Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more. On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was pouring a bottle of eaude-cologne over her arms. As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere. From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite. It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and ‘when he was beginning to get on there.’ Yet if it must be! He took her to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed. After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market town called Yonville-l’Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma’s health did not improve. One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with 90
Madame Bovary