Monsieur Rouault receives the news; Husband and father; The funeral service; At the graveside; Back at home; Charles's mother; A lonely mourner.

HE did not receive the chemist's letter until thirty-six hours after the event. And in order to soften the blow, Monsieur Homais had written in such vague terms that it was impossible to get any clear idea as to how the matter really stood.

When he read the letter for the first time, the poor old man fell down as though he were in an apoplectic fit. Then he read it that she wasn't dead. And yet she might be. At last he slipped on his blouse, picked up his hat, buckled a spur on one of his shoes, and started off as hard as he could go. All the way along, gasping and panting, the old man's heart was torn with anguish. Once, indeed, he had to get down; there was no help for it. He couldn't see where he was going; he heard voices round him. He felt as if he were going mad.

Day broke. He saw three black hens roosting in a tree. He shuddered with terror at this evil omen. It was then that he promised the Blessed Virgin three chasubles for the Church, and vowed he would walk barefoot from the churchyard at les Bertaux to the chapel at Vassonville.

He rode into Maromme shouting to the people at the inn, burst the stable door open with his shoulder, made a rush for the corn bin, emptied a bottle of cider into the manger, remounted his hack and tore on, the sparks flying from its four feet.

He told himself they would pull her through right enough. The doctors would find a way; no doubt about that. He called to mind all the accounts he had heard of miraculous cures.

Then he seemed to see her dead. There she was, stretched out before him, on her back, in the middle of the road. He would give a tug at the bridle, and the hallucination would disappear.

When he got to Quincampoix, he drank off three coffees one after another, to keep his heart up.

He remembered that the name had been written down wrong, and felt for the letter in his pocket. It was there all right, but he could not bring himself to look at it.

It even came into his mind that someone was fooling him, taking a rise out of him for some reason or other. Besides, if she were dead, it would somehow be brought home to him. But no, the country presented its wonted appearance: the sky was blue, the trees were waving, a flock of sheep passed by. He came in sight of the village. They saw him coming along at full speed, his head well down, lashing furiously at his beast, whose flanks were dripping with blood.

When he came to, he fell weeping into Bovary's arms.

'My little girl! Emma! My child! How, tell me how it...'

And Charles, choking with sobs, answered,

'I don't know! I don't know! It's some curse that's on us!'

The apothecary intervened.

'It's no use going into these horrible details. I'll tell your father-in-law about it. Here are some people coming. Pull yourselves together! Come, where's your philosophy?'

Charles, poor fellow, tried to show a brave front, and kept saying to himself,

'Yes, yes; must bear up! must bear up!'

'Ay, and by God, I will bear up- that I will, and go along with her to the very end,' cried the old man.

The bell began to toll. Everything was ready. It was time to be making a start.

In one of the choir stalls, sitting side by side, they watched the three cantors passing and repassing in front of them, intoning the chants. The organ was playing full blast. Monsieur Bournisien, elaborately vested, was chanting in a shrill voice. He bowed to the tabernacle, raised his hands and spread out his arms. Lestiboudois was moving about the church with his verger's wand.

Near the reading-desk rested the bier, between four rows of tapers. Charles felt as if he would like to get up and put them out.

He endeavoured, however, to bring himself into a devotional frame of mind, to buoy himself up with the hope of a future life, in which he would see her again. He tried to imagine that she had set forth on a journey, a journey to a distant land, and that she had been gone a long time. But when he remembered that she was there, underneath that pall, his heart was filled with black, despairing rage. Sometimes it seemed to him as if he had lost the faculty of feeling, and he derived comfort from this mitigation of his grief, even though it made him feel ashamed of himself.

The church now resounded with a noise like a stick with an iron ferrule tap-tapping on the stone flags. The sound came from the back of the church and stopped short in one of the aisles. A man in a big brown jacket got down painfully on to his knees. It was Hippolyte, the ostler at the 'Lion d'Or'. He was wearing his new leg.

One of the choirmen came down from the chancel to take the collection, and one by one the coppers clattered into the silver plate.

'Make haste, can't you? This is agony for me!' exclaimed Bovary angrily, throwing him a five-franc piece.

The choirman thanked him with a low bow.

They sang, they went down on their knees, they got up again there seemed to be no end to it all. He remembered how once, in the early days, they had attended Mass together. They had sat on the other side, on the right, against the wall. The bell began again. There was a great scraping of chairs. The bearers slipped their three staves under the bier and the congregation filed out of the church.

Just then Justin appeared in the doorway of the chemist's shop. He turned and went in again at once, with white face and faltering steps.

People were standing at the windows to see the funeral go by. Charles walked in front, holding himself very erect. He was trying to look brave, and as the people came forth from the doors and alleyways to take their stand with the crowd, he gave them a nod of recognition. The six bearers, three a side, went stumping along with little, short steps, puffing and panting a little. The priests, the cantors and the two choir-boys recited the 'De Profundis', and their voices were borne away over the fields, rising and falling in murmuring undulations of sound. Sometimes a sudden turn in the pathway hid them from sight, but always the great silver cross rose high amid the trees. The women followed, clad in black capes with drawn hoods, and each in her hand carried a tall lighted taper. Charles began to feel that all these everlasting prayers and tapers, tapers and prayers were going to be too much for him, that he could not bear much longer the sickly odour of cassocks and burning candles. There was a fresh breeze blowing, the fields of rye and colza were green and flourishing, drops of diamond dew hung glistening on the thorn hedge that fringed the path. Far and wide the air was filled with gladness: the far-off click-clack of a wagon trundling along in the ruts, the sound of a cock crowing, or the scamper of a colt galloping off in great alarm beneath the apple-trees. The limpid sky was flecked with clouds of rose, and a bluish light lingered on the thatched roofs covered with iris. Charles recognized every garden as he passed, and remembered how often, on just such a morning as this, he had come away from one or other of them, and set out for home and Emma.

The black pall with its silver tears blew up from time to time and showed the bier; the bearers were tired and walked more slowly; but still, on and on it went, with little jerky movements like a boat in a choppy sea pitching at every wave.

They reached their journey's end.

The bearers held on their way till they came to where a pit had been dug in the grass.

The people stood around, and all the time the priest was speaking, the red earth that had been cast up round the sides trickled down at the corners, noiselessly, unceasingly.

Then, when the four ropes were in position, they pushed the coffin across them and lowered it into the grave. He watched it descend, down and down and down. At last there was a dull thud, then a grating noise, and the ropes were hauled up again. The Abbe Bournisien took the spade held out to him by Lestiboudois. With his left hand- still sprinkling holy-water with his right- he vigorously thrust over a big shovelful of earth. And the crash of the stones on the wood of the coffin gave forth that dreadful sound that seems to fall upon the ear like an echo of eternity.

The priest handed the holy-water sprinkler to his neighbour. It was Monsieur Homais. He shook it gravely and then passed it on to Charles who sank down on his knees on the soil, throwing it down in handfuls and crying, 'Adieu!' He kept sending her kisses, and dragged himself towards the grave to cast himself in and abide with her.

They led him away; and he soon grew calm again, conscious, perhaps, like all the others, of a vague sense of relief that it was all over now, and done with.

Farmer Rouault, on the way back, puffed calmly at his pipe; a proceeding which, in his own mind, Homais condemned as highly indecorous. He further remarked that Monsieur Binet had abstained from appearing, that Tuvache had bolted after the Mass, and that Theodore, the notary's manservant, was wearing a blue coat, 'just as if a man couldn't get hold of a black one, seeing, damme, that it's the custom!' And to communicate these views of his he passed along from group to group. They spoke of Emma's death, and said what a dreadful thing it was, especially Lheureux, who had not omitted to come to the funeral.

'Poor little lady! What a terrible grief for her husband!'

'I can tell you what; if it hadn't been for me he would have done something dreadful to himself!'

'Such a nice, friendly little body she was, too. Why, it was only last Saturday I saw her in my shop!'

'I should have liked to say a few words over the grave, but I've had no time to prepare anything.'

When he got home Charles changed his things and Farmer Rouault slipped on his blue blouse. It was a new one, and as he had frequently wiped his eyes with the sleeve of it, riding along, the dye had come off on his face. You could see where the tears had been, by the streaks in the dust with which his face was covered.

Madame Bovary, senior, was with them. They all three sat without a word. At last the old farmer broke silence.

'You remember, once when I came to Tostes, you had just lost your first wife. I comforted you, back along in those days. The words came then, right enough, but now... Ah, well,' he groaned, with a deep sigh that shook his whole frame, ''tis the wind-up for me, I tell 'e. I've seen my wife go, and, after her, my boy... and now, today, 'tis the girl!'

He insisted on going straight back to les Bertaux, saying that he couldn't sleep in that house, there. He wouldn't even see his little grandchild.

'No, no! I couldn't bear the pain of it. But, there, you'll give her a good kiss for me. Good-bye to 'e, then. You'm a good lad,' and, slapping his thigh, 'I shan't forget that leg, not as long as I live; you'll always get your turkey, never you fear.'

But when he reached the top of the hill he turned again, just as, years ago, he had turned and looked back along the Saint Victor road, when she left him to go with her husband. The windows in the village were all on fire in the slanting rays of the sun that was sinking down behind the meadow. He put up his hand to shade his eyes, and far away, on the horizon, he descried a space enclosed with walls, with trees making dark clusters here and there amid the white stones. Then he went on his way, riding gently, because his horse was lame.

Charles and his mother, despite their weariness, sat up talking very late. They spoke of days gone by, of the future. She would come and live at Yonville and keep house for him; they would be together always. She was tactful and soothing, inwardly rejoicing at recovering an affection which, for many a year past, had been slowly slipping from her. The clock struck midnight. The village was wrapped in its wonted silence. Charles was still awake, thinking of her.

Rodolphe, who, to pass the time away, had been out beating the coverts all day long, was sleeping soundly in his great house, and Leon, far away, was sleeping too.

But there was one other, at this time, who was not asleep.

On the grave, between the pine-trees, a boy was on his knees weeping; his breast, shaken with sobs, panted convulsively in the gloom, beneath the burden of a boundless grief, more tender than the moon and deeper than the night. Suddenly the gate creaked on its hinges. It was Lestiboudois come back to look for the spade he had left there a while ago. He recognized Justin clambering over the wall, and so learnt at last who the rascal was that pilfered his potatoes.

Related Articles

• 16 - Madame Bovary - Chapter 16 - Gustave Flaubert (1797-1835)
• 20 - Madame Bovary - Chapter 20 - Gustave Flaubert (1797-1835)
• Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
• 1-1 - Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
• 3 - The Country Doctor - Honre de Balzac