It was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed.
After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market town called Yonville-l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week before.

Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's health did not improve.
One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger.

It was a wire of her wedding bouquet.
The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges.

She threw it into the fire.

It flared up more quickly than dry straw.