Madame Bovary - Penn State University

Flaubertto confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were ing a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurdin themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to allthe Government, I’d have the priests bled once a month. Yes,Madame Lefrancois, every month—a good phlebotomy, in physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests havethe interests of the police and morals.”always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would“Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you’ve no fain engulf the people with them.”religion.”He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubblingover the chemist had for a moment fancied himself inThe chemist answered: “I have a religion, my religion, andI even have more than all these others with their mummeries the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longerand their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling. One couldthe Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clatteringlittle who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizensand fathers of families; but I don’t need to go to church the “Hirondelle” stopped at the door.of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at lastto kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching togood-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtiedknow Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplatingthe eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained heretheir shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattledGod of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I and there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, thatam for the profession of faith of the ‘Savoyard Vicar,’ and the not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. It wasimmortal principles of ’89! And I can’t admit of an old boy drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it cameof a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies utter-Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square;67