Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovarygrey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the “My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?”ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistlingThese were so polished that they reflected the grass. He of the lips.trampled on horses’s dung with them, one hand in the pocket But they were obliged to separate from each other becauseof his jacket and his straw hat on one side.of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them.“Besides,” added he, “when one lives in the country—” He was so overladen with them that one could only see the“It’s waste of time,” said Emma.tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched“That is true,” replied Rodolphe. “To think that not one of arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carryingthese people is capable of understanding even the cut of a the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to all thatcoat!”concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turningThen they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he noit crushed, the illusions lost there.longer knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who“And I too,” said Rodolphe, “am drifting into depression.” were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelt of incense,and they leant against the thick backs, stained with the“You!” she said in astonishment; “I thought you very lighthearted.”wax of candles, with a certain veneration.“Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe’s arm; he went on asknow how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and if speaking to himself—yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlighthave I not asked myself whether it were not better to had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found“Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if Ijoin those sleeping there!”someone! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which“Oh! and your friends?” she said. “You do not think of them.” I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!”120