Page 170 - madame-bovary

her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the
idleness in which she lives.
Yet she is always busy,’ said Charles.
‘Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books,
works against religion, and in which they mock at priests
in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far
astray, my poor child. Anyone who has no religion always
ends by turning out badly.’
So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. The en-
terprise did not seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She
was, when she passed through Rouen, to go herself to the
lending-library and represent that Emma had discontin-
ued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply
to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his
poisonous trade? The farewells of mother and daughter-in-
law were cold. During the three weeks that they had been
together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words apart
from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and
in the evening before going to bed.
Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at
Yonville.
The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of
carts, which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all
along the line of houses from the church to the inn. On the
other side there were canvas booths, where cotton checks,
blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together with
harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends
fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out
on the ground between pyramids of eggs and hampers of

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