Page 45 - madame-bovary

house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks,
agricultural implements past service, and a mass of dusty
things whose use it was impossible to guess.
The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud
walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that
separated it from the field. In the middle was a slate sundial
on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with eglantines sur-
rounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed.
Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in
plaster reading his breviary.
Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished,
but in the second, which was their bedroom, was a ma-
hogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery. A shell box
adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary near the
window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin
ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride’s bouquet; it was
the other one’s. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took
it and carried it up to the attic, while Emma seated in an
arm-chair (they were putting her things down around her)
thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox, and
wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she
were to die.
During the first days she occupied herself in thinking
about changes in the house. She took the shades off the can-
dlesticks, had new wallpaper put up, the staircase repainted,
and seats made in the garden round the sundial; she even
inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and
fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive
out, picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new

Madame Bovary