Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame BovaryChapter Fourour(many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and bytheir sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress ofTHE GUESTS ARRIVED EARLY in carriages, in one-horse chaises, their first communion lengthened for the occasion were sometwo-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt,hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, andin which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were notnot to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlementurned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. Ac-from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, fromNormanville, and from Cany.cording to their different social positions they wore tail-coats,All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolentof family respectability, that only came out of the ward-between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sightof written to.robe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping inFrom time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jacketshedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-boundthe foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in theThey got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of whicharms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter’s hatchet. Some, toofashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of thebelts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a table), wore their best blouses—that is to say, with collars turnedpin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits andlike their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.24