Page 84 - madame-bovary

a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat? She could
have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been
illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers’, repeated
in the newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had
no ambition.
An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consulta-
tion had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of
the patient, before the assembled relatives. When, in the
evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed
loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He
kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was an-
gered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she
went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the
fresh air to calm herself.
‘What a man! What a man!’ she said in a low voice, bit-
ing her lips.
Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As
he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut
the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his
teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling
noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting fatter, the
puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up
to the temples.
Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-
vest unto his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw
away the dirty gloves he was going to put on; and this was
not, as he fancied, for himself; it was for herself, by a diffu-
sion of egotism, of nervous irritation. Sometimes, too, she
told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel,