CHAPTER TEN

At first reading the letter that Homais had sent him, old Rouault had fallen to the floor in shock, then he read the letter again, and thought she wasn't dead. But yet, she might be ... Finally, he got his things ready and left for Yonville. He told himself along the way that she would certainly live. Of course the doctors could save her.

He arrived, and his first sight was of the coffin.

"My girl! My Emma! My child! How did it ... ?"

"I don't know, I don't know!" answered Charles as he cried.

Charles tried to imagine that she had gone away, gone long ago, on a distant journey, and that they would meet again. But then he remembered that her body was being carried away, to be placed in the ground below, and he was filled with sadness.

"Do you remember me coming to Tostes once when you had lost your first wife? I comforted you then. I found something to say then. But now ... " Monsieur Rouault told his son-in-law, through tears. "There's nothing left for me now, my boy! I've seen my wife go, and now today it's my daughter!"

He told Charles he couldn't sleep in that house, and left for Les Bertaux immediately. He even refused to see his granddaughter.

"It'd upset me too much. But give her a big kiss for me!" he said as he left.

Charles and his mother stayed up very late talking. They decided that she would come to live at Yonville to take care of the house, and they would never part again; she was secretly delighted. Charles could not sleep, thinking only of her.

Rodolphe slept peacefully that night; far away, Leon was sleeping, too.

There was one other who was still awake that night. Poor Justin was kneeling on Madame Bovary's grave, shaking as he cried.

(end of section)