ing little for letters, said: "It is not worth while. Shall
we ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a
practice, or to start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always
gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked
about the village.

He went after the laborers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens
that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the
geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in
the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and
at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he
might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward
by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong of
hand, fresh of color.

When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began his
lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and
irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare
moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a
burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil
after the _Angelus_. They went up to his room and settled down; the
flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell
asleep and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his
stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,
when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum
to some sick person in the neighborhood, caught sight of Charles playing
about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour,
and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the
foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All
the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man"
had a very good memory.

Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.
Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a
struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take
his first communion.

Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to
school at Rouen, whither his father took him towards the end of October,
at the time of the St. Romain fair.

It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him.
He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in
school-h