Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely
in his examination for an ordinary degree. He
was expected home the same night to celebrate his
success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all.
She excused him, threw the blame of his failure on
the injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little,
and took upon herself to set matters straight.
It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew
the truth; it was old then, and he accepted it.
Moreover, he could not believe that a man born of
him could be a fool.
So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,
ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart.
He passed pretty well. What a happy day for his
mother! They gave a grand dinner.
Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where
there was only one old doctor. For a long time
Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his death,
and the old fellow had barely been packed off when
Charles was installed, opposite his place, as his
successor.
But it was not everything to have brought up a son,
to have had him taught medicine, and discovered Tostes,
where he could practice it; he must have a wife.
She found him one—the widow of a bailiff
at Dieppe—who was forty-five and had an
income of twelve hundred francs. Though she was
ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples
as the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of
suitors. To attain her ends Madame Bovary had
to oust them all, and she even succeeded in very cleverly
baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up
by the priests.
Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier
life, thinking he would be more free to do as he liked
with himself and his money. But his wife was
master; he had to say this and not say that in company,
to fast every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at
her bidding those patients who did not pay. She
opened his letter, watched his comings and goings,
and listened at the partition-wall when women came
to consult him in his surgery.
She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions
without end. She constantly complained of her
nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps
made her ill; when people left her, solitude became
odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless
to see her die. When Charles returned in the
evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from
beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having
made him sit down on the edge of the bed, began to
talk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting
her, he loved another. She had been warned she
would be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for
a dose of medicine and a little more love.
