During the first period of Charles’s visits to the Bertaux, Madame Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault.  But when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called “a good education”; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider and play the piano.  That was the last straw.

“So it is for this,” she said to herself, “that his face beams when he goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it with the rain.  Ah! that woman!  That woman!”

And she detested her instinctively.  At first she solaced herself by allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer.  “Why did he go back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn’t paid yet?  Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to talk, to embroider, to be witty.  That was what he cared about; he wanted town misses.”  And she went on—­

“The daughter of old Rouault a town miss!  Get out!  Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel.  It is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess.  Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn’t been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears.”

For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux.  Heloise made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love.  He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her.  And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings.

Charles’s mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations.  It was wrong of him to eat so much.