Chapter summary
Uncle Rouault, who received Homais's letter thirty-six hours after the death, arrives on horseback in Yonville in despair. In the church, among the chants, Hippolyte appears with his new leg, and Charles Bovary, who strives to show courage, throws a five-franc coin to the precentor who takes the collection; the procession leaves the church to the sound of the De profundis and crosses the field to the grave. Abbé Bournisien throws the first shovelful of earth onto the coffin, Homais passes the aspergillum, and Charles, who tries to throw himself into the grave, is pulled away. At home, uncle Rouault says goodbye without wanting to see his granddaughter, and that night the young Justin weeps over the grave, until Lestiboudois catches him jumping the wall.
Analysis
Rouault gallops until he bloodies the horse, because Homais's letter, written out of consideration for his sensitivity, did not say whether Emma was dead. Between hope, with miraculous cures and doctors who would find a remedy, the idea that they had got the name wrong, and visions of his daughter stretched out in the middle of the road, he alternates. The reason for his haste is what Homais left unsaid; Charles, when he receives him, only repeats that he does not know, that it is a curse.
The father of Emma Bovary, Rouault, rides to Yonville in panic and despair (one of the few sorrows in the book that carries no calculation). Before the burial, during the Mass, one of those present announces himself by the sound of a wooden leg with an iron tip striking the flagstones of the church:
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