Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table, sitting in an armchair at his bureau under the phrenological head.

Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they had many long consultations together on the subject of Emma.

What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all medical treatment? “Do you know what your wife wants?” replied Madame Bovary senior.

“She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn’t have these vapours, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in which she lives.”

“Yet she is always busy,” said Charles.