Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in his
examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night
to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused
him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners,
encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight.
It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was
old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man
born of him could be a fool.
So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,
ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty
well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.
Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old
doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his
death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was
installed, opposite his place, as his successor.
But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him
taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practice it;
he must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at
Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs.
Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as
the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her
ends Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in
very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the
priests.
Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he
would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his
wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast
every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients
who did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings,
and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his
surgery.
She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She
constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of
footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to
her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles
returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from
beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit
down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he
was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be
unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little
more love.