Free Madame Bovary's Daughter by Linda Urbach Page A

that ran back and forth to create a fuzzy image of her. And the cow that was supposed to represent Céleste was far too thin.
    â€œWell,” he asked, as he smudged the black lines even more with his little finger, “what do you think, Mademoiselle Berthe?”
    â€œI think you should keep working on it,” she said, folding her arms across her chest.
    He laughed so loud and hard that she feared he might fall off his stool. She felt great pleasure that she had amused him. She couldn’t remember ever having done that before. It gave her a curious sense of power. She began to relax and enjoy posing without worrying about what to say or how to act. Some time later he stopped sketching.
    â€œWhy do you live with your grand-mère? Where are your parents?” he asked.
    â€œThey are both dead.”
    â€œOh, dear girl. I am so sorry.” His brown eyes filled with sympathy. She had a sudden urge to throw her arms around this strange, warm man. She imagined following him about the countryside, carrying his little camp stool, helping him find interesting subjects, perhaps even learning to sketch herself. He would teach her all about art and painting. She was a good student and would be eager to learn.
    Berthe had been fascinated by the practice of medicine but her father had always been too busy to answer her many questions. If he wasn’t rushing off to patients he was too preoccupied in his clinic trying to wrestle with a difficult medical problem.
    There was one day she remembered distinctly. He rushed into the kitchen where she was helping Félicité peel the potatoes.
    â€œI believe I have discovered a cure for clubfoot,” he announced.
    â€œOh, Papa, how exciting. What is clubfoot?” But he was gone before she could get an answer. Then she remembered the stable boy, Hippolyte, and how he hopped around town, thrusting hisbadly curled foot in front of him. Her father spent weeks talking the poor cripple into letting him operate on his foot. Berthe had stood by hoping to catch a view of her father’s inventive surgery, but he shut the door in her face.
    That afternoon Millet followed Berthe to the river and sketched her as she let Céleste drink. She noticed he was now using different colored papers with the black charcoal. She looked over his shoulder as he completed the sketch. Again she saw no likeness between the figure of the woman and herself, or between the scrawny cow and Céleste.
    â€œAnd this will someday become a painting?” she asked, shooing a fly away.
    â€œYes, it will be a very beautiful painting,” he said, as he worked the crayon over and over the buff-colored paper. He added three more cows, his hand moving quickly.
    â€œBut there is only one cow,” she said.
    â€œIt is called taking artistic license, Mademoiselle Berthe,” he explained, holding up the paper and squinting his eyes. He picked up a piece of red chalk and gave her a rose-colored top instead of her coarse cotton shirt. Then he quickly added a long pole in her hands. Something she would never have carried with Céleste, as it would have frightened the cow.
    â€œIf you keep adding things that aren’t there, why do you need someone to model for you? Why don’t you just draw out of your own imagination?”
    â€œAn artist uses his imagination but his inspiration comes from the world around him,” he said, putting down the sketch. “Without the real world I would have nothing to say with my pictures.” The way he spoke to her, as if she was someone worth talking to, made her think of her father again. After he had performed the surgery on Hippolyte’s foot he had been so veryproud. And so sometime later she felt encouraged to ask him about his most successful patient.
    â€œPapa, how is Hippolyte’s foot? He must be very happy to be able to walk so well.” Her father stared at her for a long moment, his expression one of great