private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his
luck, jealous of every one, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five,
sick of men, he said, and determined to live in peace.

His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a
thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once,
expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the
fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered,
grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at
first, when she had seen him going after all the village drabs, and when
a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking
drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her
anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was
constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the
lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them
renewed, and at home, ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen,
paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally
besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say
disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into
the cinders.

When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,
the lad was spoiled as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with
jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the
philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the
young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain
virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing
him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong
constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink
off large draughts of rum, and to jeer at religious processions. But,
peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His
mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him
tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety
and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the
child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of
high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an
engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even on an old piano
she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur
Bovary, car