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Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
page 21 of 449 (04%)

"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
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