Page 91 - madame-bovary

Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Every-
thing that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more.
On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and
this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of
torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without
moving. What then revived her was pouring a bottle of eau-
de-cologne over her arms.
As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles
fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local
cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of
setting up elsewhere.
From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp
little cough, and completely lost her appetite.
It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there
four years and ‘when he was beginning to get on there.’ Yet
if it must be! He took her to Rouen to see his old master. It
was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed.
After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles
learnt that in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a
considerable market town called Yonville-l’Abbaye, whose
doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week before. Then
he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the
population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his
predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer
being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards
the spring, if Emma’s health did not improve.
One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying
a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her
wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with

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