Rodolphe, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the wood all day, was sleeping quietly in his chateau, and Leon, down yonder, always slept.

There was another who at that hour was not asleep.

On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees weeping, and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow beneath the load of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night.  The gate suddenly grated.  It was Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his spade, that he had forgotten.  He recognised Justin climbing over the wall, and at last knew who was the culprit who stole his potatoes.

Chapter Eleven

The next day Charles had the child brought back.  She asked for her mamma.  They told her she was away; that she would bring her back some playthings.  Berthe spoke of her again several times, then at last thought no more of her.  The child’s gaiety broke Bovary’s heart, and he had to bear besides the intolerable consolations of the chemist.

Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on anew his friend Vincart, and Charles pledged himself for exorbitant sums; for he would never consent to let the smallest of the things that had belonged to HER be sold.  His mother was exasperated with him; he grew even more angry than she did.  He had altogether changed.  She left the house.

Then everyone began “taking advantage” of him.  Mademoiselle Lempereur presented a bill for six months’ teaching, although Emma had never taken a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had shown Bovary); it was an arrangement between the two women.  The man at the circulating library demanded three years’ subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due for some twenty letters, and when Charles asked for an explanation, she had the delicacy to reply—­

“Oh, I don’t know.  It was for her business affairs.”

With every debt he paid Charles thought he had come to the end of them.  But others followed ceaselessly.  He sent in accounts for professional attendance.  He was shown the letters his wife had written.  Then he had to apologise.

Felicite now wore Madame Bovary’s gowns; not all, for he had kept some of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room, locking himself up there; she was about her height, and often Charles, seeing her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and cried out—­

“Oh, stay, stay!”

But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by Theodore, stealing all that was left of the wardrobe.

It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to inform him of the “marriage of Monsieur Leon Dupuis her son, notary at Yvetot, to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of Bondeville.”  Charles, among the other congratulations he sent him, wrote this sentence—­

“How glad my poor wife would have been!”