with others he went from group to group. They were deploring Emma's death, especially Lheureux, who had not failed to come to the funeral. "Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!" The druggist continued, "Do you know that but for me he would have committed some fatal attempt upon himself?" "Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in my shop." "I haven't had leisure," said Homais, "to prepare a few words that I would have cast upon her tomb." Charles on getting home undressed, and old Rouault put on his blue blouse. It was a new one, and as he had often during the journey wiped his eyes on the sleeves, the dye had stained his face, and the traces of tears made lines in the layer of dust that covered it. Madame Bovary senior was with them. All three were silent. At last the old fellow sighed-- "Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you had just lost your first deceased? I consoled you at that time. I thought of something to say then, but now--" Then, with a loud groan that shook his whole chest, "Ah! this is the end for me, do you see! I saw my wife go, then my son, and now to-day it's my daughter." He wanted to go back at once to Bertaux, saying that he could not sleep in this house. He even refused to see his granddaughter. "No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only you'll kiss her many times for me. Good-bye! you're a good fellow! And then I shall never forget that," he said, slapping his thigh. "Never fear, you shall always have your turkey." But when he reached the top of the hill he turned back, as he had turned once before on the road of Saint-Victor when he had parted from her. The windows of the village were all on fire beneath the slanting rays of the sun sinking behind the field. He put his hand over his eyes, and saw in the horizon an enclosure of walls, where trees here and there formed black clusters between white stones; then he went on his way at a gentle trot, for his nag had gone lame. Despite their fatigue, Charles and his mother stayed very long that evening talking together. They spoke of the days of the past and of the future. She would come to live at Yonville; she would keep house for him; they would never part again. She was ingenious and caressing, rejoicing in her heart at gaining once more an affection that had wandered from her for so many years. Midnight struck. The village as usual was silent, and Charles, awake, thought always of her. Rodolphe, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the wood all day, was sleeping quietly in his chateau, and Leon, down yonder, always slept. There was another who at that hour was not asleep. On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees weeping, and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow beneath the load of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night. The gate suddenly grated. It was Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his spade, that he had forgotten. He recognised Justin climbing over the wall, and at last knew who was the culprit who stole his potatoes. The next day Charles had the child brought back. She asked for her mamma. They told her she was away; that she would bring her back some playthings. Berthe spoke of her again several times, then at last thought no more of her. The child's gaiety broke Bovary's heart, and he had to bear besides the intolerable consolations of the chemist. Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on anew his friend Vincart, and Charles pledged himself for exorbitant sums; for he would never consent to let the smallest of the things that had belonged to HER be sold. His mother was exasperated with him; he grew even more angry than she did. He had altogether changed. She left the house. Then everyone began "taking advantage" of him. Mademoiselle Lempereur presented a bill for six months' teaching, although Emma had never taken a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had shown Bovary); it was an arrangement between the two women. The man at the circulating library demanded three years' subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due for some twenty letters, and when Charles asked for an explanation, she had the delicacy to reply-- "Oh, I don't know. It was for her business affairs." With every debt he paid Charles thought he had come to the end of them. But others followed ceaselessly. He sent in accounts for professional attendance. He was shown the letters his wife had written. Then he had to apologise. Felicite now wore Madame Bovary's gowns; not all, for he had kept some of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room, locking himself up there; she was about her height, and often Charles, seeing her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and cried out-- "Oh, stay, stay!" But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by Theodore, stealing all that was left of the wardrobe. It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to inform him of the "marriage of Monsieur Leon Dupuis her son, notary at Yvetot, to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of Bondeville." Charles, among the other congratulations he sent him, wrote this sentence-- "How glad my poor wife would have been!" One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up to the attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper. He opened it and read: "Courage, Emma, courage. I would not bring misery into your life." It was Rodolphe's letter, fallen to the ground between the boxes, where it had remained, and that the wind from the dormer window had just blown towards the door. And Charles stood, motionless and staring, in the very same place where, long ago, Emma, in despair, and paler even than he, had thought of dying. At last he discovered a small R at the bottom of the second page. What did this mean? He remembered Rodolphe's attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when they had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of the letter deceived him. "Perhaps they loved one another platonically," he said to himself. Besides, Charles was not of those who go to the bottom of things; he shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the immensity of his woe. Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his despair, and that was boundless, because it was now unrealisable. To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her, signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave. He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom, her own room, remained as before. After his dinner Charles went up there. He pushed the round table in front of the fire, and drew up her armchair. He sat down opposite it. A candle burnt in one of the gilt candlesticks. Berthe by his side was painting prints. He suffered, poor man, at seeing her so badly dressed, with laceless boots, and the arm-holes of her pinafore torn down to the hips; for the charwoman took no care of her. But she was so sweet, so pretty, and her little head bent forward so gracefully, letting the dear fair hair fall over her rosy cheeks, that an infinite joy came upon him, a happiness mingled with bitterness, like those ill-made wines that taste of resin. He mended her toys, made her puppets from cardboard, or sewed up half-torn dolls. Then, if his eyes fell upon the workbox, a ribbon lying about, or even a pin left in a crack of the table, he began to dream, and looked so sad that she became as sad as he. No one now came to see them, for Justin had run away to Rouen, where he was a grocer's assistant, and the druggist's children saw less and less of the child, Monsieur Homais not caring, seeing the difference of their social position, to continue the intimacy. The blind man, whom he had not been able to cure with the pomade, had gone back to the hill of Bois-Guillaume, where he told the travellers of the vain attempt of the druggist, to such an extent, that Homais when he went to town hid himself behind the curtains of the "Hirondelle" to avoid meeting him. He detested him, and wishing, in the interests of his own reputation, to get rid of him at all costs, he directed against him a secret battery, that betrayed the depth of his intellect and the baseness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one could read in the "Fanal de Rouen" editorials such as these-- "All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy have, no doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a wretch suffering from a horrible facial wound. He importunes, persecutes one, and levies a regular tax on all travellers. Are we still living in the monstrous times of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds were permitted to display in our public places leprosy and scrofulas they had brought back from the Crusades?" Or-- "In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to our great towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. Some are seen going about alone, and these are not, perhaps, the least dangerous. What are our ediles about?" Then Homais invented anecdotes-- "Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse--" And then followed the story of an accident caused by the presence of the blind man. He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he was released. He began again, and Homais began again. It was a struggle. Homais won it, for his foe was condemned to life-long confinement in an asylum. This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was no longer a dog run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten in the parish, of which he did not immediately inform the public, guided always by the love of progress and the hate of priests. He instituted comparisons between the elementary and clerical schools to the detriment of the latter; called to mind the massacre of St. Bartholomew a propos of a grant of one hundred francs to the church, and denounced abuses, aired new views. That was his phrase. Homais was digging and delving; he was becoming dangerous. However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism, and soon a book, a work was necessary to him. Then he composed "General Statistics of the Canton of Yonville, followed by Climatological Remarks." The statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with great questions: the social problem, moralisation of the poorer classes, pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at being a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room. He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he was the first to introduce "cocoa" and "revalenta" into the Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi. He had fine ideas about Emma's tomb. First he proposed a broken column with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of rotunda, or else a "mass of ruins." And in all his plans Homais always stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable symbol of sorrow. Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to look at some tombs at a funeral furnisher's, accompanied by an artist, one Vaufrylard, a friend of Bridoux's, who made puns all the time. At last, after having examined some hundred designs, having ordered an estimate and made another journey to Rouen, Charles decided in favour of a mausoleum, which on the two principal sides was to have a "spirit bearing an extinguished torch." As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so fine as Sta viator*, and he got no further; he racked his brain, he constantly repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon Amabilen conjugem calcas**, which was adopted. * Rest traveler. ** Tread upon a loving wife. A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually thinking of Emma, was forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image fading from his memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt of her; it was always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he was about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms. For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up. Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows. In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he was far from being able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux refused to renew any more bills. A distraint became imminent. Then he appealed to his mother, who consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but with a great many recriminations against Emma; and in return for her sacrifice she asked for a shawl that had escaped the depredations of Felicite. Charles refused to give it her; they quarrelled. She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to have the little girl, who could help her in the house, to live with her. Charles consented to this, but when the time for parting came, all his courage failed him. Then there was a final, complete rupture. As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had red spots on her cheeks. Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him in the laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras' table in a breath. He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men. Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais hankered after the cross of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it. "First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense, various works of public utility, such as" (and he recalled his pamphlet entitled, "Cider, its manufacture and effects," besides observation on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); "without counting that I am a member of several learned societies" (he was member of a single one). "In short!" he cried, making a pirouette, "if it were only for distinguishing myself at fires!" Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He secretly did the prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself--in a word, prostituted himself. He even addressed a petition to the sovereign in which he implored him to "do him justice"; he called him "our good king," and compared him to Henri IV. And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from the top to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded arms, meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men. From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day, however, he sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Leon's letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe's portrait flew full in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters. People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one, refused even to visit his patients. Then they said "he shut himself up to drink." Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge, and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as he walked up and down. In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him and led her to the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only light left in the Place was that in Binet's window. The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be able to speak of her. But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the "Favorites du Commerce," and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands, insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening to go over "to the opposition shop." One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse--his last resource--he met Rodolphe. They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Rodolphe, who had only sent his card, first stammered some apologies, then grew bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the public-house. Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would have liked to have been this man. The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Charles was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he followed the succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at last a moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on Rodolphe, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same look of weary lassitude came back to his face. "I don't blame you," he said. Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow-- "No, I don't blame you now." He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made-- "It is the fault of fatality!" Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean. The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart. At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner. His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair. "Come along, papa," she said. And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead. Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Monsieur Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing. When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary's going to her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Rouault was paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living. Since Bovary's death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and public opinion protects him. He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.

Chapters 9-11

https://web.archive.org/web/20201101053231/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/m/madame-bovary/summary-and-analysis/part-iii-chapters-911

It took Charles a long time to recover from the initial shock of Emma's death. His mother arrived and helped to put affairs in order and thought that now Emma was gone she would be reinstated in Charles' affection. Emma's father also showed up for the funeral, but was too emotional to be of help. The priest and Homais sat up all night with the body and performed certain rites which they thought appropriate. The priest had a difficult time convincing Charles that the burial should take place soon. Charles gave directions for Emma to be buried in her wedding dress and quarreled with his mother about the expense of some parts of the funeral. As soon as the funeral is over, old Roualt goes home without even seeing little Berthe. Later that night the sexton sees Justin by Emma's grave and thinks that he now knows who has been stealing his potatoes. In the days which followed, Bovary was contacted by all Emma's creditors. Her debts included not merely those of Lheureux, but many bills to business concerns, tradesmen, and other people. Their total constituted a vast amount. Bovary tried to collect the fees due him in an effort to pay but learned that Emma had already done so. In the meantime, Leon became engaged to a young woman of good family. Bovary sent a letter of congratulations to Leon's mother, in which he remarked, innocently, that the news would have pleased his late wife. One night Bovary came across the letter from Rodolphe that Emma had lost in the attic a long time before. He read it, but assumed that there had been a platonic affection between them and was not concerned. He idealized Emma's memory and was pleased to learn that another had also admired her. In an attempt to pay his debts, Bovary had to sell nearly all the furniture, but even this amount was not sufficient. For sentimental reasons, though, he refrained from taking anything from her bedroom and kept it just the way it was before her death. Mrs. Bovary had come to live with him, but they had a quarrel over the possession of one of Emma's shawls and she left his house. The servant left also, taking most of Emma's wardrobe with her. Bovary began to live in seclusion. He avoided his old friends and neglected his practice. Homais, who had once been so close, and who was now a power in the community, shunned him, claiming that there was too big a gap in their social positions. Bovary often sat in Emma's room, examining her possessions and recalling their life together. One day he opened her desk and discovered the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. He read them with an air of disbelief and was very distressed when he realized their meaning and was forced to acknowledge that Emma had been unfaithful. After this he was always gloomy and seemed a broken man. He rarely left his house and kept away from people. Once he had to go to Rouen to sell his horse in order to raise more money. He met Rodolphe there and the two men had a drink together in a cafe. Rodolphe felt guilty and tried to make small talk. Finally Bovary told him that he knew the truth, but that he no longer held any grudge against him. The fault, Bovary said, was with Destiny. The next day Bovary died quietly while sitting in his garden. His house and remaining property were sold on behalf of his creditors, and there was just enough left over to send Berthe to stay with her grandmother. Mrs. Bovary died later that year and Roualt was seriously ill; Berthe was then sent to an aunt's house. This woman was very poor, and the little girl ended up working in a cotton mill.

The final chapters are concerned with showing the effect of Emma's death on various people. The greatest effect is on Charles, who mourns her death for a long time before he discovers the letters from Rodolphe and Leon. Then he slowly deteriorates in despair and poverty and inertia. Obliquely, Emma's death probably has the greatest effect on little Berthe, since at the age of seven she is sent into the cotton mill to earn her own living. In contrast, the people whom Emma most loved, Rodolphe and Leon, are not at all affected by her death. Justine who loved her with the purest love, is accused of stealing potatoes because he returned to cry at her grave. The last chapter is filled with many ironies. That Charles would want to bury Emma in her wedding dress is ironic in view of Emma's infidelities. The actions of the chemist and the priest are developed to show how their every act is not for someone else's benefit but for their own advancement. Homais' receipt of the cross of the Legion of Honor suggests the pettiness of the society against which Emma revolted. In the final analysis, as seen against the society in which Emma lived, Emma becomes a rather sympathetic character. She was a woman who had a full conviction of her dreams and was willing to risk everything for them. She had a glimpse of a life and of emotions that exist outside this narrow provincial world, but her tragedy lies finally in the fact that she could find no object in this world worthy of her dreams.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/01.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_0_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 1

chapter 1

{"name": "Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary09.asp", "summary": "The novel opens with a description of the school days of Charles Bovary. The fifteen year-old boy stands out in class, for he is clumsy and does not fit in with his boisterous classmates. A detailed account is given of the mismatched and unfashionable clothes he wears. His classmates are quick to notice his provincial origins and begin to tease him. The teacher comes to his defense, and the class settles down to work. Charles appears to be a serious student; he applies himself diligently to all the lessons, perhaps in order to make up for the lack of study in his early years, but he is never really successful. Charles' father had served as an assistant surgeon in the army. He had been forced to resign in 1812 after being implicated in a scandal. Being physically attractive, he had used his charms to persuade a merchant's daughter to marry him. She had brought Bovary a large dowry, and in the years immediately following his marriage, he had lived off his wife's money. When his father-in- law died, leaving practically nothing, he plunged into business but failed. He also attempted to settle down to life in the country and finally chose a village on the borders of Caux and Picardy. His wife, who had once lavished her affection on him, began to feel embittered towards him. She was practical minded and took charge of the accounts. Charles' birth was a welcome distraction for both parents. The mother was over-indulgent and protective, while the father tried to fit the child into his \"manly ideal of boyhood. \" The child, being mild-mannered, had preferred his mother's company. At the age of twelve, the cure took him under his wings, and Charles' studies began. Eventually, Charles was sent to school in Rouen, where he led a balanced student life. In accordance with his parents' wishes, Charles goes on to study medicine. Having been an average student all his life, he is unable to cope with the demanding curriculum. On his first try, he fails the examination at medical school. On the second attempt, he manages to pass and sets up a practice in Tostes, France. His mother marries him off to a forty-five year old widow, who has a fairly good annual income. Charles' fanciful notions regarding marriage are reduced to nothing, for \"his wife was master. \" She checks all his activities and constantly demands his attention. It is against this backdrop that Charles' medical practice grows.", "analysis": "Notes Flaubert first introduces Charles Bovary through the use of the first-person plural, \"we.\" The reader observes Charles through the eyes of his classmates, and it is not a pleasant picture. He is the clumsy, provincial boy who is easy to tease and taunt. For whatever reason, Flaubert discontinues this kind of first-person narrative mid-way through the chapter and takes up a third-person omniscient voice to sketch Charles' family background. Charles' father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartholome Bovary, is presented as a social misfit. He uses his charms to marry a wife with a generous dowry, but cannot apply himself to any occupation for long. His wife, who feels cheated by her husband, dotes on Charles, their only son. In fact, she \"kept him tied to her apron strings\" in a domineering manner. Charles' close affinity to his mother foreshadows the course his life will take; he will be dominated by his wife as well. Charles' classmates observe some key characteristics of boy that will continue to haunt him as a man. Although he is a somewhat diligent student, he has no natural aptitude for learning. In medical school, he flunks the examination on his first try. He continues to struggle with financial matters throughout his life. Charles also reveals he has no backbone, for he tolerates the taunts of his fellow classmates. This character trait will also greatly influence his life. He readily accepts the marriage arranged by his mother to Heloise Dubuc, but it is a very unhappy one. She successfully controls every aspect of his being, revealing his spineless character. Charles' attitude during his first marriage prepares the reader for his second marriage to Emma, in which Charles also exhibits no control."}

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work. The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice-- "Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age." The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots. We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us. When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the thing." But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone. "Rise," said the master. He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once more. "Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag. There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down again and placed it on his knee. "Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name." The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name. "Again!" The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering 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 his voice as if calling someone in the word "Charbovari." A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing 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 gradually re-established in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of "Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated. "What are you looking for?" asked the master. "My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round him. "Five hundred lines for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. "Silence!" continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow 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 cap again; it hasn't been stolen." *A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat. **I am ridiculous. Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered. In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible. His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a hosier'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 always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours, he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial traveller. Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought he would make money. But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, 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 up all speculation. For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of 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 the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace. His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once, 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 much without complaint at first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders. When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village. He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour. When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions, when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had a very good memory. *A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell. Here, the evening prayer. Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps. Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take his first communion. Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October, at the time of the St. Romain fair. It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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.

Chapter 1

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary09.asp

The novel opens with a description of the school days of Charles Bovary. The fifteen year-old boy stands out in class, for he is clumsy and does not fit in with his boisterous classmates. A detailed account is given of the mismatched and unfashionable clothes he wears. His classmates are quick to notice his provincial origins and begin to tease him. The teacher comes to his defense, and the class settles down to work. Charles appears to be a serious student; he applies himself diligently to all the lessons, perhaps in order to make up for the lack of study in his early years, but he is never really successful. Charles' father had served as an assistant surgeon in the army. He had been forced to resign in 1812 after being implicated in a scandal. Being physically attractive, he had used his charms to persuade a merchant's daughter to marry him. She had brought Bovary a large dowry, and in the years immediately following his marriage, he had lived off his wife's money. When his father-in- law died, leaving practically nothing, he plunged into business but failed. He also attempted to settle down to life in the country and finally chose a village on the borders of Caux and Picardy. His wife, who had once lavished her affection on him, began to feel embittered towards him. She was practical minded and took charge of the accounts. Charles' birth was a welcome distraction for both parents. The mother was over-indulgent and protective, while the father tried to fit the child into his "manly ideal of boyhood. " The child, being mild-mannered, had preferred his mother's company. At the age of twelve, the cure took him under his wings, and Charles' studies began. Eventually, Charles was sent to school in Rouen, where he led a balanced student life. In accordance with his parents' wishes, Charles goes on to study medicine. Having been an average student all his life, he is unable to cope with the demanding curriculum. On his first try, he fails the examination at medical school. On the second attempt, he manages to pass and sets up a practice in Tostes, France. His mother marries him off to a forty-five year old widow, who has a fairly good annual income. Charles' fanciful notions regarding marriage are reduced to nothing, for "his wife was master. " She checks all his activities and constantly demands his attention. It is against this backdrop that Charles' medical practice grows.

Notes Flaubert first introduces Charles Bovary through the use of the first-person plural, "we." The reader observes Charles through the eyes of his classmates, and it is not a pleasant picture. He is the clumsy, provincial boy who is easy to tease and taunt. For whatever reason, Flaubert discontinues this kind of first-person narrative mid-way through the chapter and takes up a third-person omniscient voice to sketch Charles' family background. Charles' father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartholome Bovary, is presented as a social misfit. He uses his charms to marry a wife with a generous dowry, but cannot apply himself to any occupation for long. His wife, who feels cheated by her husband, dotes on Charles, their only son. In fact, she "kept him tied to her apron strings" in a domineering manner. Charles' close affinity to his mother foreshadows the course his life will take; he will be dominated by his wife as well. Charles' classmates observe some key characteristics of boy that will continue to haunt him as a man. Although he is a somewhat diligent student, he has no natural aptitude for learning. In medical school, he flunks the examination on his first try. He continues to struggle with financial matters throughout his life. Charles also reveals he has no backbone, for he tolerates the taunts of his fellow classmates. This character trait will also greatly influence his life. He readily accepts the marriage arranged by his mother to Heloise Dubuc, but it is a very unhappy one. She successfully controls every aspect of his being, revealing his spineless character. Charles' attitude during his first marriage prepares the reader for his second marriage to Emma, in which Charles also exhibits no control.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/02.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_1_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 2

chapter 2

{"name": "Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary11.asp", "summary": "Late one night, a man comes to Charles with a letter. Apparently, someone in Les Bertaux, about eighteen miles from Tostes, has broken a leg and is in need of immediate medical attention. At his wife's urging, Charles postpones his journey to Les Bertaux by three hours. When Charles does set out, the early morning air lulls his senses. He sees himself \"as two selves, student and husband at once - lying in bed as he had been an hour ago, and going through a ward full of patients as in the old days.\" A small boy guides him through Vassonville to the farmhouse of Monsieur Rouault, the patient. From the boy Charles gathers some information about the Rouault family. The man is a prosperous farmer and a widower who lives with his young, unmarried daughter whose name is Emma. It is she who ushers Charles in and leads him to the patient's room. He is relieved to note that Rouault has suffered a simple fracture, which can easily be set. Rouault is soon on his way to recovery. During this first visit, Charles is fascinated with Emma, and he calls on her father frequently in order to see the daughter. Charles' own wife, Heloise, is upset when she learns that Rouault has a young, well-educated daughter. She nags Charles until he agrees not to go to Les Bertaux any more. His wife and mother constantly team up to scold him for one thing or another. The lawyer in charge of Heloise's investments supposedly disappears with the money. Further investigation, however, reveals that Heloise has little to substantiate her claims of having investments and property. Charles' parents are very upset about this turn of affairs, and they create a scene. Heloise is fatally affected by their feelings, and a week later, she has a stroke and dies, leaving Charles as a very young widower.", "analysis": "Notes Flaubert introduces Emma in this chapter. Before she is seen in person, she is described by the young boy who leads Charles to the Roualt home. Charles then gives his own description of the lovely young girl, and Heloise also reveals her perception of Emma from a distance. Charles, who is not particularly insightful and is seemingly unaware of his own feelings, does not admit that he is attracted to Emma or that his wife is jealous of her. He is aware, however, of the immense contrast between Emma and his wife. The latter is described in unflattering terms as a nag and a bother. Charles seems to regret that he has allowed his mother to convince him to marry this older woman because of her dowry. It, therefore, becomes extremely ironic that Heloise does not really possess a fortune. When his parents become aware of this fact, they are incensed and treat their daughter-in-law cruelly. Heloise is so upset over their behavior that she has a stroke and dies. Her death is a convenient and timely occurrence for Charles, for the path is now clear for him to approach Emma. It is important to notice Flaubert's use of the naturalistic technique in his descriptions. Through this device, he evokes in the readers a 'feel' for the characters and action of the plot. So precise are his descriptive details that the novel becomes a cinematic delight in the mind's eye."}

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 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 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. 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 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 sew some pads. As she was a long time before she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails. They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness. The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he left. Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre, was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written in Gothic letters "To dear Papa." First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night. Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full 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 were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass. When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for anything?" she asked. "My whip, if you please," he answered. He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip. Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident. Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen. As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to 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 wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots. She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said "Good-bye"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk. During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called "a good education"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider 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 he puts 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 herself by allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted town misses." And she went on-- "The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess. Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears." For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings. Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. 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 the house. But "the blow had struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!

Chapter 2

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary11.asp

Late one night, a man comes to Charles with a letter. Apparently, someone in Les Bertaux, about eighteen miles from Tostes, has broken a leg and is in need of immediate medical attention. At his wife's urging, Charles postpones his journey to Les Bertaux by three hours. When Charles does set out, the early morning air lulls his senses. He sees himself "as two selves, student and husband at once - lying in bed as he had been an hour ago, and going through a ward full of patients as in the old days." A small boy guides him through Vassonville to the farmhouse of Monsieur Rouault, the patient. From the boy Charles gathers some information about the Rouault family. The man is a prosperous farmer and a widower who lives with his young, unmarried daughter whose name is Emma. It is she who ushers Charles in and leads him to the patient's room. He is relieved to note that Rouault has suffered a simple fracture, which can easily be set. Rouault is soon on his way to recovery. During this first visit, Charles is fascinated with Emma, and he calls on her father frequently in order to see the daughter. Charles' own wife, Heloise, is upset when she learns that Rouault has a young, well-educated daughter. She nags Charles until he agrees not to go to Les Bertaux any more. His wife and mother constantly team up to scold him for one thing or another. The lawyer in charge of Heloise's investments supposedly disappears with the money. Further investigation, however, reveals that Heloise has little to substantiate her claims of having investments and property. Charles' parents are very upset about this turn of affairs, and they create a scene. Heloise is fatally affected by their feelings, and a week later, she has a stroke and dies, leaving Charles as a very young widower.

Notes Flaubert introduces Emma in this chapter. Before she is seen in person, she is described by the young boy who leads Charles to the Roualt home. Charles then gives his own description of the lovely young girl, and Heloise also reveals her perception of Emma from a distance. Charles, who is not particularly insightful and is seemingly unaware of his own feelings, does not admit that he is attracted to Emma or that his wife is jealous of her. He is aware, however, of the immense contrast between Emma and his wife. The latter is described in unflattering terms as a nag and a bother. Charles seems to regret that he has allowed his mother to convince him to marry this older woman because of her dowry. It, therefore, becomes extremely ironic that Heloise does not really possess a fortune. When his parents become aware of this fact, they are incensed and treat their daughter-in-law cruelly. Heloise is so upset over their behavior that she has a stroke and dies. Her death is a convenient and timely occurrence for Charles, for the path is now clear for him to approach Emma. It is important to notice Flaubert's use of the naturalistic technique in his descriptions. Through this device, he evokes in the readers a 'feel' for the characters and action of the plot. So precise are his descriptive details that the novel becomes a cinematic delight in the mind's eye.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/03.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_2_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 3

chapter 3

{"name": "Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary12.asp", "summary": "After Heloise's death, Rouault pays Charles a condolence visit, during which he settles his account with the doctor. He also tells Charles of the manner in which he had coped when his wife died and assures him that his grief will pass. He then invites Charles to visit Les Bertaux in the spring. Charles is delighted at the invitation, and he soon becomes a regular visitor at the farm. Things are going well for Charles. His practice is flourishing with the sympathy generated by his wife's death, he is delighted to visit with Emma during his trips to Les Bertaux. For the first time, Charles dares to feel \"vaguely hopeful and happy.\" As the meetings between Emma and Charles become more frequent, old Rouault is sharp enough to see Charles' increasing fondness for his daughter. He is worried, however, about providing her with a dowry, since his debts are rising. When Charles asks him for Emma's hand in marriage, he readily consents. The wedding will take place after Charles' period of mourning ends. Emma pictures a romantic midnight wedding with torches.", "analysis": "Notes Rouault appears to be a kind, good-natured man. He calls on Charles to offer his condolences over his wife's death and invites him to spend some time with him at Les Bertaux. His invitation has the dual purpose of taking Charles' mind off of his wife's death and interesting Charles in his own daughter Emma. Since Roualt is suffering from rising debts, he is very concerned about not having a large dowry for his daughter and wants to see her respectably and quickly married. When Rouault sees that Charles is fond of Emma, he does everything possible to encourage their relationship, for he judges the young doctor to be a suitable husband. In this chapter, Flaubert continues to develop Emma. The first hint of her imaginative, romantic nature is depicted as she dreams about a midnight wedding with torches. Probably because of her dreamy, romantic ways, her father does not find Emma helpful enough on the farm and feels she will not be terribly missed when she marries. Charles, on the other hand, is thoroughly infatuated with Emma, believing everything about her, both her actions and her appearance, to be flawless. Emma will later take undue advantage of this devotion of Charles to her."}

One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could. "I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit." Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life. Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her. He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked. He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass. One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders. After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass. She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs. She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid! She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering. Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married, and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the Bertaux. Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips. Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid as on the stage. *A mixture of coffee and spirits. When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property," as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said to himself, "I'll give her to him." At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux. The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it-- "Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to you." They stopped. Charles was silent. "Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault, laughing softly. "Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles. "I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge." And he went off. Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging. The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year. The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be entrees. Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following.

Chapter 3

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary12.asp

After Heloise's death, Rouault pays Charles a condolence visit, during which he settles his account with the doctor. He also tells Charles of the manner in which he had coped when his wife died and assures him that his grief will pass. He then invites Charles to visit Les Bertaux in the spring. Charles is delighted at the invitation, and he soon becomes a regular visitor at the farm. Things are going well for Charles. His practice is flourishing with the sympathy generated by his wife's death, he is delighted to visit with Emma during his trips to Les Bertaux. For the first time, Charles dares to feel "vaguely hopeful and happy." As the meetings between Emma and Charles become more frequent, old Rouault is sharp enough to see Charles' increasing fondness for his daughter. He is worried, however, about providing her with a dowry, since his debts are rising. When Charles asks him for Emma's hand in marriage, he readily consents. The wedding will take place after Charles' period of mourning ends. Emma pictures a romantic midnight wedding with torches.

Notes Rouault appears to be a kind, good-natured man. He calls on Charles to offer his condolences over his wife's death and invites him to spend some time with him at Les Bertaux. His invitation has the dual purpose of taking Charles' mind off of his wife's death and interesting Charles in his own daughter Emma. Since Roualt is suffering from rising debts, he is very concerned about not having a large dowry for his daughter and wants to see her respectably and quickly married. When Rouault sees that Charles is fond of Emma, he does everything possible to encourage their relationship, for he judges the young doctor to be a suitable husband. In this chapter, Flaubert continues to develop Emma. The first hint of her imaginative, romantic nature is depicted as she dreams about a midnight wedding with torches. Probably because of her dreamy, romantic ways, her father does not find Emma helpful enough on the farm and feels she will not be terribly missed when she marries. Charles, on the other hand, is thoroughly infatuated with Emma, believing everything about her, both her actions and her appearance, to be flawless. Emma will later take undue advantage of this devotion of Charles to her.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/04.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_3_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 4

chapter 4

{"name": "Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary13.asp", "summary": "In this chapter, the wedding takes place, and \"all relatives on both sides had been invited\" to the celebration. After the ceremony, the bridal couple, along with a band of well-wishers, make their way from the mayor's office to the church on foot. The sumptuous wedding feast is laid in a cart-shed. In the midst of all this joy and merry-making is Charles' mother, who is upset because \"she had not been consulted about the bride's dress, nor about the feast. \" The lively description of the wedding celebration is given in great detail and reflects the social status of the characters. The guests who attend are a mixed lot, ranging from the prosperous to the not- so-well-to-do. It is obvious that for many people this a special occasion calling for special clothing. The men are dressed according to their wealth, wearing dress-coats, frock-coats, waistcoats, or jackets. Many ladies are wearing new dresses, tailored to the prevailing style of the day. For many of the children, it is the first time for them to wear boots or gloves. After the wedding night, Charles appears to be a renewed man, while Emma appears just as innocent and demure as she did before the marriage. When the couple arrives in Tostes two days later, the neighbors gather in their windows to see the doctor's new wife. The maid suggests to Emma that she should look over the house once dinner is ready.", "analysis": "Notes Flaubert's ability to write commendable and powerful descriptions is clearly seen in this chapter. The wedding feast is described with careful detail. While contributing little to plot development, the chapter does much to further develop the characters. The resentful attitude of Charles' mother is in keeping with her desire to control everything, especially her son's life. She cannot stand it that her new daughter-in-law does not depend on her for guidance. Her animosity also foreshadows the mutual distrust with which these two women are to regard each other in future. Emma's continued \"innocence\" after the wedding night, in contrast to Charles' invigorated state, seems to hint that she has not found sexual relations with her husband as satisfying as he has with her. This dissatisfaction foreshadows some of Emma's future need to find sexual relationships outside of her marriage. Flaubert gives a humorous touch to the marriage celebration by describing the ways in which the simple country folk try to imitate their town cousins. But hard work is a way of life for these people, and they cannot easily leave it behind. As a result, the gentlemen arriving for the celebration do not hesitate to unharness the carriages themselves, even though they are dressed in their best finery. Flaubert also presents the traditions of the village community with the wedding itself becoming a communal event. It is important to notice Charles' neighbors who stare out the window at the newlyweds upon their return to Tostes. They seem to be a somewhat nosy group, indicating it will not be easy for Emma to be secretive about her actions or behavior."}

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to. From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. According to their different social positions they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt. And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs. The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little birds from afar. The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly 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 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 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, 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 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.

Chapter 4

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary13.asp

In this chapter, the wedding takes place, and "all relatives on both sides had been invited" to the celebration. After the ceremony, the bridal couple, along with a band of well-wishers, make their way from the mayor's office to the church on foot. The sumptuous wedding feast is laid in a cart-shed. In the midst of all this joy and merry-making is Charles' mother, who is upset because "she had not been consulted about the bride's dress, nor about the feast. " The lively description of the wedding celebration is given in great detail and reflects the social status of the characters. The guests who attend are a mixed lot, ranging from the prosperous to the not- so-well-to-do. It is obvious that for many people this a special occasion calling for special clothing. The men are dressed according to their wealth, wearing dress-coats, frock-coats, waistcoats, or jackets. Many ladies are wearing new dresses, tailored to the prevailing style of the day. For many of the children, it is the first time for them to wear boots or gloves. After the wedding night, Charles appears to be a renewed man, while Emma appears just as innocent and demure as she did before the marriage. When the couple arrives in Tostes two days later, the neighbors gather in their windows to see the doctor's new wife. The maid suggests to Emma that she should look over the house once dinner is ready.

Notes Flaubert's ability to write commendable and powerful descriptions is clearly seen in this chapter. The wedding feast is described with careful detail. While contributing little to plot development, the chapter does much to further develop the characters. The resentful attitude of Charles' mother is in keeping with her desire to control everything, especially her son's life. She cannot stand it that her new daughter-in-law does not depend on her for guidance. Her animosity also foreshadows the mutual distrust with which these two women are to regard each other in future. Emma's continued "innocence" after the wedding night, in contrast to Charles' invigorated state, seems to hint that she has not found sexual relations with her husband as satisfying as he has with her. This dissatisfaction foreshadows some of Emma's future need to find sexual relationships outside of her marriage. Flaubert gives a humorous touch to the marriage celebration by describing the ways in which the simple country folk try to imitate their town cousins. But hard work is a way of life for these people, and they cannot easily leave it behind. As a result, the gentlemen arriving for the celebration do not hesitate to unharness the carriages themselves, even though they are dressed in their best finery. Flaubert also presents the traditions of the village community with the wedding itself becoming a communal event. It is important to notice Charles' neighbors who stare out the window at the newlyweds upon their return to Tostes. They seem to be a somewhat nosy group, indicating it will not be easy for Emma to be secretive about her actions or behavior.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/05.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_4_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 5

chapter 5

{"name": "Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary14.asp", "summary": "The house is described in great detail: the wallpaper, the curtains and the bookshelves all contribute to the \"feel\" of the place. Emma does not seem to mind that the garden is not very remarkable; it is the bedroom that she examines eagerly. When she notices Heloise's bridal bouquet, she muses morbidly about the possibility of her own death. Emma spends the next few days changing the house to suit her tastes, and Charles indulges her every whim. He buys her a second-hand carriage so that she can drive out on her own. Charles is ecstatic over his new found happiness with Emma. \" A meal together, a walk along the highroad in the evening, a way she had of putting her hand to her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging on the window latch, and a great many things besides, in which Charles had never thought to find pleasure, now made up the even tenor of his happiness.\" He treasures every moment with Emma. While Charles luxuriates in his love for his wife, Emma quickly grows tired of her husband and married life. She had dreamed of \"bliss,\" \"passion,\" and \"ecstasy,\" a far cry from what she has found with Charles.", "analysis": "Notes This chapter masterfully contrasts Charles' joy with marriage to Emma's boredom, and Flaubert successfully captures her gloomy mood. Charles' house, with its bleak furnishings, depresses Emma. She is particularly bothered by the bedroom, where she spies Heloise's bridal bouquet and is forced to think about her own mortality; it is a clear foreshadowing of Emma's own early death. The chapter ends on a note of discord. Emma is slowly beginning to realize the difference between her fanciful expectations of marriage and the unromantic reality that it actually offers. In total contrast to his wife's boredom with marriage, Charles is delighted about everything. He obviously idolizes Emma, and every little thing about her is special to him - the way she puts her hand to hair and leaves her straw hat on the window shelf. He has never felt so happy. As a result, he does everything he can materially to please his wife. He buys her a carriage so she can go out on her own, and he allows her to redecorate the house. The alterations that she makes in their dwelling are more than an attempt to render it more pleasant in appearance; it is an effort on her put to establish her own authority over the place. Charles does not mind. In fact, he is so immersed in his own contentment with married life that he fails to notice the disillusionment that is creeping over Emma. Charles is a naive husband who thinks that a few material indulgences are enough to satisfy a wife. He makes no effort to understand Emma's need for companionship and conversation. He ignores her romanticism and does nothing to satisfy her passions. Although Emma is guilty of many sins during the course of the novel, some of the blame must be placed on Charles. He never considers whether his wife is comfortable or happy; he just assumes that she is since he is. Besides Emma's gloomy thoughts about death early in the chapter, there are other significant things to note in here that will become important later on. Emma's main concern in the house is the bedroom with its romantic and sexual connotations; throughout the book, Emma will have a preoccupation with her own sexuality. Ironically, the thing she most notices in this particular bedroom is the dead bouquet of flowers belonging to a dead wife. Also significant is the fact that Charles buys his wife a carriage, which gives her the freedom that she will need to pursue her own desires. The fact that he allows Emma to have her way about practically everything spoils her to the point that she will later borrow whatever she needs to get what she wants, causing financial disaster for the pair."}

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 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 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 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. 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. 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.

Chapter 5

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary14.asp

The house is described in great detail: the wallpaper, the curtains and the bookshelves all contribute to the "feel" of the place. Emma does not seem to mind that the garden is not very remarkable; it is the bedroom that she examines eagerly. When she notices Heloise's bridal bouquet, she muses morbidly about the possibility of her own death. Emma spends the next few days changing the house to suit her tastes, and Charles indulges her every whim. He buys her a second-hand carriage so that she can drive out on her own. Charles is ecstatic over his new found happiness with Emma. " A meal together, a walk along the highroad in the evening, a way she had of putting her hand to her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging on the window latch, and a great many things besides, in which Charles had never thought to find pleasure, now made up the even tenor of his happiness." He treasures every moment with Emma. While Charles luxuriates in his love for his wife, Emma quickly grows tired of her husband and married life. She had dreamed of "bliss," "passion," and "ecstasy," a far cry from what she has found with Charles.

Notes This chapter masterfully contrasts Charles' joy with marriage to Emma's boredom, and Flaubert successfully captures her gloomy mood. Charles' house, with its bleak furnishings, depresses Emma. She is particularly bothered by the bedroom, where she spies Heloise's bridal bouquet and is forced to think about her own mortality; it is a clear foreshadowing of Emma's own early death. The chapter ends on a note of discord. Emma is slowly beginning to realize the difference between her fanciful expectations of marriage and the unromantic reality that it actually offers. In total contrast to his wife's boredom with marriage, Charles is delighted about everything. He obviously idolizes Emma, and every little thing about her is special to him - the way she puts her hand to hair and leaves her straw hat on the window shelf. He has never felt so happy. As a result, he does everything he can materially to please his wife. He buys her a carriage so she can go out on her own, and he allows her to redecorate the house. The alterations that she makes in their dwelling are more than an attempt to render it more pleasant in appearance; it is an effort on her put to establish her own authority over the place. Charles does not mind. In fact, he is so immersed in his own contentment with married life that he fails to notice the disillusionment that is creeping over Emma. Charles is a naive husband who thinks that a few material indulgences are enough to satisfy a wife. He makes no effort to understand Emma's need for companionship and conversation. He ignores her romanticism and does nothing to satisfy her passions. Although Emma is guilty of many sins during the course of the novel, some of the blame must be placed on Charles. He never considers whether his wife is comfortable or happy; he just assumes that she is since he is. Besides Emma's gloomy thoughts about death early in the chapter, there are other significant things to note in here that will become important later on. Emma's main concern in the house is the bedroom with its romantic and sexual connotations; throughout the book, Emma will have a preoccupation with her own sexuality. Ironically, the thing she most notices in this particular bedroom is the dead bouquet of flowers belonging to a dead wife. Also significant is the fact that Charles buys his wife a carriage, which gives her the freedom that she will need to pursue her own desires. The fact that he allows Emma to have her way about practically everything spoils her to the point that she will later borrow whatever she needs to get what she wants, causing financial disaster for the pair.

pinkmonkey

all_chapterized_books/2413-chapters/06.txt

finished_summaries/pinkmonkey/Madame Bovary/section_5_part_0.txt

Madame Bovary.part 1.chapter 6

chapter 6

{"name": "Chapter 6", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary15.asp", "summary": "In this chapter, Emma relives her past. When she was thirteen, her father put her in a convent. At first she \"enjoyed the society of the nuns\" and even liked answering the curate's harder questions in catechism. Gradually, however, she found herself responding more and more to the physical beauty of the place, rather than the spiritual and religious. She was fascinated with \"the perfumes of the attar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers,\" all romantic images for her. In fact, \"the metaphors of betrothed, spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting, that recur in sermons, awoke in the depths of her soul an unlooked-for delight.\" Emma's already dreamy disposition is further developed when she is exposed to romantic ballads. The songs she learns in her music lessons help her to create a world of make-believe. She is also influenced by the popular novels of her day. Emma would read any gothic or sentimental romance with eagerness, and she had \"a passion for the historical\" and an \"enthusiastic adoration for all illustrious or ill-fated women,\" such as Mary Queen of Scots, Joan of Arc, and Heloise. She also dreamed about sultans and other fanciful characters. When her mother died, Emma was at the convent. She wept for several days, had a lock of her mother's hair mounted on a memorial card, and expressed her wish to be buried in the same grave when she died. However, the pall of gloom soon lifted from Emma, and she found herself totally at peace, \"with no more sadness in her heart than wrinkles on her brow. \" The nuns were surprised at Emma's lack of devotion to religious matters. In truth, she had begun to openly rebel against the mysteries of the faith as she grew more irritated with the strict discipline, a thing repugnant to her nature.\" The sisters were relieved when Mr. Roualt finally took Emma away to manage his affairs at the farm. By the time she meets Charles, Emma is very tired of her life on the farm. She wants a more exciting life, filled with passion. Unfortunately, this is not what Charles offers her in their marriage.", "analysis": "Notes Discontented with her present married life, Emma begins to contemplate her past, hoping it will bring her comfort. As a child, she was naturally sharp and curious. Like many young girls of her time, Emma eagerly read the popular gothic novels and dreamed of living in the romantic past. She spent her adolescent years in a convent, where her romantic temperament became obvious; with true classical romanticism, she imaginatively looked to the remote past for inspiration and grew sentimental. She became fascinated with all the mystical and sensual images of the Catholic Church, such as the incense and the candlelight. She was also excited over the metaphor of Christ as the heavenly lover, for the image stirred the flames of passion in her. Individualism and freedom from restraint are major characteristics of Emma's romantic temperament. They surfaced in the convent when she refused to devote herself to her religious studies; as a result, the nuns were glad when Roualt took the difficult girl away. Her rebellious nature is further revealed by her glorification of \"illustrious or ill-fated women.\" Her role models, all of whom paid a high price for their rebelliousness, are an indication of the path Emma will take. Whether society applauds her or not, she does not care. She will allow herself to be just as headstrong and impetuous as her historical role models. Emma also allows herself to be as sentimental as she chooses. Her mother's death fills her with 'excessive' grief. When this period passes, she finds herself trying to break free from the life of restraint in the convent. This yearning is symbolic of her actual breaking away from the social conventions of the age later in the novel. Emma yearns for excitement in life; the normal routine fails to rouse her spirits. As her memories reveal, she constantly needs mental distractions. It is a compulsive trait that Flaubert unfolds gradually during the course of the novel. This chapter reveals that nothing can hold Emma's interest for long. She applies her energies to one thing, abandons it, and begins something new. Although she was a devoted student at the convent in the beginning, she quickly tired of the routine. In a similar manner, she quickly grows tired of tending her father's farm and being married to Charles. This inability to maintain a long-term interest will be developed throughout the novel. Much of what has been learned about Emma has come through her own thoughts. Even though this is not a novel about the psychological aspect of consciousness, Flaubert will continue to delve into Emma's psyche to see what thoughts lie behind her actions."}

She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, 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. Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil. When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness. In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the "Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs. Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV. In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts. She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about. And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards. When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow. The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community. Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel. But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.

Chapter 6

https://web.archive.org/web/20180820035130/http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmMadameBovary15.asp

In this chapter, Emma relives her past. When she was thirteen, her father put her in a convent. At first she "enjoyed the society of the nuns" and even liked answering the curate's harder questions in catechism. Gradually, however, she found herself responding more and more to the physical beauty of the place, rather than the spiritual and religious. She was fascinated with "the perfumes of the attar, the coolness of the holy-water fonts and the radiance of the tapers," all romantic images for her. In fact, "the metaphors of betrothed, spouse, heavenly lover, marriage everlasting, that recur in sermons, awoke in the depths of her soul an unlooked-for delight." Emma's already dreamy disposition is further developed when she is exposed to romantic ballads. The songs she learns in her music lessons help her to create a world of make-believe. She is also influenced by the popular novels of her day. Emma would read any gothic or sentimental romance with eagerness, and she had "a passion for the historical" and an "enthusiastic adoration for all illustrious or ill-fated women," such as Mary Queen of Scots, Joan of Arc, and Heloise. She also dreamed about sultans and other fanciful characters. When her mother died, Emma was at the convent. She wept for several days, had a lock of her mother's hair mounted on a memorial card, and expressed her wish to be buried in the same grave when she died. However, the pall of gloom soon lifted from Emma, and she found herself totally at peace, "with no more sadness in her heart than wrinkles on her brow. " The nuns were surprised at Emma's lack of devotion to religious matters. In truth, she had begun to openly rebel against the mysteries of the faith as she grew more irritated with the strict discipline, a thing repugnant to her nature." The sisters were relieved when Mr. Roualt finally took Emma away to manage his affairs at the farm. By the time she meets Charles, Emma is very tired of her life on the farm. She wants a more exciting life, filled with passion. Unfortunately, this is not what Charles offers her in their marriage.

Notes Discontented with her present married life, Emma begins to contemplate her past, hoping it will bring her comfort. As a child, she was naturally sharp and curious. Like many young girls of her time, Emma eagerly read the popular gothic novels and dreamed of living in the romantic past. She spent her adolescent years in a convent, where her romantic temperament became obvious; with true classical romanticism, she imaginatively looked to the remote past for inspiration and grew sentimental. She became fascinated with all the mystical and sensual images of the Catholic Church, such as the incense and the candlelight. She was also excited over the metaphor of Christ as the heavenly lover, for the image stirred the flames of passion in her. Individualism and freedom from restraint are major characteristics of Emma's romantic temperament. They surfaced in the convent when she refused to devote herself to her religious studies; as a result, the nuns were glad when Roualt took the difficult girl away. Her rebellious nature is further revealed by her glorification of "illustrious or ill-fated women." Her role models, all of whom paid a high price for their rebelliousness, are an indication of the path Emma will take. Whether society applauds her or not, she does not care. She will allow herself to be just as headstrong and impetuous as her historical role models. Emma also allows herself to be as sentimental as she chooses. Her mother's death fills her with 'excessive' grief. When this period passes, she finds herself trying to break free from the life of restraint in the convent. This yearning is symbolic of her actual breaking away from the social conventions of the age later in the novel. Emma yearns for excitement in life; the normal routine fails to rouse her spirits. As her memories reveal, she constantly needs mental distractions. It is a compulsive trait that Flaubert unfolds gradually during the course of the novel. This chapter reveals that nothing can hold Emma's interest for long. She applies her energies to one thing, abandons it, and begins something new. Although she was a devoted student at the convent in the beginning, she quickly tired of the routine. In a similar manner, she quickly grows tired of tending her father's farm and being married to Charles. This inability to maintain a long-term interest will be developed throughout the novel. Much of what has been learned about Emma has come through her own thoughts. Even though this is not a novel about the psychological aspect of consciousness, Flaubert will continue to delve into Emma's psyche to see what thoughts lie behind her actions.