prompt:
Chapter: Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the
folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case.
She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odour of the lining--a
mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps
it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some
rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had
occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the
pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the
canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and
all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same
silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away
with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled
chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes;
he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague
name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it
rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes,
even on the labels of her pomade-pots.

At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts
singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the
iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon
deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to
herself.

And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing
villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the
end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into
which her dream died.

She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map
she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at
every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white
squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of
her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind
and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles
of theatres.

She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des
Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of
first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a
singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the
addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In
Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and
George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.
Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages
while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always
returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made
comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened
round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened
out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.

Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an
atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult
were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma
perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in
themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over
polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables
covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with
trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the
society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the
women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men,
unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to
death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards
the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,
where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the
motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as
kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence
outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of
storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it
was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. The nearer
things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them.
All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class
imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a
peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as
far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused
in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart,
elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like
Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs
by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all
the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be
separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence,
from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled
flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of precious
stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.

The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning
passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes
in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the
groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done,
he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put up
his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the
servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could
into the manger.

To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma
took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet
face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in
the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before
coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a
lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not
to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,
Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone
in her bed after she had said her prayers.

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.

Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that
showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with
three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and
her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell
over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case,
pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she
dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,
and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She
longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same
time to die and to live in Paris.

Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid
spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he
found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say
whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous
her chemise.

She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on
her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the
servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the
watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two
large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a
silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements
the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the
senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust
sanding all along the narrow path of his life.

He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established.

The country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the
children, never went to the public house, and, moreover, his morals
inspired confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest
complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact
only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath,
or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people
copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the
"devil's own wrist."

Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "La Ruche Medicale,"
a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little
after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to
the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin
on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the
lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was
not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their
books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism
sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat?
She could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been
illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the
newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition.

An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat
humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled
relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma
inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He
kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with
shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window
in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.

"What a man! What a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips.

Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his
manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles;
after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup
he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting
fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up
to the temples.

Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his
waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was
going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it
was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.
Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in
a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she
had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an
ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to
her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to
the pendulum of the clock.

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to
happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the
solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of
the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would
bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a
shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the
portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that
day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that
it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for
the morrow.

Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees
began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.

From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to
October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give
another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or
visits.

After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained
empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would
thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing
nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some
event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and
the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so!
The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.

She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?
Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking
with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel
the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while
boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery
she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing
irritated her. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she
sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.

How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull
attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over
some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the
highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and
the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away
over the fields.

But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the
peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along
in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six
men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door
of the inn.

The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with
rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass,
sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp
had to be lighted.

On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the
cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one
to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the
espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent
under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the
many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the
curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right
foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white
scabs on his face.

Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with
the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever.
She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of
shame restrained her.

Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened
the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre
over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by
three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the
bell of a public house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear
the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop
creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving
of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a
woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted
calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big
town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the
theatre--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church,
sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she
always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skullcap over
his ears and his vest of lasting.

Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room, the head of a
man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with
a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately
began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of
a finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock
coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas,
the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together
at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle,
looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again,
while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone,
with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his
shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music
escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under
a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at
the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted
lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless
sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the
flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream
to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers
in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ
on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going.

But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this
small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking
door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life
seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there
rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow
eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused
herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point
of her knife.

She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame
Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much
surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty,
now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and
burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since
they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that
Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth
of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow
her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that
mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she
had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good
woman did not interfere again.

Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself,
then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next
cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then,
stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had
well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see
neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her
purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible
to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always
retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal
hands.

Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself
brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes.
Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the
room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and
municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with
a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover she no
longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she
set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which
others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which
made her husband open his eyes widely.

Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet
she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen
duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she
execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls
to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent
pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these
must surely yield.

She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart.

Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried
only seemed to irritate her the more.

On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this
over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which
she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was
pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.

As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her
illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea,
began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.

From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and
completely lost her appetite.

It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and
"when he was beginning to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her
to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of
air was needed.

After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that
in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market town
called Yonville-l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a
week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the
number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what
his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being
satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's
health did not improve.

One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,
something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet.
The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin
ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared
up more quickly than dry straw. 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 gold
lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black
butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney.

When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant.

Part II

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: When Charles is out, Emma lovingly looks at the green silk cigar case and invents stories about its origins. She imagines that an adoring mistress gave it to the Viscount - she even imagines herself in the role of the mistress. Paris becomes a new obsession for Emma. She jealously looks at the fishmongers' carts on their way through the village, thinking about their journey to the capital city. She buys herself a map of Paris, and studies it endlessly, imagining herself there. In her passion for the metropolis, Emma attempts to cultivate herself by reading magazines about arts and culture. She learns all the details of fine Parisian life, and reads the novels of Honore de Balzac and George Sand . In these books, she finds more and more similarities between the Viscount of her imagination and the characters. To Emma, everything seems possible in Paris, a city of languid, beautifully-dressed women and extravagant, thrilling men. Everything else fades around her, and Emma lives completely in the fantastical world she constructs. Emma longs for luxurious boudoirs, lingering embraces, moonlit rendezvous. Instead, what she has is a number of awkward peasant servants in tattered clothes. To replace Nastasie, she hires a young girl, Felicite, who seems to be sweet but rusticated. With nothing else to do, Emma wanders around the house languidly, wearing a fancy dressing gown. Bored, lonely, and utterly discontented, she halfheartedly wishes both to die and to escape to Paris. Charles goes about his business, totally unaware of his wife's unhappiness. He's still his usual, dull self, perfectly happy and blissfully ignorant. He's just so pleased with everything Emma does, and by her city-like airs. She attempts to create some kind of false happiness through buying things; Charles goes along with it gamely. Everything looks great for Charles. His reputation as a doctor established, he generally does pretty well...that is, he doesn't kill anyone. He prescribes the same course of treatment to almost everyone: sedatives, the occasional emetic, footbath, or leeches, and on special occasions, he bleeds people or pulls teeth. He attempts to keep current with the latest medical news by subscribing to a professional journal, but it doesn't inspire him to any thrilling feats. Emma is fed up with all this. She wishes Charles had more ambition and intellectual oomph. She is more and more irritated by him with every passing day. Even when she straightens his clothes in an attempt to make him look more presentable, it's for her sake, not his. She continues to talk to Charles, however - her reasoning being that if she has to resort to talking to the dog, she might as well talk to her husband. Emma waits and waits, and grows more and more impatient with her unchanging life. She imagines a ship of dreams that will come and carry her away; unsurprisingly, it never does. Every day feels the same, and she's sure that God has doomed her to a monotonous fate. Disgruntled, Emma gives up on all of her pastimes - she stops playing the piano, abandons her sketchbook, and ignores her embroidery. She falls into a deep depression, and feels profoundly alone. She even wishes she could chat with Felicite, but her pride stops her. It's not just Emma's life that's dull and unchanging; she observes the townspeople doing the same boring things day after day. We get the feeling that Emma's not the only person who's unenthused about provincial life. A wandering peddler of some kind comes around on occasions, bringing with him a hurdy-gurdy . Emma listens to the waltzes and thinks of her brush with greatness at the ball. Meals are the worst. Emma feels as though she can't bear it any longer, as she regards the gross-sounding meals and watches her bovine husband slowly chew his cud. By the springtime, Emma has given up on everything, including taking care of the house. She doesn't even make the effort to maintain her personal appearance. Her mother-in-law arrives for a visit before Easter, and is shocked by the change; she's taken aback, and can't even muster up a critical comment. Emma actually succeeds in cowing the old Madame Bovary. Emma starts to exhibit some kooky behavior. She goes on weird diets, has violent mood swings, and is totally unpredictable. At the end of February, Monsieur Rouault comes for a visit and brings a huge turkey to Emma and Charles at Tostes to celebrate the anniversary of his broken leg . Emma spends most of the visit with him, and is surprisingly glad to see him go. He reminds her of her hick background, something for which she has a great amount of contempt. Actually, she's contemptuous of pretty much everyone and everything at this point, so much so that Charles is shocked by her behavior. All of this takes a toll on Emma's health, and Charles gets worried about her frailty. He prescribes some rather useless cures, and it makes her seem worse than ever. She demonstrates what we might call manic-depressive symptoms around this time. Emma complains and complains about Tostes, and Charles realizes that something about the town is making her unhappy. He ponders moving the little family elsewhere. Oddly, Emma starts drinking vinegar to lose weight . One of Charles's old teachers diagnoses her with a so-called "nervous malady" , and it's decided that they'll move away. Charles finds a slightly larger town called Yonville-l'Abbaye that needs a doctor, and decides to move by spring if Emma stays ill. While preparing for the big move, Emma discovers her bridal bouquet in a drawer. While this might be a sentimental moment for some other women, she is disgusted, and throws it on the fire. What else could Emma and Charles possibly need in their complicated lives? You got it: a baby. By the time they move away in March, Emma is definitely pregnant. You can bet her mood swings aren't getting any better.


prompt:
Chapter: Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not
even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen,
between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley
watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after
turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout
that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.

We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of
the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it
makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on
the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches
under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of
the Bray country, 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 white line the colour of the
roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle
with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver.

Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of
Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top
to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these
brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of
the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in
the neighboring country.

Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France,
a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is
without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel
cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is
costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full
of sand and flints.

Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but
about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to
that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their
way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of
its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping
up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and
the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread
riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a
cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side.

At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with
young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the
place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards
full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries
scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to
the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach
down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses
have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the
plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree
sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small
swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread
steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower,
the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of
ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a
blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts
outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a
white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger
on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps;
scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the
finest in the place.

     *The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of
     notaries.

The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther
down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds
it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old
stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the
grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was
rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof
is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows
in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a
loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their
wooden shoes.

The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon
the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with
a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Mr.
So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the
confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in
a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and
with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a
copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,"
overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the
perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted.

The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts,
occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town
hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of
Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On
the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a
semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a
Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other
the scales of Justice.

But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the
chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand
lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front
throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across
them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist
leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with
inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy,
Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine,
Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,
hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the
breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at
the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the
word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about
half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black
ground.

Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only
one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops
short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and
the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached.

At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall
was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all
the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore,
continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once
gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the
parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to
plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows
smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to
rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.

"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to him one
day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time;
but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and
even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.

Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed
at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the
church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from
the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou,
rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of
the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its
poodle mane.

On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow
Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated
great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The
meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee
made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the
doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with
bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for
brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the
long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of
plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was
being chopped.

From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the
servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.

A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and
wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the
chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he
appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head
in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.

"Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water
bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to
offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers
are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has
been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when
it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur
Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk
eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went on,
looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.

"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would
buy another."

"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.

"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again
you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want
narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is
changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!"

The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on--

"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one
were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or
the sufferers from the Lyons floods--"

"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the
landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as
long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered
our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed
with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went
on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding
the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six
visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!"

"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?"

"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes
six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for
punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd
rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so
particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes
at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he
eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!"

"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and
an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector."

Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.

He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin
body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of
his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,
flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth
waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round,
well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking
out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair
whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a
garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose
hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a
fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin
rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist
and the egotism of a bourgeois.

He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out
first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet
remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and
took off his cap in his usual way.

"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said
the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady.

"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the
cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the
evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a
dab fish and never said a word."

"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that
makes the society-man."

"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.

"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it is
possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--

"Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a
doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become
whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in
history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something.
Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the
bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had
put it behind my ear!"

Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle"
were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into
the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his
face was rubicund and his form athletic.

"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady, as she
reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed
with their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of
Cassis*? A glass of wine?"

     *Black currant liqueur.

The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that
he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after
asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the
evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.

When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the
square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This
refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy;
all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days
of the tithe.

The landlady took up the defence of her curie.

"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year
he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six
trusses at once, he is so strong."

"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to
fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have
the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a
good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals."

"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion."

The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have
more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling.
I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a
Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below
to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't
need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my
pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one
can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the
eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of
Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith
of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't
admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a
cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies
uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd
in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,
which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in
turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."

He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over
the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town
council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a
distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled
with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground,
and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.

It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,
prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders.
The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the
coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the
old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed
away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came
down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.

Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all
spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert
did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place
in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for
the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his
mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and
all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,
which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of
his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.

An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across
the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had
even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight
of her; but it had been necessary to go on.

Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune.
Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with
her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs
recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had
been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another
had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four
rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve
years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street
as he was going to dine in town.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Welcome to Emma and Charles's new home! Yonville-l'Abbaye, their new town, is a small step up from Tostes. It's a market town in the Neufchatel region of France, not too far from Rouen . The town is bordered by farmland, and it actually sounds fairly attractive. Flaubert, ever the party pooper, describes it as "characterless," and claims that it makes the worst Neufchatel cheese in the whole district . Despite new improvements in roads and trade routes, Yonville is still really slow and old-fashioned. We can already tell that this doesn't bode well for Emma. The actual town is pretty simple; it has a nice house or two, a church and graveyard, some brandy distilleries and cider presses, and an inn. Most notably, it's also home to a very peculiar building: Monsieur Homais' Pharmacy. It sounds like a pretty exciting place, covered in signs advertising the pharmacist's products. Apparently that's all there is to see in Yonville. Our sense of dread increases. Emma is so not going to like this... The church's caretaker , Lestiboudois, is in the practice of planting crops right up to the cemetery, a rather sketchy thing, if you ask us. The priest claims half-jokingly that he's "feeding on the dead" - creepy! All in all, we get the picture - nothing ever changes in Yonville. It's not exactly the booming metropolis Emma dreams of. On the day of the Bovary's arrival, the innkeeper, Madame Lefrancois, is busy preparing everything for the coming week. She's all in a tizzy because she's got a lot of food to prepare, both for her regular boarders, and for Charles and Emma. As she's in the midst of preparations, Monsieur Homais pays her a little visit. He immediately appears to be quite an arrogant guy. Monsieur Homais and Madame Lefrancois have a somewhat aggressive conversation. They chat about town affairs, including a rival bar, and about the inn's boarders. Among them are an oddly dull man named Binet and some young man called Leon. Binet enters on cue, ready for his dinner. He seems like a normal guy, but is really, really boring. Monsieur Homais obviously isn't a huge fan. The town priest stops by to pick up his umbrella. He and Monsieur Homais clearly have some kind of antagonistic relationship , since Homais bursts out in a big anti-clerical rant after he leaves. Homais clearly regards himself as quite an intellectual. He's immoderately proud of himself. Finally, the Hirondelle pulls up with the Bovarys inside. The driver, Hivert, is immediately besieged by questions from the townspeople . Hivert explains the Hirondelle's tardiness: Emma's beloved greyhound, Djali, ran away and they had to stop to look for her. She was nowhere to be found. A local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, who was along for the ride, attempts to console Emma by telling her that Djali will find her way home.


prompt:
Chapter: Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and
they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly
since night set in.

Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his
respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render
them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had
ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.

When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney.

With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and
having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black
boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the
whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the
fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now
and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind
through the half-open door.

On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her
silently.

As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the
notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who
was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his
dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom
he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early,
he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure
from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Binet. It was therefore with
delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine
in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour
where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the
table laid for four.

Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;
then, turning to his neighbour--

"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in
our 'Hirondelle.'"

"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like
change of place."

"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same
places."

"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the
saddle"--

"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it
seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.

"Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not very
hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us
the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay
pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases
of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a
few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a
serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of
scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur
Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your
science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse
to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the
doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad,
and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I
have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade
at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or
otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a
matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of
Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on
the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous
vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle
in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say,
nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and
which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together
all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say,
and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when
there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender
insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered
on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to
say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled
themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like
breezes from Russia."

"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?" continued
Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.

"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on
the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I
go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."

"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but
especially by the side of the sea."

"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon.

"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the
mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of
which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?"

"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin
of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could
not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the
waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of
incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices,
and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such
spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I
no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire
his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some
imposing site."

"You play?" she asked.

"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.

"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais,
bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the
other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I
heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor."

Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room on the
second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his
landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to
him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He
was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary
was not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a
good deal of show.

Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"

"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream."

"Have you been to the opera?"

"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish
reading for the bar."

"As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the chemist,
"with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find
yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the
most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a
doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen.
Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a
laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He
was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden,
by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of
drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be
able--"

"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has
been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room
reading."

"Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by
one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against
the window and the lamp is burning?"

"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon
him.

"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we
traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with
the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the
adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were
yourself palpitating beneath their costumes."

"That is true! That is true?" she said.

"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague
idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from
afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"

"I have experienced it," she replied.

"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more
tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears."

"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the
contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one.
I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are
in nature."

"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart,
miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all
the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble
characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself,
living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville
affords so few resources."

"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a
lending library."

"If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said the chemist,
who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library
composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter
Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and in addition I receive various
periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage
to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel,
Yonville, and vicinity."

For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant
Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags,
brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly
left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against
the wall with its hooks.

Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the
bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small
blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar,
and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently
sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while
Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague
conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to
the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of
novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where
she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked
of everything till to the end of dinner.

When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the
new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was
asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was
waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw
stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had
taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started.

The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the
earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was
only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost
immediately, and the company dispersed.

As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster
fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the
wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish
light passed through the curtainless windows.

She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields,
half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along
the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were
scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses
on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the
furniture had left everything about carelessly.

This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place.

The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her
arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth.
And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in
her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in
the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life
lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be
better.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Emma, Charles, Felicite, and Monsieur Lheureux get out of the Hirondelle for the Bovarys' first glimpse of Yonville. Monsieur Homais is on hand to introduce himself. Emma checks out the inn. Meanwhile, a blond young man checks her out. Who is this guy, you may ask? Flaubert tells us. It turns out that this is the Monsieur Leon mentioned earlier. He's a clerk who works for the notary in town. He, like Emma, is a bored young person trapped in a town full of aging, dull people. The dinner party, comprised of Emma, Charles, Homais, and Leon, make polite chitter chatter about their trip, and about the town. Homais goes off on a long spiel about Yonville. We realize that his primary mode of communication is probably by long spiel. Leon and Emma are clearly on the same wavelength - one that nobody else is on. They seem to have similar ideas and interests. It turns out that Leon is an amateur musician, like Emma. Monsieur Homais, with whom the young clerk lives, claims that Leon is a beautiful singer. Emma is intrigued. Emma and Leon have a little moment, in which he reveals that he loves German music, "the kind that makes you dream" - what an Emma-like thing to say! He also tells her he's going away to Paris to study to be lawyer. Homais and Charles have obviously been conversing on their own. Homais attempts to include everyone in the conversation; Emma and Leon aren't interested, and soon get caught up in their private conversation again. Like Emma, Leon is a big reader, and it seems like they have pretty similar thoughts about literature, as well. Homais tries to break into their conversation again, offering the use of his personal library to Emma. Emma and Leon are sitting so close that he has his feet on one of the rungs of her chair. After dinner, the guests all go their separate ways. Emma and Charles go into their new house for the first time. It doesn't sound too thrilling. We are unsurprised. Emma philosophically muses that, since her life so far hasn't been too hot, it has to get better.


prompt:
Chapter: The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She
had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and
reclosed the window.

Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going
to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The
dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he
had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How
then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of
things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually
shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and
dissimulation.

At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the arguments
of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable
thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in
water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature
after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him
for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for
he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were
always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their
mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the
chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been
taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time
as a servant.

The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary
information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider
merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly
placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a
supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the
sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked
after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,
according to the taste of the customers.

The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the
chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it
all.

He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which
forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that,
after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen
to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate
receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was
in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard
the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise
great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were
about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons,
his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was
obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover
his spirits.

Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and
he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his
back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous,
everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his
attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later
on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him "the
paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to
have a chat with the Doctor.

Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours
without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched
his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a
workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been
left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had
spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the
moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped
away in two years.

Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from
Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out
of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand
fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came
to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her
confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of
the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment
of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and
her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one
another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her
armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her,
passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to
make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of
caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having
begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human
life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.

Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be
delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not
being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a
swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit
of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the
whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing
anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that
stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the
very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.

As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to
think of him more consecutively.

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him
George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected
revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he
may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste
of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once
inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and
legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a
string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws
her, some conventionality that restrains.

She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was
rising.

"It is a girl!" said Charles.

She turned her head away and fainted.

Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost
immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of
discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the
half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made.

Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a
name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian
endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde
pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better.

Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed
this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted
outsiders.

"Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it
the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in
fashion just now."

But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a
sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that
recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it
was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon
represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to
romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the
French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere
with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of
sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination
and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the
ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded
all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic
over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,
but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for
their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in
which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with
both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour.

At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard
the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was
chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested
to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment,
to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of
marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that
he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there
was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement.
Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes
gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who
was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary,
senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing
it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery
of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old
Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure
wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they
succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on
with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.

Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the
natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore
in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the
habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant
to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his
son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his
daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne.

The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the
world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier
times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had
partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs,
or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look
out for yourself."

Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and
fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence
upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure.
Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was
not the man to respect anything.

One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little
girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and, without
looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were
yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme
end of the village, between the highroad and the fields.

It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate
roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to
strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing;
Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she
was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to
rest.

At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbouring door with a
bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the
shade in front of the Lheureux's shop under the projecting grey awning.

Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was
beginning to grow tired.

"If--" said Leon, not daring to go on.

"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.

And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same
evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's
wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was
compromising herself."

To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving
the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little
houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were
in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the
sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in
the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or
tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two,
side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining
his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges
fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.

They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it.

Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the
dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright
against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of
lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here
and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags,
knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse
linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared
with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was
pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula,
the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their
business, left in the country.

"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."

The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its
farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a
kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which
was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,
shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,
near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu
Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and
bits of amadou.

Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing her
trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus
and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.

Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the
wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
herself to and fro.

Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this
beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.
Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been
an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who
had just been sick over her collar.

The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show.

"She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of her. If
you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have
a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't
trouble you then."

"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and
she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.

The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the
time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.

"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you
might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a
month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk."

After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a
little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned
round. It was the nurse.

"What is it?"

Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began
talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year
that the captain--

"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.

"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid
he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--"

"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You
bother me!"

"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he
has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him."

"Do make haste, Mere Rollet!"

"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking
too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes
begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little
one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue."

Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked
fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of
her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat
had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and
carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one
wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to
trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing
desk.

They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the
bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls
whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift,
and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the
current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like
streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a
water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced
with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed
each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in
the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the
dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard
nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the
path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's dress rustling round
her.

The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were
hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up
between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary,
as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow
dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its
fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.

They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected
shortly at the Rouen theatre.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"If I can," he answered.

Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full
of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial
phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the
whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices.
Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of
speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like
tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn
softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication
without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.

In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to
step on large green stones put here and there in the mud.

She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and
tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent
forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling
into the puddles of water.

When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the
little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.

Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the
briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went
out.

He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of
the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched
the sky through his fingers.

"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!"

He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais
for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely
absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red
whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements,
although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had
impressed the clerk.

As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle
as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins,
weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in her household, and
detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so
common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although
she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each
other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a
woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than
the gown.

And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three
publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his
two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands
and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable
companions.

But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood
out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to
see a vague abyss.

In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the
druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him
again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being
indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The next morning, Emma sees Leon through her bedroom window; they bow to each other. Leon, hopeful that the Bovarys will turn up for dinner at the inn again, can't wait for six o'clock. However, dinnertime rolls around, and Emma is nowhere to be found. He's deeply disappointed. Apparently, Leon isn't exactly a lady's man. His conversation with Emma the previous night was the most intimate situation he's ever been in with a "lady." Everyone in the town likes him for his many fine qualities, but he felt a different kind of connection with Emma. Homais turns out to be a very, very attentive neighbor. He gives Emma all kinds of assistance with the house, and is oh-so-friendly. However, he's not exactly Ned Flanders. It seems that his kindly guy-next-door act is a front; he'd been accused previously of illegally practicing medicine without any certification, and was threatened with legal action. A lot of townspeople, including the mayor, are out to get him, so he's careful to keep Charles on his side. Speaking of Charles, the poor guy isn't so happy. He doesn't have any patients yet, and spends most of his time hanging about the house. He's worried about money - the move from Tostes was expensive, and all the money that Emma brought with her to the marriage is gone. The only thing that cheers Charles up is the thought of Emma's pregnancy. He feels that his whole life is complete now that a baby is on the horizon. Emma, on the other hand, traversed a whole range of emotions, from astonished to bitter, before settling on indifferent. She decides that if she must have a baby, it should be a boy, so it can have the power to escape the rules that govern women. Instead, it's a girl. Emma passes out, presumably from disappointment, as well as the rigors of childbirth. Madame Homais and Madame Lefrancois rush in to see how things are going. Everyone is excited except Emma. Emma can't even think up a name for the poor kid. She has all kinds of romantic ideas about what she'd like to call the daughter . Homais has all kinds of crazy ideas, naturally, having named his children all kinds of crazy things. Emma eventually settles haphazardly on "Berthe." Little Berthe is baptized. Her godfather is Homais, since Emma's dad couldn't make it for the birth, and her godmother is old Madame Bovary, who's visiting with her husband. Charles's father gets along pretty well with Emma, who's interested in his stories of travel in the army. Charles's mom is worried that her husband will be a bad influence upon Emma, and they peace out pretty quickly. One day, as Emma is going to visit the baby , she runs into Leon. She invites him to come with her, which causes quite the scandal among the gossips of the town. The wetnurse lives in an unsavory little cottage. Leon is thrown off by the image before him, of the beautiful lady in a fancy dress surrounded by squalor. The baby makes a spectacular entrance by promptly spitting up on Emma. The visitors head out. As they're leaving, Madame Rollet comes up and wheedles the promise of some brandy out of Emma. Emma and Leon head back to Yonville. They obviously have an intense connection already. When they get back to town, Emma heads home, while Leon keeps wandering, pondering his boredom and the dullness of the other people he knows in town. He has quite the crush on our young Madame Bovary.