Page 451 - madame-bovary

social problem: moralisation of the poorer classes, piscicul-
ture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at
being a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked.
He bought two chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his
drawing-room.
He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he
kept well abreast of new discoveries. He followed the great
movement of chocolates; he was the first to introduce ‘cocoa’
and ‘revalenta’ into the Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusias-
tic about the hydro-electric Pulvermacher chains; he wore
one himself, and when at night he took off his flannel vest,
Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden
spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour re-
double for this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and
splendid as one of the Magi.
He had fine ideas about Emma’s tomb. First he proposed
a broken column with some drapery, next a pyramid, then
a Temple of Vesta, a sort of rotunda, or else a ‘mass of ruins.’
And in all his plans Homais always stuck to the weeping
willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable symbol
of sorrow.
Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to look
at some tombs at a funeral furnisher’s, accompanied by
an artist, one Vaufrylard, a friend of Bridoux’s, who made
puns all the time. At last, after having examined some hun-
dred designs, having ordered an estimate and made another
journey to Rouen, Charles decided in favour of a mauso-
leum, which on the two principal sides was to have a ‘spirit
bearing an extinguished torch.’

0 Madame Bovary