chunk: When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, including Léon and Rodolphe, only to be turned down. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, preserves Emma's room as a shrine, and adopts her attitudes and tastes to keep her memory alive. In his last months, he stops working and lives by selling off his possessions. When he finds Rodolphe and Léon's love letters, he still tries to understand and forgive her. His remaining possessions are seized to pay off Lheureux. He dies, and his young daughter Berthe is placed with her grandmother, who soon dies. Berthe then lives with an impoverished aunt, who sends her to work in a cotton mill. The book concludes with the local pharmacist Homais, who had competed with Charles's medical practice, gaining prominence among Yonville people and being awarded for his medical achievements.