Page 122 - madame-bovary

senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and be-
gan baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured
over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments
made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old Bovary replied by a
quotation from ‘La Guerre des Dieux”; the cure wanted to
leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they suc-
ceeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly
went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.
Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month,
dazzling the native by a superb policeman’s cap with sil-
ver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked
his pipe in the square. Being also in the habit of drinking
a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the Lion
d’Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son’s
account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his
daughter-in-law’s whole supply of eau-de-cologne.
The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had
knocked about the world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna,
and Strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he
had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken;
then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the
stairs, or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, cry-
ing, ‘Charles, look out for yourself.’
Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her
son’s happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the
long-run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the
young woman, took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps
she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur
Bovary was not the man to respect anything.

1 1