the people he had met, the villages where he had been,
the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he
finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off
the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to
bed, and lay on his back and snored.

As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief
would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was
all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of
the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore
thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely
towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that was "quite good
enough for the country."

His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
when there had been some violent scene at her place; and yet Madame
Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought
"her ways too fine for their position;" the wood, the sugar, and the
candles disappeared as at "a grand establishment," and the amount of
firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses.
She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to
keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with
these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words
"daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by
little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice
trembling with anger.

In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the
favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion
from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched
her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the
windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as
remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to
adore her so exclusively.

Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved
his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,
and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madame
Bovary had gone he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or
two of the more anodyne observations