Page 454 - madame-bovary

dressed a petition to the sovereign in which he implored
him to ‘do him justice”; he called him ‘our good king,’ and
compared him to Henri IV.
And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to
see if his nomination were in it. It was never there. At last,
unable to bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden
designed to represent the Star of the Cross of Honour with
two little strips of grass running from the top to imitate the
ribband. He walked round it with folded arms, meditating
on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men.
From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made
him carry on his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet
opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which Emma
had generally used. One day, however, he sat down before
it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Leon’s letters
were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured
them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the fur-
niture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying
aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box and broke it open
with a kick. Rodolphe’s portrait flew full in his face in the
midst of the overturned love-letters.
People wondered at his despondency. He never went out,
saw no one, refused even to visit his patients. Then they said
‘he shut himself up to drink.’
Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on
to the garden hedge, and saw with amazement this long-
bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as he
walked up and down.
In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him