But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, "It was not worth while.

Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in business?
Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village.
He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about.

He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing.

Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour.
When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began lessons.

The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use.