Madame Bovary's funeral

Slowly approaching the end of Flaubert's Madame Bovary - how unconventional, that she dies some 30 pages before the conclusion - and we see that the novel actually begins and ends with Charles Bovary. The novel is about her, obviously, but also about her effect on others, and in some ways, though he is in the dark throughout the entire course of his marriage, Charles Bovary just as important to the novel as she is. Flaubert treats her death lavishly, with exquisite attention to detail - from the moment she ingests the arsenic, through the horror of her symptoms and death throes, and the various forms of mourning, from Charles's sobbing to Roualt's near-hysteria to the placid indifference of Homais and the priest - and then there's the funeral procession, an obvious bookend to the marriage procession near the outset of the book. The most striking thing about the somber funeral, to me, is that great phrase: the clods of earth smacking against the coffin with that clanging sound that reminds all of us of eternity. Yes, definitely - and the phrase all the more striking because it is one of the very few in this novel when Flaubert steps out of the narration and offers to us a general comment or observation (one other would be his phrase about speech being like banging on a metal pot for bears to dance to). The funeral scene chapter has a very beautiful conclusion, in which the pharmacist's helper, the much put upon Justine, who is only a very minor character in the novel, is found sobbing at her grave site - and we suddenly see a whole other pathway for the novel - the many young men, like Leon earlier, who had an unrequited crush on Emma, the many whom her beauty may have tormented, and maybe Justine would have become one of her lovers as well - his tears sharpened by his own guilt in providing her access to the poison - and then one of the vergers in the church sees him there, sees him fleeing (out of shame or embarrassment, most likely) and suspects him, stupidly, of stealing apples (a tiny reference forward to the conclusion of Sentimental Education?). I think Flaubert might have effectively ended Madame Bovary right there - but one chapter remains.