When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,

the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him

with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the

philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the

young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain

virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing

him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong

constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink

off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But,

peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His

mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him

tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety

and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the

child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of

high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as

an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old

piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this

Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth

while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to

buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man

always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child

knocked about the village.

He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens

that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the

geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in

the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and

at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he

might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward

by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on

hand, fresh of colour.

When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began

lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and

irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare

moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and

a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil

after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the

flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child

fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his

stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,

when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum

to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles

playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of

an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his

verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance

passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the

"young man" had a very good memory.




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