Part II

Chapter One

Yonville-l’Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not

even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen,

between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley

watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after

turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout

that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.

We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of

the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it

makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on

the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches

under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of

the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising,

broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The

water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour of the

roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle

with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver.

Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of

Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top

to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these

brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of

the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in

the neighboring country.

Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France,

a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is

without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchâtel

cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is

costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full

of sand and flints.

Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but

about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to

that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their

way to Flanders. Yonville-l’Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of

its “new outlet.” Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping

up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and

the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread

riverwards. It is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a

cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side.

At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted

with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in

the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards

full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries

scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to

the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach

down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses

have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the

plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree

sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small

swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread

steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower,

the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns

swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a

blacksmith’s forge and then a wheelwright’s, with two or three new

carts outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space

appears a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his

finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of

steps; scutcheons[9] blaze upon the door. It is the notary’s house, and

the finest in the place.

[9] The _panonceaux_ that have to be hung over the doors of notaries.

The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther

down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds

it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old

stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the

grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was

rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof

is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows

in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a

loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their

wooden shoes.

The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon

the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with

a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, “Mr.

So-and-so’s pew.” Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the

confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in

a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and

with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a

copy of the “Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,”

overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the

perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted.

The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts,

occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town

hall, constructed “from the designs of a Paris architect,” is a sort of

Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist’s shop. On

the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a

semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a

Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the “Charte” and holding in the other

the scales of Justice.

But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d’Or inn, the

chemist’s shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand

lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front

throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across

them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist

leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with

inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: “Vichy,

Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine,

Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,

hygienic chocolate,” etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the

breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, “Homais, Chemist.” Then at

the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the

word “Laboratory” appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about

half-way up once more repeats “Homais” in gold letters on a black

ground.

Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only

one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops

short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and

the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached.

At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall

was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all

the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore,

continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once

gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the

parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to

plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows

smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to

rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.

“You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!” the curé at last said to him one

day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time;

but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and

even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.

Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed

at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the

church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from

the linen-draper’s; the chemist’s fetuses, like lumps of white amadou,

rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of

the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its

poodle mane.

On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow

Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated

great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The

meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee

made. Moreover, she had the boarders’ meal to see to, and that of the

doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with

bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for

brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the

long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of

plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was

being chopped.

From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the

servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.

A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and

wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the

chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he

appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head

in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.

“Artémise!” shouted the landlady, “chop some wood, fill the water

bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to

offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers

are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has

been left before the front door! The ‘Hirondelle’ might run into it when

it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur

Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk

eight jars of cider! Why, they’ll tear my cloth for me,” she went on,

looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.

“That wouldn’t be much of a loss,” replied Monsieur Homais. “You would

buy another.”

“Another billiard-table!” exclaimed the widow.

“Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again

you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want

narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren’t played now; everything is

changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!”

The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on--

“You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one

were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or

the sufferers from the Lyons floods--”

“It isn’t beggars like him that’ll frighten us,” interrupted the

landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. “Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as

long as the ‘Lion d’Or’ exists people will come to it. We’ve feathered

our nest; while one of these days you’ll find the ‘Cafe Francais’ closed

with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!” she went

on, speaking to herself, “the table that comes in so handy for folding

the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six

visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn’t come!”

“Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen’s dinner?”

“Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes

six you’ll see him come in, for he hasn’t his equal under the sun for

punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He’d

rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so

particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Léon; he sometimes comes

at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn’t so much as look at what he

eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!”

“Well, you see, there’s a great difference between an educated man and

an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector.”

Six o’clock struck. Binet came in.

He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin

body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of

his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,

flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth

waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round,

well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking

out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair

whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a

garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose

hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a

fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin

rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist

and the egotism of a bourgeois.

He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out

first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet

remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and

took off his cap in his usual way.

“It isn’t with saying civil things that he’ll wear out his tongue,” said

the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady.

“He never talks more,” she replied. “Last week two travelers in the

cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the

evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a

dab fish and never said a word.”

“Yes,” observed the chemist; “no imagination, no sallies, nothing that

makes the society-man.”

“Yet they say he has parts,” objected the landlady.

“Parts!” replied Monsieur Homais; “he, parts! In his own line it is

possible,” he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--

“Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a

doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become

whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in

history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something.

Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the

bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had

put it behind my ear!”

Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the “Hirondelle”

were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into

the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his

face was rubicund and his form athletic.

“What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curé?” asked the landlady, as she

reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed

with their candles in a row. “Will you take something? A thimbleful of

_Cassis?_[10] A glass of wine?”

[10] Black currant liqueur.

The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that

he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after

asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the

evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.

When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the

square, he thought the priest’s behaviour just now very unbecoming. This

refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy;

all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days

of the tithe.

The landlady took up the defence of her curé.

“Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year

he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six

trusses at once, he is so strong.”

“Bravo!” said the chemist. “Now just send your daughters to confess to

fellows with such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I’d have

the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a

good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals.”

“Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you’ve no religion.”

The chemist answered: “I have a religion, my religion, and I even have

more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling.

I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a

Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below

to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don’t

need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my

pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one

can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the

eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of

Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith

of the ‘Savoyard Vicar,’ and the immortal principles of ‘89! And I can’t

admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a

cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies

uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd

in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,

which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in

turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.”

He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over

the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town

council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a

distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled

with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground,

and at last the “Hirondelle” stopped at the door.

It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,

prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders.

The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the

coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the

old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed

away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came

down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.

Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all

spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert

did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place

in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for

the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his

mistress, caps from the milliner’s, locks from the hair-dresser’s and

all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,

which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of

his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.

An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary’s greyhound had run across

the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had

even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight

of her; but it had been necessary to go on.

Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this misfortune.

Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with

her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs

recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had

been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another

had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four

rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve

years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street

as he was going to dine in town.

Chapter Two

Emma got out first, then Félicité, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and

they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly

since night set in.

Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his

respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render

them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had

ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.

When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney.

With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and

having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black

boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the

whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the

fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now

and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind

through the half-open door.

On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her

silently.

As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the

notary’s, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Léon Dupuis (it was he who

was the second habitue of the “Lion d’Or”) frequently put back his

dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom

he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early,

he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure

from soup to cheese a _tête-à-tête_ with Binet. It was therefore with

delight that he accepted the landlady’s suggestion that he should dine

in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour

where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the

table laid for four.

Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;

then, turning to his neighbour--

“Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in

our ‘Hirondelle.’”

“That is true,” replied Emma; “but moving about always amuses me. I like

change of place.”

“It is so tedious,” sighed the clerk, “to be always riveted to the same

places.”

“If you were like me,” said Charles, “constantly obliged to be in the

saddle”--

“But,” Léon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, “nothing, it

seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can,” he added.

“Moreover,” said the druggist, “the practice of medicine is not very

hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us

the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay

pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases

of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a

few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a

serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of

scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our

peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur

Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your

science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse

to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the

doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad,

and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I

have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade

at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or

otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a

matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of

Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on

the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous

vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle

in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say,

nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and

which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together

all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say,

and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when

there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender

insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered

on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to

say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled

themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like

breezes from Russia.”

“At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?” continued

Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.

“Oh, very few,” he answered. “There is a place they call La Pâture, on

the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I

go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset.”

“I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets,” she resumed; “but

especially by the side of the sea.”

“Oh, I adore the sea!” said Monsieur Léon.

“And then, does it not seem to you,” continued Madame Bovary, “that the

mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of

which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?”

“It is the same with mountainous landscapes,” continued Léon. “A cousin

of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could

not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the

waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of

incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices,

and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such

spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I

no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire

his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some

imposing site.”

“You play?” she asked.

“No, but I am very fond of music,” he replied.

“Ah! don’t you listen to him, Madame Bovary,” interrupted Homais,

bending over his plate. “That’s sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the

other day in your room you were singing ‘L’Ange Gardien’ ravishingly. I

heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor.”

Léon, in fact, lodged at the chemist’s where he had a small room on the

second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his

landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to

him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He

was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary

was not known exactly, and “there was the Tuvache household,” who made a

good deal of show.

Emma continued, “And what music do you prefer?”

“Oh, German music; that which makes you dream.”

“Have you been to the opera?”

“Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish

reading for the bar.”

“As I had the honour of putting it to your husband,” said the chemist,

“with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find

yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the

most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a

doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen.

Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a

laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He

was a gay dog, who didn’t care what he spent. At the end of the garden,

by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of

drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be

able--”

“My wife doesn’t care about it,” said Charles; “although she has

been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room

reading.”

“Like me,” replied Léon. “And indeed, what is better than to sit by

one’s fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against

the window and the lamp is burning?”

“What, indeed?” she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon

him.

“One thinks of nothing,” he continued; “the hours slip by. Motionless we

traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with

the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the

adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were

yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.”

“That is true! That is true?” she said.

“Has it ever happened to you,” Léon went on, “to come across some vague

idea of one’s own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from

afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?”

“I have experienced it,” she replied.

“That is why,” he said, “I especially love the poets. I think verse more

tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears.”

“Still in the long run it is tiring,” continued Emma. “Now I, on the

contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one.

I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are

in nature.”

“In fact,” observed the clerk, “these works, not touching the heart,

miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all

the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble

characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself,

living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville

affords so few resources.”

“Like Tostes, no doubt,” replied Emma; “and so I always subscribed to a

lending library.”

“If madame will do me the honour of making use of it”, said the chemist,

who had just caught the last words, “I have at her disposal a library

composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter

Scott, the ‘Echo des Feuilletons’; and in addition I receive various

periodicals, among them the ‘Fanal de Rouen’ daily, having the advantage

to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchâtel,

Yonville, and vicinity.”

For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant

Artémis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags,

brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly

left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against

the wall with its hooks.

Unconsciously, Léon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the

bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small

blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar,

and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently

sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while

Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague

conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to

the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of

novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where

she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked

of everything till to the end of dinner.

When coffee was served Félicité went away to get ready the room in the

new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was

asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was

waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw

stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had

taken in his other hand the cure’s umbrella, they started.

The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the

earth was all grey as on a summer’s night. But as the doctor’s house was

only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost

immediately, and the company dispersed.

As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster

fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the

wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish

light passed through the curtainless windows.

She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields,

half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along

the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were

scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses

on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the

furniture had left everything about carelessly.

This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place.

The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her

arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth.

And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in

her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in

the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life

lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be

better.

Chapter Three

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She

had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and

reclosed the window.

Léon waited all day for six o’clock in the evening to come, but on going

to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The

dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he

had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a “lady.” How

then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of

things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually

shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and

dissimulation.

At Yonville he was considered “well-bred.” He listened to the arguments

of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable

thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in

water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature

after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him

for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for

he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were

always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their

mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the

chemist’s apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been

taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time

as a servant.

The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary

information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider

merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly

placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a

supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the

sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked

after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,

according to the taste of the customers.

The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the

chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it

all.

He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which

forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that,

after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen

to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate

receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was

in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard

the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise

great locks that were shut. The druggist’s ears tingled as if he were

about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons,

his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was

obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover

his spirits.

Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and

he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his

back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous,

everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his

attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later

on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him “the

paper,” and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to

have a chat with the Doctor.

Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours

without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched

his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a

workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been

left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had

spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame’s toilette, and for the

moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped

away in two years.

Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from

Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out

of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand

fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came

to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her

confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of

the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment

of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and

her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one

another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her

armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her,

passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to

make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of

caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having

begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human

life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.

Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be

delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not

being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a

swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit

of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the

whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing

anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that

stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the

very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.

As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to

think of him more consecutively.

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him

George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected

revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he

may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste

of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once

inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and

legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a

string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws

her, some conventionality that restrains.

She was confined on a Sunday at about six o’clock, as the sun was

rising.

“It is a girl!” said Charles.

She turned her head away and fainted.

Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d’Or, almost

immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of

discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the

half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made.

Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a

name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian

endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde

pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better.

Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed

this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted

outsiders.

“Monsieur Léon,” said the chemist, “with whom I was talking about it

the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in

fashion just now.”

But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a

sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that

recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it

was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon

represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to

romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the

French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere

with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of

sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination

and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the

ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded

all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic

over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,

but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for

their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in

which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with

both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour.

At last Emma remembered that at the château of Vaubyessard she had heard

the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was

chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested

to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment,

to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of

marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that

he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there

was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement.

Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing “Le Dieu des bonnes

gens.” Monsieur Léon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who

was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary,

senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing

it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery

of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old

Bovary replied by a quotation from “La Guerre des Dieux”; the cure

wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they

succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on

with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.

Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the

natives by a superb policeman’s cap with silver tassels that he wore

in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the

habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant

to the Lion d’Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his

son’s account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his

daughter-in-law’s whole supply of eau-de-cologne.

The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the

world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier

times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had

partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs,

or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, “Charles, look

out for yourself.”

Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son’s happiness, and

fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence

upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure.

Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was

not the man to respect anything.

One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little

girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter’s wife, and, without

looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were

yet passed, she set out for the Rollets’ house, situated at the extreme

end of the village, between the highroad and the fields.

It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate

roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to

strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing;

Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she

was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to

rest.

At this moment Monsieur Léon came out from a neighbouring door with a

bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the

shade in front of the Lheureux’s shop under the projecting grey awning.

Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was

beginning to grow tired.

“If--” said Léon, not daring to go on.

“Have you any business to attend to?” she asked.

And on the clerk’s answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same

evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor’s

wife, declared in the presence of her servant that “Madame Bovary was

compromising herself.”

To get to the nurse’s it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving

the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little

houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were

in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the

sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in

the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or

tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two,

side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining

his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges

fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.

They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it.

Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the

dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright

against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of

lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here

and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags,

knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse

linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared

with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was

pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula,

the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their

business, left in the country.

“Go in,” she said; “your little one is there asleep.”

The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its

farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a

kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which

was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,

shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,

near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu

Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and

bits of amadou.

Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a “Fame” blowing her

trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer’s prospectus

and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.

Emma’s child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the

wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked

herself to and fro.

Léon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this

beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.

Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been

an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who

had just been sick over her collar.

The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn’t show.

“She gives me other doses,” she said: “I am always a-washing of her. If

you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have

a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn’t

trouble you then.”

“Very well! very well!” said Emma. “Good morning, Madame Rollet,” and

she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.

The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the

time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.

“I’m that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I’m sure you

might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that’d last me a

month, and I’d take it of a morning with some milk.”

After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a

little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned

round. It was the nurse.

“What is it?”

Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began

talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year

that the captain--

“Oh, be quick!” said Emma.

“Well,” the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, “I’m afraid

he’ll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--”

“But you are to have some,” Emma repeated; “I will give you some. You

bother me!”

“Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he

has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him.”

“Do make haste, Mere Rollet!”

“Well,” the latter continued, making a curtsey, “if it weren’t asking

too much,” and she curtsied once more, “if you would”--and her eyes

begged--“a jar of brandy,” she said at last, “and I’d rub your little

one’s feet with it; they’re as tender as one’s tongue.”

Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Léon’s arm. She walked

fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of

her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat

had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and

carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one

wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk’s chief occupations to

trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing

desk.

They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the

bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls

whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift,

and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the

current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like

streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a

water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced

with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed

each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in

the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the

dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard

nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the

path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma’s dress rustling round

her.

The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were

hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up

between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary,

as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow

dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its

fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.

They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected

shortly at the Rouen theatre.

“Are you going?” she asked.

“If I can,” he answered.

Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full

of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial

phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the

whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices.

Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of

speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like

tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn

softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication

without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.

In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to

step on large green stones put here and there in the mud.

She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and

tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent

forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling

into the puddles of water.

When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the

little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.

Léon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the

briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went

out.

He went to La Pâture at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of

the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched

the sky through his fingers.

“How bored I am!” he said to himself, “how bored I am!”

He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais

for a friend and Monsieur Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely

absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red

whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements,

although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had

impressed the clerk.

As to the chemist’s spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle

as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins,

weeping for other’s woes, letting everything go in her household, and

detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so

common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although

she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each

other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a

woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than

the gown.

And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three

publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his

two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands

and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable

companions.

But from the general background of all these human faces Emma’s stood

out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to

see a vague abyss.

In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the

druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him

again, and Léon did not know what to do between his fear of being

indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.

Chapter Four

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the

sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was

on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the

looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see

the villagers pass along the pavement.

Twice a day Léon went from his office to the Lion d’Or. Emma could hear

him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man

glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without

turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her

left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she

often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past.

She would get up and order the table to be laid.

Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on

tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase,

“Good evening, everybody.” Then, when he had taken his seat at the table

between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter

consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked

of “what was in the paper.”

Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end

to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories

of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But

the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some

remarks on the dishes before him.

Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the

tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the

manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning.

He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner.

Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars,

excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs;

he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with

the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.

At eight o’clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop.

Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Félicité was

there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor’s

house.

“The young dog,” he said, “is beginning to have ideas, and the devil

take me if I don’t believe he’s in love with your servant!”

But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his

constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could

not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called

him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs,

and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too

large.

Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist’s, his

scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated

various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be

there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took

her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that

she wore over her boots when there was snow.

First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais

played ecarte with Emma; Léon behind her gave her advice.

Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of

her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made

to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her

turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually

paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell

on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the

ground. When Léon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it,

he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.

When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played

dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table,

turning over the leaves of “L’Illustration”. She had brought her ladies’

journal with her. Léon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings

together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She

often begged him to read her the verses; Léon declaimed them in a

languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love

passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais

was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.

Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in

front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the

cinders; the teapot was empty, Léon was still reading.

Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the

gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances

with their balancing-poles. Léon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his

sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation

seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard.

Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce

of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did

not trouble himself about it.

On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked

with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of

the clerk’s. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him

at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses

fashionable, Léon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on

his knees in the “Hirondelle,” pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.

She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the

pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other

tending their flowers at their windows.

Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for

on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was

bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of

Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be

heard at the Lion d’Or.

One evening on coming home Léon found in his room a rug in velvet and

wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur

Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;

every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor’s wife give the

clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his

lover.

He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and

of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him--

“What does it matter to me since I’m not in her set?”

He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to

her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the

shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.

Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put

it off to times that he again deferred.

Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution

soon deserted him in Emma’s presence, and when Charles, dropping in,

invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient

in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went

out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma,

she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come

suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies,

which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf,

and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on

the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she

would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a

rent in the wall of it.

Chapter Five

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.

They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Léon,

gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a

half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give

them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas

on his shoulder.

Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great

piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and

stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a

quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The

building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the

roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed

with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.

Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance

of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the

thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick

such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.

Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and

she looked at the sun’s disc shedding afar through the mist his pale

splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over

his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look

of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating

to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the

bearer.

While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of

depraved pleasure, Léon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale

seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and

his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the

lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large

blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more

beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.

“Wretched boy!” suddenly cried the chemist.

And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of

lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was

being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes

with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his.

“Ah!” she said to herself, “he carried a knife in his pocket like a

peasant.”

The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.

In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour’s, and when

Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began

with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that

lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from

her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had

down there, Léon standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with

the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She

thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she

recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the

sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her

lips as if for a kiss--

“Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?” she asked herself; “but

with whom? With me?”

All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of

the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back,

stretching out her arms.

Then began the eternal lamentation: “Oh, if Heaven had not willed it!

And why not? What prevented it?”

When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened,

and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then

asked carelessly what had happened that evening.

“Monsieur Léon,” he said, “went to his room early.”

She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a

new delight.

The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lheureux, the

draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but

bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of

the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a

decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the

keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been

formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others.

What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that

would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always

held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who

invites.

After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down

a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with

many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without

gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract

a “fashionable lady”; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to

command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might

wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for

he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the

best houses. You could speak of him at the “Trois Freres,” at the “Barbe

d’Or,” or at the “Grand Sauvage”; all these gentlemen knew him as

well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show

madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to

the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered

collars from the box.

Madame Bovary examined them. “I do not require anything,” she said.

Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves,

several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and

finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts.

Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure

bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma’s look, who was walking up

and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove

some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread

out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the

green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little

stars.

“How much are they?”

“A mere nothing,” he replied, “a mere nothing. But there’s no hurry;

whenever it’s convenient. We are not Jews.”

She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur

Lheureux’s offer. He replied quite unconcernedly--

“Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got

on with ladies--if I didn’t with my own!”

Emma smiled.

“I wanted to tell you,” he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, “that

it isn’t the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some,

if need be.”

She made a gesture of surprise.

“Ah!” said he quickly and in a low voice, “I shouldn’t have to go far to

find you some, rely on that.”

And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the “Cafe

Francais,” whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.

“What’s the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his

whole house, and I’m afraid he’ll soon want a deal covering rather than

a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people,

madame, have not the least regularity; he’s burnt up with brandy. Still

it’s sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off.”

And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor’s

patients.

“It’s the weather, no doubt,” he said, looking frowningly at the floor,

“that causes these illnesses. I, too, don’t feel the thing. One of these

days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my

back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble

servant.” And he closed the door gently.

Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she

was a long time over it; everything was well with her.

“How good I was!” she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.

She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Léon. She got up and took

from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When

he came in she seemed very busy.

The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes,

whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near

the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She

stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with

her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence,

as he would have been by her speech.

“Poor fellow!” she thought.

“How have I displeased her?” he asked himself.

At last, however, Léon said that he should have, one of these days, to

go to Rouen on some office business.

“Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?”

“No,” she replied.

“Why?”

“Because--”

And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread.

This work irritated Léon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers.

A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.

“Then you are giving it up?” he went on.

“What?” she asked hurriedly. “Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to

look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many

duties that must be considered first?”

She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected anxiety.

Two or three times she even repeated, “He is so good!”

The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf

astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises,

which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist.

“Ah! he is a good fellow,” continued Emma.

“Certainly,” replied the clerk.

And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance

generally made them laugh.

“What does it matter?” interrupted Emma. “A good housewife does not

trouble about her appearance.”

Then she relapsed into silence.

It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners,

everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church

regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity.

She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Félicité brought her

in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared

she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion,

and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have

reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in “Notre Dame de

Paris.”

When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire.

His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was

quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles

of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn

in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not

understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when

Léon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,

his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes

moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this

woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his

forehead: “What madness!” he said to himself. “And how to reach her!”

And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all

hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on

an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly

attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she

rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent

manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure

feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because

they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion

rejoices.

Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black

hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always

silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely

touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine

destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,

that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder

in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the

marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist

said--

“She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn’t be misplaced in a

sub-prefecture.”

The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the

poor her charity.

But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with

the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste

lips said nothing. She was in love with Léon, and sought solitude that

she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his

form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at

the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and

afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended

in sorrow.

Léon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had

gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings

and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find

an excuse for going to his room. The chemist’s wife seemed happy to her

to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon

this house, like the “Lion d’Or” pigeons, who came there to dip their

red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised

her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident,

that she might make it less. She would have liked Léon to guess it, and

she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.

What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of

shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was

past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to

herself, “I am virtuous,” and to look at herself in the glass taking

resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she

was making.

Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy

of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of

turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself

to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by

an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had

not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow

home.

What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her

anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an

imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose

sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all

felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of

that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.

On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that

resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented

it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,

and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own

gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity

drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires.

She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better

right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised

sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and

she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she

was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.

Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the

temptation to flee somewhere with Léon to try a new life; but at once a

vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.

“Besides, he no longer loves me,” she thought. “What is to become of me?

What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?”

She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with

flowing tears.

“Why don’t you tell master?” the servant asked her when she came in

during these crises.

“It is the nerves,” said Emma. “Do not speak to him of it; it would

worry him.”

“Ah! yes,” Félicité went on, “you are just like La Guerine, Pere

Guerin’s daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at

Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her

standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a

winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was

a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do

anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went

off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his

rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle.

Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say.”

“But with me,” replied Emma, “it was after marriage that it began.”

Chapter Six

One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been

watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard

the Angelus ringing.

It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a

warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like

women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars

of the arbour and away beyond the river seen in the fields, meandering

through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between

the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler

and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches.

In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing

could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its

peaceful lamentation.

With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost

themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered

the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the

altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked

to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here

and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over

their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the

gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense.

Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the

down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she

went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that

her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.

On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not

to shorten his day’s labour, he preferred interrupting his work,

then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own

convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads

of catechism hour.

Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the

cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their

clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the

newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but

stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.

The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure

made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the

humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the

great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on

the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the

air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow

nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was

burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a

distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of

the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and

the corners.

“Where is the cure?” asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was

amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it.

“He is just coming,” he answered.

And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien appeared;

the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.

“These young scamps!” murmured the priest, “always the same!”

Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with his

foot, “They respect nothing!” But as soon as he caught sight of Madame

Bovary, “Excuse me,” he said; “I did not recognise you.”

He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing

the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.

The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the

lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem.

Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines

of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his

neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was

dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of

his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily.

“How are you?” he added.

“Not well,” replied Emma; “I am ill.”

“Well, and so am I,” answered the priest. “These first warm days weaken

one most remarkably, don’t they? But, after all, we are born to suffer,

as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?”

“He!” she said with a gesture of contempt.

“What!” replied the good fellow, quite astonished, “doesn’t he prescribe

something for you?”

“Ah!” said Emma, “it is no earthly remedy I need.”

But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the

kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs

of cards.

“I should like to know--” she went on.

“You look out, Riboudet,” cried the priest in an angry voice; “I’ll warm

your ears, you imp!” Then turning to Emma, “He’s Boudet the carpenter’s

son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he

could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes

for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to

Maromme) and I even say ‘Mon Riboudet.’ Ha! Ha! ‘Mont Riboudet.’ The

other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he

condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?”

She seemed not to hear him. And he went on--

“Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest

people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body,” he added with a

thick laugh, “and I of the soul.”

She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. “Yes,” she said, “you

solace all sorrows.”

“Ah! don’t talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to

Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell.

All their cows, I don’t know how it is--But pardon me! Longuemarre and

Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?”

And with a bound he ran into the church.

The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over

the precentor’s footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were

just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly

distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of

their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their

knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them

there.

“Yes,” said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton

handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, “farmers are

much to be pitied.”

“Others, too,” she replied.

“Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example.”

“It is not they--”

“Pardon! I’ve there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I

assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread.”

“But those,” replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she

spoke, “those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--”

“Fire in the winter,” said the priest.

“Oh, what does that matter?”

“What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and

food--for, after all--”

“My God! my God!” she sighed.

“It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink

a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water

with a little moist sugar.”

“Why?” And she looked like one awaking from a dream.

“Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought

you felt faint.” Then, bethinking himself, “But you were asking me

something? What was it? I really don’t remember.”

“I? Nothing! nothing!” repeated Emma.

And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the

cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking.

“Then, Madame Bovary,” he said at last, “excuse me, but duty first, you

know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will

soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after

Ascension Day I keep them _recta_[11] an extra hour every Wednesday.

Poor children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord,

as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his

Divine Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband.”

[11] On the straight and narrow path.

And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached

the door.

Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with a

heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two

hands half-open behind him.

Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot,

and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices

of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her.

“Are you a Christian?”

“Yes, I am a Christian.”

“What is a Christian?”

“He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--”

She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and

when she was in her room threw herself into an arm-chair.

The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations.

The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to

lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out,

the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of

all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was

there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted

shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her

apron-strings.

“Leave me alone,” said the latter, putting her from her with her hand.

The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on

them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a

small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron.

“Leave me alone,” repeated the young woman quite irritably.

Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.

“Will you leave me alone?” she said, pushing her with her elbow.

Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting

her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame Bovary sprang to

lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her

might, and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It

was the dinner-hour; he had come home.

“Look, dear!” said Emma, in a calm voice, “the little one fell down

while she was playing, and has hurt herself.”

Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for

some sticking plaster.

Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished

to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her sleep, the

little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid

to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little.

Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed.

Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big tears

lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one

could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew

the skin obliquely.

“It is very strange,” thought Emma, “how ugly this child is!”

When at eleven o’clock Charles came back from the chemist’s shop,

whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the

sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle.

“I assure you it’s nothing.” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

“Don’t worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill.”

He had stayed a long time at the chemist’s. Although he had not seemed

much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to

“keep up his spirits.” Then they had talked of the various dangers that

threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew

something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin

full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and

her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not

sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows

and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homais, in spite of

their spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the

slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until

they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded

head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais’; her

husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences

of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went so far as

to say to her, “Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?”

Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation.

“I should like to speak to you,” he had whispered in the clerk’s ear,

who went upstairs in front of him.

“Can he suspect anything?” Léon asked himself. His heart beat, and he

racked his brain with surmises.

At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself

what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes. It was a

sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his

portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know “how much it would

be.” The inquiries would not put Monsieur Léon out, since he went to

town almost every week.

Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some “young man’s affair” at the bottom

of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Léon was after no love-making.

He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of

food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned

the tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he “wasn’t paid by the

police.”

All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Léon often

threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely of life.

“It’s because you don’t take enough recreation,” said the collector.

“What recreation?”

“If I were you I’d have a lathe.”

“But I don’t know how to turn,” answered the clerk.

“Ah! that’s true,” said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of

mingled contempt and satisfaction.

Léon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning

to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of

life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored

with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons,

of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good

fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet

the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced

him.

This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar

sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he

was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented

him? And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations

beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an

artist’s life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have

a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was

admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death’s head

on the guitar above them.

The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed

more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other

chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course,

then, Léon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none,

and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which

he set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She

consented.

He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises,

parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville;

and when Léon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs

restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had made more

preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from week

to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to

leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation.

When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin

sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to

carry his friend’s overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary,

who was taking Léon to Rouen in his carriage.

The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary.

When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out of

breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary arose hurriedly.

“It is I again!” said Léon.

“I was sure of it!”

She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her

red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained

standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot.

“The doctor is not here?” he went on.

“He is out.” She repeated, “He is out.”

Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their thoughts,

confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing

breasts.

“I should like to kiss Berthe,” said Léon.

Emma went down a few steps and called Félicité.

He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the

decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away

everything. But she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was

swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of a string. Léon kissed

her several times on the neck.

“Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!” And he gave

her back to her mother.

“Take her away,” she said.

They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed

against a window-pane; Léon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly

against his thigh.

“It is going to rain,” said Emma.

“I have a cloak,” he answered.

“Ah!”

She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward.

The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the

eyebrows, without one’s being able to guess what Emma was seeing on the

horizon or what she was thinking within herself.

“Well, good-bye,” he sighed.

She raised her head with a quick movement.

“Yes, good-bye--go!”

They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.

“In the English fashion, then,” she said, giving her own hand wholly to

him, and forcing a laugh.

Léon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being

seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their

eyes met again, and he disappeared.

When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to

look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds.

He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the

curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it,

slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single

movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Léon

set off running.

From afar he saw his employer’s gig in the road, and by it a man in

a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were

talking. They were waiting for him.

“Embrace me,” said the druggist with tears in his eyes. “Here is your

coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after

yourself.”

“Come, Léon, jump in,” said the notary.

Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs uttered

these three sad words--

“A pleasant journey!”

“Good-night,” said Monsieur Guillaumin. “Give him his head.” They set

out, and Homais went back.

Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched

the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and

then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great

rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy,

while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust

of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered

against the green leaves.

Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in

the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed

away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia.

“Ah! how far off he must be already!” she thought.

Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.

“Well,” said he, “so we’ve sent off our young friend!”

“So it seems,” replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; “Any news

at home?”

“Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know

women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be

wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more

malleable than ours.”

“Poor Léon!” said Charles. “How will he live at Paris? Will he get used

to it?”

Madame Bovary sighed.

“Get along!” said the chemist, smacking his lips. “The outings at

restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that’ll be jolly

enough, I assure you.”

“I don’t think he’ll go wrong,” objected Bovary.

“Nor do I,” said Monsieur Homais quickly; “although he’ll have to do

like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don’t know what

a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with actresses. Besides,

students are thought a great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few

accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even

ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which

subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches.”

“But,” said the doctor, “I fear for him that down there--”

“You are right,” interrupted the chemist; “that is the reverse of the

medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one’s hand in one’s pocket

there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual

presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom one

would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself;

offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more

intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house,

introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and

three-fourths of the time it’s only to plunder your watch or lead you

into some pernicious step.

“That is true,” said Charles; “but I was thinking especially of

illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the

provinces.”

Emma shuddered.

“Because of the change of regimen,” continued the chemist, “and of the

perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the

water at Paris, don’t you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the

spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever

people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always

preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying

pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the

professors.”

And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal

likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was

wanted.

“Not a moment’s peace!” he cried; “always at it! I can’t go out for a

minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling.

What drudgery!” Then, when he was at the door, “By the way, do you know

the news?”

“What news?”

“That it is very likely,” Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and

assuming one of his most serious expression, “that the agricultural

meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at

Yonville-l’Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the round. This

morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance

for our district. But we’ll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you;

Justin has the lantern.”

Chapter Seven