Chapter 12

In time Berthe forgot her mother.  Charles was besieged by debtors and he signed more and more notes.  His mother left when he refused to sell anything that had belonged to Emma.  Félicité fled Yonville by eloping with the manservant Théodore and stole everything that was left of Emma's wardrobe.  Léon married.  One day Charles discovered Rodolphe's letter on the floor of the attic but he rationalized its meaning and closed his eyes to the evidence of adultery.  Justin ran off to Rouen and Monsieur Homais began restricting his children's visits with Berthe since he deemed her below their social status.  The blind man was not cured by Homais' salve and in order to silence the man Homais conducted a successful campaign to have him locked in an asylum.  Emboldened by his success, Homais began to adopt modern fashions and mannerisms and produced a book General Statistics Concerning the Canton of Yonville, Followed by Climatological Observations.  He assists Charles in designing Emma's tombstone.  New debts came in and Charles wrote to his mother for help.  She agreed to mortgage her house but wrote many harsh things about Emma and demanded one of her daughter-in-law's shawls that Charles refuses to let her have.  She offers to take Berthe but when the time comes for her to go Charles cannot bear to give up the child and he and his mother quarrel and irrevocably split.  Charles worries for Berthe's health.  Across the square the pharmacist and his family are prospering and after a long and desperate campaign Homais succeeds in being awarded the cross of the Legion of Honor.  One day Charles goes through Emma's desk and finds all the love letters from Léon and Rodolphe.  Unable to fool himself any longer Charles is filled with intense rage and sorrow.  He refuses to leave the house and grows a long beard.  One day he goes to the market to sell his horse and encounters Rodolphe.  They sit down for a beer and Bovary tells him that he doesn't hold the affair against him because it was decreed by fate.  Rodolphe thinks him weak and contemptible.  The next evening Charles quietly dies while sitting in the arbor holding a lock of his wife's hair.  Berthe is sent to her grandmother who dies the same year.  With Mosieur Rouault paralyzed the young girl is sent to a poor aunt's who puts the girl to work in a cotton mill.  Homais' reputation is such that no other doctors succeed in establishing a practice in Yonville.