The widower; Funeral instructions; Philosophy and belief; Watching by the body; A lock of hair; The coffin is closed.

DEATH always brings with it a kind of stupefaction, so difficult is it for the human mind to realize and resign itself to the blank and utter nothingness. Yet when, at length, he saw her lying there so still, Charles flung himself upon her, crying piteously,

'Good-bye! Good-bye!'

Homais and Canivet led him from the room.

'There, try and be calm!'

'Yes,' he said, endeavouring to disengage himself, 'I'll be sensible, I won't do any harm. But leave me! I must see her! She is my wife!'

And he began to cry.

'That's right, weep on,' said the chemist. 'Let Nature have her way. You'll feel easier!'

Weaker, now, than a little child, Charles suffered himself to be led downstairs into the dining-room, and, soon after, Monsieur Homais took his departure.

As he was crossing the market-place he was accosted by the blind beggar, who had dragged himself all the way to Yonville in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic ointment, asking everyone he met where the chemist lived.

'Oh, good Lord! as if I had nothing else to see to! Well, well, it's hard luck; but come again later on.'

With these words he dashed into his shop.

He had two letters to write, a sleeping draught to make up for Bovary, some sort of tale to invent to hide the truth about the poisoning, and then to serve it up in an article for the 'Rouen Beacon', to say nothing of all the people who were hanging about to see what news they could extract from him. When all the town had heard him tell how she had mistaken arsenic for sugar when making a vanilla blanc-mange, Homais again went back to the doctor's.

He found him all by himself (Monsieur Canivet had just gone), sitting in an arm-chair near the window, and staring blankly at the stone floor.

'Now,' said the chemist, 'you'll have to settle about the ceremony.'

'How do you mean? What ceremony?'

Then, in a frightened voice, he stammered out,

'Oh, no, I tell you! No! I want to keep her!'

Homais, by way of a diversion, picked up a jug that was on the dinner-wagon and began watering the geraniums.

'Oh, thanks!' said Charles. 'That is good of you...'

And he could go no further- all the memories this action of the chemist's conjured up before him, choked his utterance.

Then, to take his mind off things, Homais deemed it becoming to talk about gardening a little. Plants, he observed, wanted a lot of water. Charles bowed his head in sign of assent.

'Summer'll soon be here again now.'

'Ah!' said Bovary.

The apothecary, having exhausted his stock of ideas, made a little opening in the small curtains of the window.

'Why,' he said, 'there's Monsieur Tuvache going along!'

And Charles said after him, like a machine,

'Monsieur Tuvache going along.'

Homais dared not ask him any more about the funeral arrangements. It was the priest that got him to make up his mind.

He shut himself up in his little room, took a pen, and after sobbing for some time, wrote:

'I wish her to he buried in her wedding dress, with white shoes and a wreath. I want her hair to be spread out over her shoulders. There are to be three coffins, one oak, one mahogany and one lead. I don't want people to speak to me. I shall bear up. A large piece of green velvet is to be laid over all. These are my wishes. See that they are carried out.'

The gentlemen were surprised at Bovary's romantic ideas, and the chemist promptly went off and spoke to him on the matter.

'It seems to me,' he said, 'that that velvet is somewhat supererogatory; besides...'

'What's it to do with you?' shouted Charles. 'Leave me alone! You did not love her! Out of my sight!'

The priest took him by the arm and made him come for a turn in the garden. He held forth on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great and very good. We must submit to His decrees without repining- nay, we should be thankful to Him!

Charles broke forth into blasphemy,

'I loathe and detest your God!' he shouted.

'The spirit of rebelliousness is still in you,' said the ecclesiastic, with a sigh.

But Bovary was out of hearing. He was pacing with long strides beside the wall, near the espalier, grinding his teeth and breathing curses at heaven. Yet not so much as a leaf stirred in answer to his imprecations.

A misty rain was falling. Charles, whose chest was all uncovered, at length began to shiver. He went indoors and sat down in the kitchen.

At six o'clock there was a rattle of old iron in the market-square. It was the 'Hirondelle' arriving; and he sat with his forehead against the window-pane watching the passengers alight one after another. Felicite put down a mattress for him in the drawing-room. He threw himself on it and slept.

Monsieur Homais was a philosopher, but he respected the dead, so, without harbouring any resentment towards poor Charles, he came back again at night to sit up with the body, bringing with him three volumes and a writing-case, in order to take some notes.

Monsieur Bournisien was already there, and two tall tapers were burning at the head of the bed, which had been pulled out from the recess.

The apothecary, finding the silence a little irksome, soon began to utter some laments concerning the fate of 'this unhappy young woman', whereon the priest replied that there was nothing to do now but to pray for her.

'Look here!' answered Homais, 'you can't have it both ways. Either she died in a state of grace (as the Church puts it), in which case she doesn't need our prayers; or else she died impenitent (I think that is the ecclesiastical expression), in which...'

Bournisien interrupted him, saying sharply that they had got to pray for her just the same.

'But,' argued Homais, 'since God knows all our needs, what's the use of prayer?'

'What!' exclaimed the ecclesiastic. 'Prayer? Aren't you a Christian, then?'

'Pardon me!' said Homais. 'I admire Christianity. To begin with, it did away with slavery, and set up a system of morality in the world...'

'That's not the point. All the texts...'

'Oh, good Lord; the texts! You look up your history; everyone knows they were faked by the Jesuits.'

Charles came in, and going up to the bed gently drew aside the curtains.

Emma was lying with her head leaning over her right shoulder. The corner of her mouth, which was open, gave the impression of a black hole at the bottom of her face; her two thumbs were still clenched in the palms of her hands; a sort of white dust had settled on her eyelids, and the eyes themselves seemed to be disappearing in a viscous pallor like a thin gauze, as if spiders had spun a web over them. The sheet that covered her lay quite flat from her breasts down to her knees, rising up again at the tips of her toes; and it seemed to Charles as though infinite masses, an enormous weight, were pressing her down.

The church clock struck two. You could hear the murmur of the river quite plainly as it rippled along in the darkness at the bottom of the garden wall. From time to time Monsieur Bournisien would blow his nose loudly, and Homais's quill pen kept squeaking along on the paper.

'Come, my dear friend, go and get some rest. This is a heart-rending sight for you to see.'

As soon as Charles was out of the room, the chemist and the 'cure' resumed their argument.

'Read Voltaire,' said the one; 'read Holbach; read the 'Encyclopaedia!''

'Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews',' said the other; 'read 'Reasons for being a Christian' by Nicolas, a retired magistrate.'

They were getting heated, their faces were flushed, they were both speaking at once, neither listening to the other. Bournisien was scandalized at such audacity; Homais was amazed at such stupidity. They were on the verge of hurling insults at each other, when suddenly Charles reappeared on the scene. A fascination seemed to draw him thither. He could not stay downstairs.

He placed himself in front of her, so as to see her the better, and there he remained, lost in a contemplation that was now too deep for pain. He thought of all the stories he had heard about catalepsy and the wonders of magnetism; he told himself that, by an extraordinary effort of will, he might perhaps succeed in bringing her back to life again. Once he actually bent over her and called to her softly, 'Emma! Emma!' And he breathed so hard that the flame of the tapers flickered against the wall.

The first thing in the morning, Madame Bovary, senior, arrived. Charles, as he kissed her, again broke down and wept. She endeavoured, like the chemist, to expostulate with him about the funeral expenses. He flew into such a rage that she held her peace. Nay, more, he commissioned her to go off to Rouen there and then to purchase what was necessary.

Charles stayed by himself all the afternoon. Berthe had been taken over to Madame Homais's. Felicite kept upstairs in the bedroom, with Mere Lefrancois.

In the evening various people came in to condole with him. He would stand up and shake hands, but he could not say anything, and each newcomer would sit with the rest of the party, who were grouped in a big circle round the fireplace. With downcast eyes, one leg over the other, they swung their feet to and fro, sighing deeply at intervals. Though everyone was intolerably bored, no one got up to go, there being a sort of contest as to who should stay the longest.

Homais, when he came back at nine (for two days past you had seen no one but Homais, going or coming, every time you looked out of the window), was loaded up with a stock of camphor, benzoin and aromatic herbs. He also brought along a jar of disinfectant to keep the air sweet. Just at this juncture, the servant, Madame Lefrancois and Madame Bovary, senior, were hovering round Emma, busily putting the finishing touches to their task of dressing her, and they drew down the long, stiff veil that covered her to her satin shoes.

'Oh, my poor mistress!' sobbed Felicite, 'my poor, poor mistress!'

'Just look at her!' said the landlady with a sigh. 'What a darling she looks even now! Why, you'd swear she'd be getting up and coming downstairs again by and by.'

Then they all bent over to put on her wreath.

They were obliged to lift her head a little, and as they did so a stream of black liquid poured from her mouth, as though she were being sick.

'Oh, my God! the dress! take care!' cried Madame Lefrancois. 'Lend a hand, can't you?' she said to the chemist. 'You're not afraid, are you, man?'

'Me, afraid?' he answered, shrugging his shoulders. 'You bet I am! Why, I saw any number of them at the Hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We students used to brew punch in the dissecting-room. Death has no terrors for a philosopher, and, as I've said many and many a time, I intend to leave my body to the hospitals, to be used in the cause of Science.'

The 'cure', when he came back, inquired how the doctor was bearing up. And when he heard the apothecary's answer he said,

'Well, you see, the shock is still too recent.'

Whereupon Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like the ordinary run of men, to the sorrow of losing a beloved companion; and that gave rise to an argument about the celibacy of the clergy.

'You see,' said the chemist, 'it's against Nature for a man to do without women. Why, there have been crimes...'

'But, sakes alive, man!' exclaimed the ecclesiastic, 'how do you expect a man involved in matrimony to keep the secret of the confessional?'

Homais attacked confession; Bournisien defended it. He enlarged on the restitutions that were brought about by its means. He narrated several stories of thieves who had suddenly turned honest men. Military men, approaching the tribunal of penitence, had felt the scales fall from their eyes. Why, there was a minister at Fribourg...

His companion had dropped off to sleep. Then, finding the atmosphere of the room rather too stuffy to be comfortable, the Abbe opened the window. The sound awakened the chemist.

'Here!' said the 'cure', 'have a pinch of snuff! Go on, man! It's good for you! It clears the head.'

Somewhere, in the distance, a dog was barking incessantly.

'Do you hear that dog howling?' said the chemist.

'People say they scent the dead,' replied the ecclesiastic. 'It's the same with bees. They all fly out of the hive when there's a death.'

Homais did not criticize these superstitions, because he had again dropped off into a doze.

Monsieur Bournisien, having more stamina, continued for some time moving his lips in a scarcely audible murmur; then, insensibly, he too let his chin drop, his big black book fell to the ground, and he began to snore.

There they were, face to face, their stomachs well out, looking puffy and morose, finding themselves, after all their disagreements, both conquered by the same weakness of the flesh. They were not less motionless than the corpse beside them, that looked as if it, too, were sleeping. When Charles came in they did not wake. It was the last time. He had come to say good-bye.

The aromatic herbs were still smouldering, and eddies of bluish vapour were mingling, near the window, with the mist that came stealing in. A few stars were shining overhead, and the night air was soft.

Drops of candle grease were falling like big tears on the bed-clothes. Charles looked at the burning tapers till his eyes grew tired in the brightness of their yellow flame.

Little shifting gleams of iridescent light played on Emma's satin robe, that shone white as moonlight. She seemed all but hidden beneath it, but it somehow seemed to him as if she were rising up and floating far and wide, merging confusedly in everything round about- in the silence, in the night, in the winds that went wandering by, in the moist odours that were rising from the earth.

Then, all of a sudden, he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on the seat, against the hedge of thorn, or at Rouen, or in the street, on the threshold of their house, in the yard at les Bertaux. He could still hear the merry laughter of the lads as they footed it beneath the apple-trees. The room was full of the scent of her hair, and her dress shivered with a sound like sparks crackling, when he put his arm round her. It was the same dress, that one, there!

He stood like this for a long time, trying to recall those vanished delights- the way she stood, the way she moved her hands, the tone of her voice. After one heart-breaking memory came another, and another, in an inexhaustible flood, like an onflowing tide.

Then a terrible curiosity came upon him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers, and with beating heart, he lifted the veil. He shrieked with horror. The sleepers awoke. They led him downstairs into the dining-room.

Then Felicite came in to say that he wanted a piece of her hair.

'Cut some off,' answered the apothecary.

And as she had not the courage, he went over himself, scissors in hand. But he was so shaky that he pricked her forehead in several places. At length, pulling himself together, Homais lopped off two or three big pieces at random, making bald patches in her beautiful dark hair.

The chemist and the 'cure' plunged once more into their respective occupations, dropping off to sleep every now and then, a dereliction of which they mutually accused themselves at each successive awakening. Then Monsieur Bournisien sprinkled the room with holy-water and Homais threw a little disinfectant on the floor.

Felicite had been careful to put a bottle of brandy, some cheese and a large milk-roll for them on the chest of drawers. And about four o'clock in the morning the apothecary, unable to hold out any longer, exclaimed, ''Ma foi', I would gladly ingest a little nourishment'.

The ecclesiastic wasn't the man to say no. He went out to say his Mass and came back. After which they fell to with a will, guzzling and drinking, and giggling a little- they didn't know why- excited by that vague sensation of cheerfulness that comes upon one after prolonged periods of strain.

As he was about to drink off the last tot, the priest said to the chemist, as he clapped him on the shoulder,

'We shall come to understand each other, one of these days.'

Downstairs in the hall they met the undertaker's men coming in. And then for two hours Charles had to endure the torture of hearing the sound of the hammer on the wood. At length they brought her downstairs in her oaken coffin, which they enclosed in the other two. But as the bier was too wide they had to fill up the interspace with wool from a mattress. Finally, when the three lids were planed smooth, nailed down and soldered, they carried her to the door; the house was thrown open, and all the inhabitants of Yonville crowded to the spot. Farmer Rouault arrived, and fell unconscious in the market-place when he saw the funeral hangings.

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