One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of

a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the

garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.

He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs

shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left

his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He

pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in

a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on

the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light.

Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.

This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur

Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken

leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across

country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;

Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was

decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three

hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and

show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.

Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his

cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,

he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped

of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that

are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly

remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures

he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches

of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers

bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as

eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals

seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the

horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.

Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and,

sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent

sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double

self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and

crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices

mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron

rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife

sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the

grass at the edge of a ditch.




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