The bill is paid; Pull yourself together; Advantages of independence; A visit to Emma; What will become of her?; Father and daughter; The opened shutter; Preparations for marriage.

One morning Pere Rouault came to pay Charles for setting his broken leg: seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard of his loss and consoled him as best he could.

'I know what it is,' said he, clapping him on the shoulder. 'I've been through the same thing myself. When I lost my poor wife I went wandering about the fields in order to be alone. I chucked myself down under a tree, called on God to hear me and told Him all kinds of silly things. I wished I had been like the moles that I saw on the branches with maggots swarming in their bellies- I wished myself dead, in a word. And when I thought that other men, at that very moment, had nice little wives to cuddle, I began to bang at the ground with my stick. I was nearly mad, and went right off my food. The very thought of going into a cafe turned me sick. You wouldn't believe. Well, slowly and surely, as one day sent another day packing, spring following on winter and autumn on summer, it began to ebb away bit by bit, crumb by crumb. It went, it departed- it went under, I should say, for you've always got something of it deep down inside, a weight on your chest, as you might say. But because we've all got to face it, there's no call for a man to fret himself into the grave before his time or to want to die himself, because other folks be dead. Pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary; you'll get over it. Come and see us; my daughter thinks a deal about you, you know, and she says you would forget things that way. Spring will soon be here. Come and knock over a rabbit or two in our warrens; it will be a change for you.'

Charles took his advice. He revisited les Bertaux, and found everything there just the same as last time, that is to say just as it was five months previously. The pear trees were already in bloom, and Farmer Rouault, now firmly established on his legs again, was always in and out, and that made things more lively.

Deeming that it behoved him to lavish every possible attention on the doctor, in view of the bereavement he had sustained, he begged him not to remove his hat, spoke to him in a subdued voice as though he were talking to an invalid, and went the length of pretending to be annoyed that they had not got some special delicacy for him such as a little jug or two of cream, or some stewed pears. He told him a few stories; Charles was surprised to find himself laughing; but suddenly he would remember his wife and grow grave again. Then the coffee came in, and he thought about her no more.

He thought of her less and less as he got used to living alone. The unaccustomed sweets of independence soon made his solitude more bearable. He was free now to have his meals when he liked, he could go out and come in without having to give explanations, and when he was very tired he could stretch out his arms and legs in bed as far as he liked. And then he pampered himself, indulged in self-pity, and let people console him to the top of their bent. Moreover his wife's death had been rather an advantage to him professionally, because, for a whole month, people had said nothing else but 'Poor young fellow! What a dreadful blow for him!' So his name had got about and his practice had increased; and then again, he could go to les Bertaux just when he thought he would. He was vaguely optimistic and indefinably happy; and surveying himself in the glass as he brushed his whiskers, he thought he had got better looking.

He arrived at the farm one day about three o'clock; everyone was out in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not see Emma at first; the jalousies were closed. Through the slits in the wood, the sunlight fell on the flagstones in long, slender rays, which were broken into various angles by the furniture, and shone tremulously on the ceiling. Flies on the table crawled up the glasses that had not been cleared away and buzzed as they fell drowning in the dregs of the cider. The daylight which shone down the chimney imparted a velvety look to the soot in the fireplace and gave a bluish tinge to the cold ashes. Between the window and the hearth sat Emma at her needlework. She had no scarf about her neck, and tiny drops of perspiration were visible on her shoulders.

Like all country people, she asked him to have something to drink. He said no, but she pressed him, and at last, with a laugh, invited him to take a glass of liqueur with her. She went to the cupboard and brought out a bottle of curacoa, reached down two small glasses, filled one up to the brim, poured two or three drops into the other and, clinking it with the doctor's, put it to her lips. As it was nearly empty, she leaned back to drink, and with her head flung back, her lips pouted and her neck thrust forward she began to laugh because she could not taste anything, and at the same time, the tip of her tongue, peeping out between her dainty teeth, made little darts at the bottom of the glass.

Then she sat down and took up her work again- a white cotton stocking which she was darning. She worked with her head bent forward. She did not talk, nor did Charles. The breeze stealing in under the door blew a little dust along the stone floor. He watched it as it eddied about, and the only sound he could hear was a buzzing in his head and the cackling of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard outside. From time to time Emma would freshen her cheeks with the palms of her hands, which she cooled again by laying them on the knob of the great andirons.

She had been complaining ever since the spring began of fits of deafness; she wondered whether sea-bathing would do her any good. She began to talk about her convent, and Charles about his college days; the words began to flow. They went upstairs to her room. She showed him her old music-books, the little volumes she had had given her as prizes, and the oak-leaf crowns lying neglected on the floor of a cupboard. And she went on to speak of her mother, of the cemetery, and even pointed out the bed in the garden where she gathered flowers the first Friday in every month, to lay on her mother's grave. But the gardener they had now didn't know his work; servants were so unsatisfactory. She would have liked to live in town, at all events during the winter months, although perhaps the long days made the country still more boring in the summer; and according to the kind of thing she was saying, her voice would be clear, shrill, or, suddenly sinking into languor, linger in modulations which ended almost in a whisper, as if she were speaking to herself- now joyfully, with wide-open, innocent eyes, now with lids half-closed, and a look of boredom, as her thoughts wandered aimlessly.

That night, as he was riding home, Charles recalled, one by one, the various things she had said, trying to remember them exactly, to discover their implications, so as to give himself an idea of the sort of existence that had been hers in the times before he knew her. But he was never able to visualize her in his thoughts as any different from what she was when he saw her for the first time, or, just now, when he had left her. Then he began to wonder what she would grow like if she married- and whom she would marry. Alas! old Rouault was very well off, and she herself... so beautiful! But Emma's countenance would persist in coming back before his eyes, and a monotonous something, like the buzzing of a gnat, kept sounding in his ears: 'Suppose you got married; suppose you got married'. That night he could not sleep: something seemed to grip his throat, he felt thirsty. He got up, took a drink from the water-jug and opened his window. The sky was filled with stars, a warm breeze was blowing, and a long way off, some dogs were barking. He turned his head towards les Bertaux.

Thinking that, after all, he had nothing to lose by it, Charles made up his mind to take the fatal step when occasion offered. But every time occasion did offer, the fear of being unable to express himself suitably, sealed his lips.

Farmer Rouault would not in the least have minded getting his daughter off his hands, for she was very little use in the house. Inwardly he made excuses for her, telling himself that she had too much brains for farming, a calling on which a curse must rest, since no one ever met a farmer who was really rich. So far from making a fortune, the worthy man made a loss every year, for, if he excelled in doing a deal, where he was up in all the tricks of the trade, for farming in the strict sense of the word, and the internal management of the place, you couldn't have found a man more thoroughly unsuited. He always had his hand in his pocket, and spared no expense in the matter of living, for he liked good food, a good fire and a good bed. His tastes ran to rich cider, underdone legs of mutton, coffee with a generous 'dash'. He always took his meals alone, in the kitchen, by the fire, on a little table that was brought to him already laid, as they do on the stage.

When, therefore, he noticed that Charles's cheeks flushed when he was near his daughter, an indication that one of these days he would be asking to marry her, he pondered the whole matter over in his mind. He certainly thought him a little bit of a muff and not exactly the sort of fellow he would have chosen for a son-in-law; but he was said to be steady, thrifty and well educated, and doubtless he would not be too exacting about the dowry. And seeing that Farmer Rouault had been obliged to sell twenty-two acres of land, that he owed substantial sums to the mason and the harness-maker, and that the shaft of the cider-press was in need of repair, he concluded by saying to himself:

'If he asks me, I shall let him have her.'

At Michaelmas Charles came to spend three days at les Bertaux. The last of them had gone by like the other two, and he had put off speaking from one quarter of an hour to another. Farmer Rouault had come out to set him on his homeward way. They had reached a dip in the road and were about to say good-bye. It was now or never. Charles gave himself to the turn of the hedge, and at last, when they had passed it, he said, almost inaudibly:

'Maitre Rouault, I've something I want to say to you.'

They stopped short. Charles held his peace.

'Come now, out with it! What, d'you think I don't know what it's all about?' said the farmer, laughing quietly.

'Pere Rouault... pere Rouault...' stammered Charles.

'Why, for my part,' the farmer went on, 'there's nothing I should like better. But, though the little maid is no doubt of the same mind as I be, we must put the question to her, all the same. You go on, then; I'll go back to the farm. If it's "yes", you understand there'll be no need for you to come back, because of the people about. Besides, it would be too much of a shock for her. But to put your mind at rest, I'll push the shutter right back against the wall. You'll be able to see it from the back there, by leaning over the hedge.'

So saying, he took his departure.

Charles tied his horse to a tree. He hurried back to take up his position, and waited. Half an hour went by, then nineteen more minutes, which he timed by his watch. Suddenly something clattered against the wall. The shutter was right back and the catch still rattling.

Next day, by nine o'clock, he was at the farm. Emma blushed when he came in, trying to laugh a little, too, to carry it off. Farmer Rouault embraced his son-in-law elect. Then they began to talk about the arrangements. They had plenty of time before them, since the wedding could not take place with any decency till Charles was out of mourning, and that meant about the spring of the following year.

They went through the winter with this plan in view. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered from Rouen; her night-dresses and night-caps she made herself, from patterns lent her by friends. Whenever Charles visited the farm, the wedding was the one topic of conversation. They discussed in what room they should have the wedding breakfast; they wondered how many plates would be wanted and what eatables they should have.

Emma, for her part, would have liked a torchlight wedding; but Farmer Rouault couldn't understand that at all. So they had a great party where they sat down forty-three to table and remained there sixteen hours, a party which started again next day, and went on, more or less, for several days following.

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