And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was blushing, she

added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!"

In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end,

despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last

manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more

wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse,

who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too

often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better

off for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family,

successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented

church less assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said

to her in a friendly way-"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"

As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out

after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the

air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when

Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and

they drank together to madame's complete restoration.

Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace

wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he

thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.

"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to

the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on

the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with

little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at

restaurants."

But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their

faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this

joke-"Its goodness strikes the eye!"

He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even scandalised

at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction

by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor,

Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion,

and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for

morals than literature.

But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he

contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of

pleasure, taught virtue.

"'Castigat ridendo mores,'* Monsieur Bournisien! Thus consider the

greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with

philosophical reflections, that made them a vast school of morals and

diplomacy for the people."




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