Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Madame Bovarywrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of thepopulation, the distance from the nearest doctor, what hispredecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answerbeing satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards thespring, if Emma’s health did not improve.One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying adrawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of herwedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow withdust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges.She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than drystraw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured.She watched it burn.The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the goldlace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering likeblack butterflies at the back of the stove, at least flew up thechimney.When they left Tostes at the month of March, MadameBovary was pregnant.Part IIChapter OneYONVILLE-L’ABBAYE (so called from an old Capuchin abbey ofwhich not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twentyfourmiles from Rouen, between the Abbeville and Beauvaisroads, at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule, a littleriver that runs into the Andelle after turning three water-millsnear its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amusethemselves by fishing for on Sundays.We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight onto the top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. Theriver that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regionswith distinct physiognomies—all on the left is pasture land,all of the right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge oflow hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the Braycountry, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising,broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields.The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a whiteline the colour of the roads and of the plains, and the country60