prompt:
Chapter: One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his
leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard
of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.

"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been
through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be
quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I
talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the
branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it.
And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their
nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on
the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very
idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well,
quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an
autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb;
it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something
always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's
heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way
altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must
pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see
us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says
you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some
rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit."

Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all
as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear
trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again,
came and went, making the farm more full of life.

Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor
because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off,
spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended
to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him
than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He
told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his
wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in;
he thought no more about her.

He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new
delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now
change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was
very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and
coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him.
On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his
business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young
man! what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had
increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked.
He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better
looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.

One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields.
He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the
outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun
sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners
of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table
were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they
drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in
by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and
touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth
Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of
perspiration on her bare shoulders.

After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to
drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have
a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao
from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the
brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked
glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent
back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the
strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her
tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the
bottom of her glass.

She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was
darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did
Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the
flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing
in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the
yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her
hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.

She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from
giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began
talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They
went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little
prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a
cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even
showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every
month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the
gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid!
She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town,
although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more
wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her
voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in
modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now
joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her
look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.

Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to
recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life
she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts
other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her.
Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married,
and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But
Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the
humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry after
all! If you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was
parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and
opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing
in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the
Bertaux.

Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised
himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each
time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words
sealed his lips.

Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was
of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking
her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one
never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it,
the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in
which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him
less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his
pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking
to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider,
underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in
the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him
all ready laid as on the stage.

     *A mixture of coffee and spirits.

When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his
daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days,
he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a
little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he
was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt
would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old
Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property,"
as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the
shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said
to himself, "I'll give her to him."

At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux.

The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to
hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road
full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave
himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past
it--

"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to
you."

They stopped. Charles was silent.

"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault,
laughing softly.

"Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.

"I ask nothing better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the
little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get
off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of
all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so
that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter
of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning
over the hedge."

And he went off.

Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited.
Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch.
Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown
back; the hook was still swinging.

The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as
he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in
countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion
of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before
them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out
of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.

The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with
her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself
chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When
Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked
over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed
of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be
entrees.

Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding
with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So
there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which
they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to
some extent on the days following.

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

completion: Charles's half-hearted mourning doesn't last too long. Monsieur Rouault shows up the day after the funeral to deliver his payment for the medical treatment, and also to give his condolences. He encourages Charles to visit Les Bertaux again, which he does, happily. Monsieur Rouault cheers Charles up, and he quickly begins to forget about his dead wife. In the weeks that follow, things start to look up for Charles. He discovers that he likes living without his wife - he can decide when and what he wants to eat, and doesn't have to explain himself to anyone. Furthermore, her death was actually good for business, since all the townspeople feel bad for him. Charles keeps up his visits to Les Bertaux. One day, he encounters Emma alone. She convinces him to have a drink by saying that she'll have one, too. She pours herself a few drops of liqueur, but in order to taste it, she throws back her head and licks the bottom of the shot glass. Emma and Charles have their first real conversation - that is, Emma talks, and Charles listens. They even go to her room to look at mementos of her days as a schoolgirl at the convent. She complains about the hired help, complains about not living in the city, and generally talks a lot about herself. Charles is charmed. On his way home, Charles mulls over the pros and cons of starting something with Emma. He begins to wonder if another marriage might be a good idea... Monsieur Rouault, we discover, is not averse to this idea. He loves Emma, but he's come to terms with the fact that she is simply useless on the farm. He himself isn't a big fan of farming, and really doesn't enjoy his profession. When he notices Charles's interest in Emma, he decides to give his blessing. After a while, Charles finally builds up the courage ask Monsieur Rouault for Emma's hand in marriage. In typical fashion, Charles can't even get the words out - fortunately, his future father-in-law figures out what's going on and says it's all cool with him. The marriage ball is rolling. Notably, we don't know what Emma thinks about any of this... The winter passes, and Emma busily prepares her trousseau . Emma reveals herself to be something of a romantic ninny; she would like to be married by torchlight in the dead of night. However, her more practical fiance and father decide that this is probably not the best idea. A traditional wedding is planned.


prompt:
Chapter: The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young
people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in
rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot
and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from
Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.

All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between
friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to.

From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets,
had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down
behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
(many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their
sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first
communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or
sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their
hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their
gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
themselves. According to their different social positions they wore
tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,
redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe
on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse
cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like
a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say,
with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.

And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had
just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been
close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and
not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or
cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh
air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were
mottled here and there with red dabs.

The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither
on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church.
The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated
across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn,
soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to
talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at
its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all
following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves
plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves
unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from
time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her
gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,
while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault,
with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands
up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur
Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply
in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing
compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed,
and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their
business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another
on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the
squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When
he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly
rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set
off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark
time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little
birds from afar.

The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six
chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle
a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At
the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round
the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine
beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least
shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of
the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot
had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up
on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself
brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin
with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a
temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and
in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second
stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications
in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and
finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of
jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate
swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.

Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they
went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the
granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to
sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began
songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with
their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad
jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed
up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they
kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore;
and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were
runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over
yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning
out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.

Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.
The children had fallen asleep under the seats.

The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage
pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even
brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water
from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in
time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position
of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the
same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused
old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in
a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running
served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been
badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints
hoping he would ruin himself.

Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been
consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the
arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead
of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till
daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This
added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.

Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.
He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*, compliments, and
chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup
appeared.

     *Double meanings.

The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who
might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before,
whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did
not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed
near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed
nothing. He called her "my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of
everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the
yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees, putting his
arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the
chemisette of her bodice with his head.

     *Used the familiar form of address.

Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of
his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back
in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here
he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.
When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the
cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of
his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her
from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,
trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that
it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he
saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
right away home.

Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock.

The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.

The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
look over her house.

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

completion: It's the big day, and various friends and family members arrive in a bustle of horses, carriages, and passengers. Flaubert treats us to a rather ridiculous description of country folks; we are reminded again that this is not the sophisticated big city event that Emma longs for; rather, it is a procession of people awkwardly dressed up in their unfashionable best for a small-town wedding. We don't get to see the ceremony, but the wedding feast that comes afterwards is mouth-watering. The guests are treated to be huge table overflowing with roast beef, mutton, chickens, a suckling pig, many alcohols, and a dizzyingly fancy wedding cake. The guests gorge themselves until nightfall, when they pile back into their vehicles and raucously drive back home. As everyone settles in for the night, a group of whiny wedding guests complain about how unsatisfactory the event was, cursing Monsieur Rouault behind his back . The Bovary family members are characteristically unimpressive during all of these goings-on. Charles's mother holds her tongue for once , while his father stays up partying and drinking all night with the guests. Charles himself is, as usual, fairly dull on the day of the wedding - but after the wedding night, he's a changed man. He's clearly very, very in love with Emma. The bride, on the other hand, is pretty casual about the whole thing. After the couple leaves to start their married life, Monsieur Rouault reflects upon his own life and his dear, departed wife. He remembers happier times and, overcome by sadness, heads home alone. Charles and Emma return to his house in Tostes; the neighbors show up to check out the new arrival.


prompt:
Chapter: The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black
leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were a pair of leggings,
still covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was
both dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the
top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly
stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways
at the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with
a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks
under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Charles's
consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table,
three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of Medical
Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive
sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the six shelves
of a deal bookcase.

The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw
patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in
the consulting room and recounting their histories.

Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large
dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and
pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements
past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to
guess.

The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered
apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the
middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with
eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed.
Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster
reading his breviary.

Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second,
which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red
drapery. A shell box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary
near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin
ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other
one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it
up to the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting
her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in
a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she
were to die.

During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in
the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper
put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the
sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain
and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard
in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.

He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together,
a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her
hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and
many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now
made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by
her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down
on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen
thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on
waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the
shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of
different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the
surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw
himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round
his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window
to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of
geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles,
in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while
she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of
flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating,
described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before
it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare
standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a
kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And
then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along
the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where
the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning
air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his
mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,
like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are
digesting.

Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when
he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of
companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his
accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied medicine, and never
had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have
become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life
this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend
beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself
with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,
ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.

He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her
fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm
from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away
half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.

Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that
should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought,
have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in
life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so
beautiful in books.

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

completion: Next, we get a brief tour of Charles and Emma's house. It sounds pretty decent - nothing impressive, but a nice enough home for a country doctor and his wife. There's a little garden, an office for Charles , and generally everything a typical village housewife might need. Emma, however, is not your typical village housewife. First of all, she notices the former Madame Bovary's bridal bouquet preserved in the bedroom - this totally doesn't fly. This relic of wife #1 is relegated to exile in the attic. After this change, Emma goes on a total renovation rampage, making changes to every aspect of the little house's decor. Charles is in heaven. He gives in to all of Emma's whims, and buys everything she wants. He's totally head over heels in love with her, and is infatuated by her beauty. Everything is perfect, as far as he's concerned, and he can't remember ever being happier. The whole world is wrapped up in Emma. Emma, however, isn't sure that she's so happy. She had thought herself in love before the marriage, but now conjugal life doesn't seem so blissful. She wonders if the words she's read about in books - passion, rapture, bliss - can apply to her life.


prompt:
Chapter: She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little
bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the
sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for
you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand,
bringing you a bird's nest.

When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place
her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter,
where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the
story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped
here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the
tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.

Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the
society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,
which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very
little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she
who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living
thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and
amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she
was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.
Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with
their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the
cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.

When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined,
her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest.
The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
unexpected sweetness.

In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in
the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or
the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the
"Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to
the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing
through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened
her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to
us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs.

Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to
those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms,
and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.

She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected
as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her
heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking
for emotions, not landscapes.

At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs
of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.

She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on
the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed
long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions
killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre
forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions,
gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of
age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.

Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events,
dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked
to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines
who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the
stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on
his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult
for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy
women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and
Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of
heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St.
Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a
little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always
the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.

In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild
compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria
of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes"
given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately
handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the
most part as counts or viscounts.

She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the
balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his
arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or
there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through
parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at
a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on
sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open
window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their
cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,
smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a
marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining
beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres,
Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands,
that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a
lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by
a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam
trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white
excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.

And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head
lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one
by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some
belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.

When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a
funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter
sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,
and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of
the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
brow.

The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping
from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against
the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.

Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself
quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to
feel.

But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies
of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived
was the happiness she had dreamed.

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

completion: Now that we've had a tour of the Bovary household, it's time for a tour of Emma's inner landscape. Fade out to a flashback... Emma is a dreamy, romantic child, and is perhaps too heavily influenced by Paul and Virginia, a popular and super-utopian novel about two siblings stranded on a desert island. At age thirteen, Emma is sent to a convent school, where she quickly falls in love with the mystical, aesthetic atmosphere of the religious life; she devotes herself to the ceremonies and artistic poses of convent life. We can see where this is heading. The things Emma likes best about religion aren't what you'd hope or expect - you know, stuff like God or faith. Instead, she is really into the romantic aspects of it; metaphors for the nun's relationship with God like "betrothed" and "heavenly lover" really get her going. At the convent, Emma meets an old lady with an aristocratic background . She introduces Emma to novels - and thus to a whole new world of swoony romantic dreams. As she does her work, the girls listen to her stories and read the romance novels she carries around in her apron pocket. Soon enough, Emma's attentions turn from religious ecstasy to dreams of historical romance. She wishes she could live the life she read about in her books. Emma's mother dies while Emma is away at school; the girl is dramatically sad for a little while, but is kind of secretly pleased at herself for being so sensitive. The nuns worry that they've lost Emma - they'd assumed that she would join the sisterhood. She rebells against their attempts to draw her back in, and ends up leaving the convent. As Flaubert states pointedly, "no one was sorry to see her go" . Back home, Emma enjoys playing lady of the manor and ordering the servants around for a while. However, she gets sick of it soon enough and - surprise, surprise - misses the convent. By the time Charles appears on the scene, she feels cynical and experienced . She actually believes that she's in love with Charles - but we get the feeling that she would have felt the same way about any guy who happened to wander into her life at that time. Unsurprisingly, now that they're married, she's unsettled and discontented.


prompt:
Chapter: She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time
of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full
sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those
lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of
laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride
slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed
by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of
a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume
of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in
hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her
that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar
to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean
over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch
cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails,
and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked
to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable
uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed
her--the opportunity, the courage.

If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but
once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have
gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by
a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater
became the gulf that separated her from him.

Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and
everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without
exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity,
he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors
from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day
he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come
across in a novel.

A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold
activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements
of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing,
wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm,
this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.

Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand
there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes
half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers,
little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers
glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb,
and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the
other end of the village when the window was open, and often the
bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list
slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.

Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the
patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of
a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to
have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves,
served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying
finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was
extended to Bovary.

Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.
He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by
her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the
wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his
door in his wool-work slippers.

He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked
for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited
on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one
after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been,
the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he
finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off
the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to
bed, and lay on his back and snored.

As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief
would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was
all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of
the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore
thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely
towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good
enough for the country."

His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary
senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her
ways too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles
disappeared as "at a grand establishment," and the amount of firing in
the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her
linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on
the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons.
Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words "daughter" and "mother"
were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the
lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.

In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the
favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion
from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched
her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through
the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as
remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to
adore her so exclusively.

Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved
his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,
and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam
Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or
two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma
proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his
patients.

And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make
herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all
the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many
melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and
Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.

When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without
getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did
not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself
in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that
Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became
regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony
of dinner.

A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had
given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for
she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see
before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far
as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an
angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of
the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you.

She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last
she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and
wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and
the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always
closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts,
aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round
and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing
the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.

Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass
that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to
herself, "Good heavens! Why did I marry?"

She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not
been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would
have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown
husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been
handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old
companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In
town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the
lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands,
the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose
dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was
weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive
her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and
open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her
seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was
full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows;
the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all
of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and
smoothed the long delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have
no troubles."

Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned
slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud
as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.

Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in
one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought
even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their
summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl
round her shoulders and rose.

In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss
that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky
showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,
and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out
against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali,
and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an
armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.

But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her
life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.

Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to
re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to
the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a
great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically
demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had
suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by
giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes
to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some
superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not
thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it
his business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty
figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not
think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other
hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.

On Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in
their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped
on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles
held a bandbox between his knees.

They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit
to show the way for the carriages.

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

completion: Emma wonders if these "honeymoon days" are really the best days of her life. She starts to feel cheated, as though Charles has deprived her of the cliched, romantic fantasies she cooks up. She's sure that she would be happier if only she was somewhere else...preferably with someone else... Emma wants to reveal these feelings of discontent to somebody, and wishes Charles could be a little more sensitive. Day by day he just grows less and less interesting to her, and she is consistently disappointed in the man she married. She believes that men should know everything and be able to do anything - Charles, however, is just an average guy. Emma attempts to express her turbulent feelings through drawing and music; Charles loves to watch her, and the people of the village are impressed by her accomplishments. Speaking of which, Emma turns out to actually be a pretty capable wife when she tries. She knows how to take care of the house and of Charles's business, and this makes the village respect the doctor and his young wife even more. Charles is also extremely impressed himself for having such a terrific wife. In his view, everything is just peachy keen. As far as we can tell, he's a really simple creature, with very few desires and no ambition at all. He's stingy and kind of oafish, but is generally still the same old predictable Charles - the kind of nice guy that finishes last. Charles's mom approves of her son's ways wholeheartedly, but she's skeptical of her daughter-in-law. She's worried that Emma wastes too much money, and every time she visits , the two women harass each other relentlessly. This springs largely from Mom's anxieties about Charles's love for Emma - she's no longer the favorite, now that Wife #2 is in the picture. Charles is caught in the crossfire between the two loves of his life. He can't believe that his mother could ever be wrong, but he also can't believe that Emma ever makes any mistakes. It's a confusing time for him; mostly, he just bumbles about, which doesn't help. Emma decides to at least attempt to "experience love" . She sings songs and recites poetry to Charles, but it doesn't accomplish anything. That's it. Emma is certain she doesn't love Charles, and furthermore, that she's incapable of loving him. She's way, way bored with her life on the whole. One of the great constants in life is the fact that Puppies Are Awesome. Emma receives a little greyhound pup as a gift from one of Charles's patients, and for a while, the awesomeness of the puppy actually makes her feel a wee bit better. She names the dog Djali and tells her about the troubles of married life. You may not have realized it, but dog is woman's best friend, too. Emma is certain she could have married someone different - and better - given the chance. She wonders about her former classmates from the convent school, and is sure that they have better husbands than she does. Her former life seems painfully far away. Just when it seems like nothing will ever happen for Emma, an invitation arrives: she and Charles are invited to a party at the home of a local big-shot, the Marquis d'Andervilliers. The Marquis, a former patient of Charles's, was impressed by Emma's elegance. The chapter ends as the couple arrives at the Marquis' chateau.


prompt:
Chapter: The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting
wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense
green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees
set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,
syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of
green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;
through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs
scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered
hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel
lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old
chateau.

Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants
appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the
doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule.

It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of
footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.

Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one
could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the
drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces,
their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled
silently as they made their strokes.

On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at
the bottom names written in black letters. She read: "Jean-Antoine
d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la
Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October,
1587." And on another: "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de
la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St.
Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of
May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693." One could
hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered
over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the
horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where
there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares
framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the
painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over
and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a
well-rounded calf.

The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the
Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on
an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her
a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook
nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair
a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young
woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers
in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.

At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down
at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the
dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness.

Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a
blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes
of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers
reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal
covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays;
bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in
the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a
bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped
roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open
baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke
was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and
frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved
dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon
gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid
with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed
motionless on the room full of life.

Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their
glasses.

But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent
over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an
old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes
were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He
was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on
a time favourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil
hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said,
the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and
Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels,
bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his
family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the
dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes
turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something
extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!
Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt
it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted
pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than
elsewhere.

The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.

Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her
debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,
and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed.

Charles's trousers were tight across the belly.

"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.

"Dancing?" repeated Emma.

"Yes!"

"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.
Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added.

Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish
dressing.

He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes
seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone
with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,
with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of
pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
green.

Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.

"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."

One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
went downstairs restraining herself from running.

Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.

She sat down on a form near the door.

The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line
of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling
faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed
hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms.

The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape,
bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate
blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places,
mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.

Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and
waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,
swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight
movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate
phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis
d'or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room;
then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note,
feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted;
the same eyes falling before you met yours again.

A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here
and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished
themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their
differences in age, dress, or face.

Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate
pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that
is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the
veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite
nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low
cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they
wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave
forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air
of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young.
In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and
through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality,
the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised
and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society
of loose women.

A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.

They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly,
Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum
by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation
full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very
young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romolus,"
and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
that had disfigured the name of his horse.

The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.

Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair
and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary
turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed
against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux
came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in
a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,
skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But
in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until
then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She
was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest.
She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand
in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her
teeth.

A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.

"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has
fallen behind the sofa?"

The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw
the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,
into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady
respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began
smelling her bouquet.

After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la
bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, and all sorts of
cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one
after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin
curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through
the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were still
left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their
tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door.

     *With almond milk

At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.
Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the
Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a
dozen persons.

One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and
whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time
to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and
that she would get through it very well.

They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
caught against his trousers.

Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to
his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a
more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with
her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for
a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but
more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the
wall and covered her eyes with her hands.

When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three
waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.

She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.

Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body,
her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved,
his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to
waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.

Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or
rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed.

Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His "knees were going
up into his body." He had spent five consecutive hours standing
bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without
understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief
that he pulled off his boots.

Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.

The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the
damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still
murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to
prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to
give up.

Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau,
trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the
evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,
blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and
cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.

There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten
minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.

Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a
small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and
they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling
with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from
over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.
The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the
outhouses of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took
her to see the stables.

Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the
horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when
anyone went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness room
shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was
piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the
whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.

Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The
dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels
being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and
Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.

Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge
of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little
horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose
reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened
on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.

They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen
with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she
recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the
movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the
trot or gallop.

A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces
that had broken.

But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the
ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with
a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a
carriage.

"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening
after dinner."

"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.

"Sometimes, when I get a chance."

He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.

When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper.
Nastasie answered rudely.

"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you
warning."

For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.

Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.

"How good it is to be at home again!"

Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl.
She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him
company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest
acquaintance in the place.

"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.

"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.

Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being
made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding,
spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.

"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.

He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the
pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back
of the cupboard.

The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up
and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier,
before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things
of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed
already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day
before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard
had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that
a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was
resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down
to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of
the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against
wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced.

The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma.

Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah!
I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago."

And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.

She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries
and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret
remained with her.

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

completion: The chateau is everything Emma could have dreamt of. It's gorgeous and extravagantly beautiful. Emma is profoundly impressed by the whole thing and notices every detail. At dinner, Emma sees that many of the ladies take wine at dinner . Emma is fascinated by an old, unattractive man, the Duc de Laverdiere; rumor has it that he had been Marie Antoinette's lover. Emma gets her first taste of champagne, pomegranates, and pineapple. Everything here seems better than it is at home. We get the feeling that she finally feels she's getting what she deserves. Getting dressed for the ball, Emma and Charles have a little spat. Charles wants to dance, but Emma claims it's ridiculous, saying that people will laugh at him. On this night, Emma looks better than ever. Charles, taken with her beauty, attempts to kiss her, but she just shoos him away. The ball is like one of Emma's romantic daydreams. It's filled with beautiful women in gorgeous dresses and jewels, and - to Emma's excitement - with beautiful men, too. Everything about these gorgeous guys radiates wealth, from their clear, white complexions to their well-cut clothes. Emma and Charles are clearly in a brand new world. Emma sees some peasants looking in through the windows, and is reminded of her former life on the farm at Les Bertaux. These new visions of luxury and beauty totally sweep her off her feet, and she begins to wonder if she ever really was a simple country girl. Emma witnesses a lady and gentleman exchange a secret love note. Hours into the ball, a second gourmet meal is served. After this, people start to leave. By 3am, it's time for the last dance, a waltz. Emma dances with a man Flaubert simply calls the Viscount, despite the fact that she doesn't really know how to waltz. She stumbles, then watches the Viscount resume the dance with another lady. Charles, who's been watching a game of whist at the card table all night, takes Emma up to bed, complaining all the way about his tired legs. Emma stays up late, looking out the window and hoping to prolong her stay in this fantastical other world. Eventually she lets herself fall asleep. In the morning, the remaining guests eat a quick breakfast, then walk around the chateau's extensive grounds. Charles and Emma pack up their buggy, say their thank yous, and head back to Tostes. During the drive home, they encounter a party of riders on horseback. One of them, Emma thinks, is the Viscount. Shortly thereafter, Charles has to fix something on the buggy. While he's outside, he finds a green silk cigar case. Home again, Emma is really in a foul mood. She fires the maid, Nastasie, because dinner isn't ready on time. The word that comes to mind is "irrational." Charles, on the other hand, is happy to be home. He's a little sad to see Nastasie go, since she's gone through a lot with him, but doesn't want to argue with his wife. After dinner, Charles tries to act like an aristocratic man by smoking one of the cigars he found in the silk case. Embarrassingly, he makes himself rather ill. Emma is disgusted. In the following days, Emma rehashes the ball over and over again in her mind. She tries to remember everything about it.