Page 342 - madame-bovary

And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to
inform them she had given up music, and could not begin
again now for important reasons. Then people commiserated
her—
‘What a pity! she had so much talent!’
They even spoke to Bovary about it. They put him to
shame, and especially the chemist.
‘You are wrong. One should never let any of the facul-
ties of nature lie fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend,
that by inducing madame to study; you are economising
on the subsequent musical education of your child. For my
own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to instruct
their children. That is an idea of Rousseau’s, still rather new
perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it,
like mothers nursing their own children and vaccination.’
So Charles returned once more to this question of the
piano. Emma replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it.
This poor piano, that had given her vanity so much satisfac-
tion—to see it go was to Bovary like the indefinable suicide
of a part of herself.
‘If you liked,’ he said, ‘a lesson from time to time, that
wouldn’t after all be very ruinous.’
‘But lessons,’ she replied, ‘are only of use when followed
up.’
And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband’s
permission to go to town once a week to see her lover. At
the end of a month she was even considered to have made
considerable progress.

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