Chapter summary
Guests arrive early, from the whole region, in carts and gigs, and the procession walks to the town hall and the church, with the fiddler in front and Emma Bovary lifting her long dress from time to time. The banquet is served under the cart shed, with roasts, fricassees and a dessert put together by the confectioner from Yvetot, a cardboard temple with a Cupid on a chocolate swing at the top. They eat until night, sing, show off their strength and kiss the women, and, when they leave, the carts race along the roads; Charles Bovary, without a gift for jokes, responds badly to the teasing that has been aimed at him since the soup. Two days later the couple leaves, with Rouault accompanying them as far as Vassonville, where he takes leave of his daughter and recalls his own marriage and his dead wife. They reach Tostes at six in the evening.
Analysis
The party belongs to everyone except the couple: the guests come from ten leagues away, eat until night, show off their strength and kiss the ladies. Emma had only asked her father to spare her the usual jokes, and Charles, with no gift for jokes, responds badly to the teasing. His mother, whom no one consulted about anything, withdraws early. For the couple, the role is to be the pretext for the celebration of others.
The next day reverses the roles of the newlyweds, and it is Charles who gives himself away. C’est lui plutôt que l’on eût pris pour la vierge de la veille, tandis que la mariée ne laissait rien découvrir où l’on pût deviner quelque chose
, it was he, rather, who would have been taken for the virgin of the day before, while the bride let nothing show from which one could guess anything.
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