Page 90 - madame-bovary

the windows and put on light dresses. After she had well
scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out
to see neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all
the silver in her purse, although she was by no means ten-
der-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of others, like
most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls
something of the horny hardness of the paternal hands.
Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory
of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb turkey,
and stayed three days at Tostes. Charles being with his pa-
tients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the room,
spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry,
and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the
door on him with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised
even herself. Moreover she no longer concealed her con-
tempt for anything or anybody, and at times she set herself
to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which
others approved, and approving things perverse and im-
moral, all of which made her husband open his eyes widely.
Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue
from it? Yet she was as good as all the women who were
living happily. She had seen duchesses at Vaubyessard with
clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated
the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls
to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls,
for violent pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not
know, but that these must surely yield.
She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the
heart.