Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubert“All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was nohave, no doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a longer a dog run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten inwretch suffering from a horrible facial wound. He importunes,persecutes one, and levies a regular tax on all travellers. lic, guided always by the love of progress and the hate ofthe parish, of which he did not immediately inform the pub-Are we still living in the monstrous times of the Middle Ages, priests. He instituted comparisons between the elementarywhen vagabonds were permitted to display in our public places and clerical schools to the detriment of the latter; called toleprosy and scrofulas they had brought back from the Crusades?”one hundred francs to the church, and denounced abuses, airedmind the massacre of St. Bartholomew a propos of a grant ofOr—new views. That was his phrase. Homais was digging and“In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to delving; he was becoming dangerous.our great towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism,and soon a book, a work was necessary to him. Then heSome are seen going about alone, and these are not, perhaps,the least dangerous. What are our ediles about?”composed “General Statistics of the Canton of Yonville, followedby Climatological Remarks.” The statistics drove himThen Homais invented anecdotes—“Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse—” to philosophy. He busied himself with great questions: theAnd then followed the story of an accident caused by the social problem: moralisation of the poorer classes, pisciculture,caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush atpresence of the blind man.He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he being a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked.was released. He began again, and Homais began again. It was He bought two chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.a struggle. Homais won it, for his foe was condemned to lifelongconfinement in an asylum.He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept293