One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of
a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the
garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.
He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs
shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left
his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He
pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in
a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on
the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light.
Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.
This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur
Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken
leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across
country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;
Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was
decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three
hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and
show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.
Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his
cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,
he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped
of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that
are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly
remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures
he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches
of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers
bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as
eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals
seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the
horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.
Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and,
sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent
sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double
self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and
crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices
mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron
rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife
sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the
grass at the edge of a ditch.