Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an

interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren,

about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took

away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook,

minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, his

tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table

lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of

bandages--every bandage to be found at the druggist’s. It was Monsieur

Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations,

as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles

pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the

operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over

Bovary’s hands to cover them with kisses.

“Come, be calm,” said the druggist; “later on you will show your

gratitude to your benefactor.”

And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were

waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would reappear

walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the

machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door.

She threw herself on his neck; they sat down to table; he ate much,

and at dessert he even wanted to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he only

permitted himself on Sundays when there was company.

The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They

talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in

their house; he saw people’s estimation of him growing, his comforts

increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh

herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some

tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe

for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to

Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth.

They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly

entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It

was the paragraph he intended for the “Fanal de Rouen.” He brought it

for them to read.

“Read it yourself,” said Bovary.

He read--

“‘Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of Europe

like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country

places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the

scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of

loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished

practitioners--’”

“Oh, that is too much! too much!” said Charles, choking with emotion.

“No, no! not at all! What next!”

“‘--Performed an operation on a club-footed man.’ I have not used the

scientific term, because you know in a newspaper everyone would not

perhaps understand. The masses must--’”

“No doubt,” said Bovary; “go on!”

“I proceed,” said the chemist. “‘Monsieur Bovary, one of our most

distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man

called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at

the hotel of the “Lion d’Or,” kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place

d’Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the

subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was

a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The

operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a

few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the

rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The

patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained

of no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be

desired. Everything tends to show that his convelescence will be brief;

and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our

good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus

of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve

and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants!

Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the

amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour!

Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame

walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science

now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to

the successive phases of this remarkable cure.’”

This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days after,

scared, and crying out--

“Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!”

Charles rushed to the “Lion d’Or,” and the chemist, who caught sight

of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared

himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone who was going up

the stairs--

“Why, what’s the matter with our interesting strephopode?”

The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine

in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to

break it.

With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb,

the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines

of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed

about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous

machine. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No

attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not

been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly had

the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit

to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten

matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it

any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised

at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with

blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid. Matters

were taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mere

Lefrancois, had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so

that he might at least have some distraction.

But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of

such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room.

He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale with long beard,

sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the

dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him.

She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged

him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days,

when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him,

fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled.

“How are you?” they said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Ah! you’re not

up to much, it seems, but it’s your own fault. You should do this! do

that!” And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured

by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added--

“You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the

same, old chap, you don’t smell nice!”

Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned

sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him

with eyes full of terror, sobbing--

“When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! How

unfortunate I am!”

And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself.

“Don’t listen to him, my lad,” said Mere Lefrancois, “Haven’t they

tortured you enough already? You’ll grow still weaker. Here! swallow

this.”

And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of

bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the

strength to put to his lips.

Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him.

He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he

ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take

advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven.

“For,” said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, “you rather neglected

your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is

it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work,

that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your

salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don’t despair. I have

known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet

at this point I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in

the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a

good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying

morning and evening a ‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ and ‘Our Father which

art in heaven’? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won’t cost

you anything. Will you promise me?”

The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted

with the landlady; and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and

puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he

fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression

of face.

His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire

to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur

Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better

than one; it was no risk anyhow.

The druggist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the

priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte’s convalescence,

and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, “Leave him alone! leave him

alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism.” But the good woman

would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit

of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin

filled with holy-water and a branch of box.

Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and

the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards

the stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the

poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last

Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois,

asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet

of Neufchâtel, who was a celebrity.

A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position

and self-possessed, Charles’s colleague did not refrain from laughing

disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then

having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the

chemist’s to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such

a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted

out in the shop--

“These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry

of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of

monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do

the clever, and they cram you with remedies without, troubling about

the consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants,

coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should

not dream of operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten

club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished,

for example, to make a hunchback straight!”

Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his

discomfort beneath a courtier’s smile; for he needed to humour Monsier

Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he

did not take up the defence of Bovary; he did not even make a single

remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the

more serious interests of his business.

This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the

village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande

Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as

if an execution had been expected. At the grocer’s they discussed

Hippolyte’s illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the

mayor’s wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to

see the operator arrive.

He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right

side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it

happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and

on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red

sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly.

After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the “Lion d’Or,” the

doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he

went into the stable to see that she was eating her oats all right; for

on arriving at a patient’s he first of all looked after his mare and his

gig. People even said about this--

“Ah! Monsieur Canivet’s a character!”

And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The

universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed

the smallest of his habits.

Homais presented himself.

“I count on you,” said the doctor. “Are we ready? Come along!”

But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to

assist at such an operation.

“When one is a simple spectator,” he said, “the imagination, you know,

is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!”

“Pshaw!” interrupted Canivet; “on the contrary, you seem to me inclined

to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn’t astonish me, for you chemist fellows

are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your

constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o’clock;

I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don’t wear flannels, and

I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way,

now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I

am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a

Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say,

habit! habit!”

Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with

agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation,

in which the druggist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a

general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out

on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon, it as a sacred office,

although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back

to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same

that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for someone to hold the

limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having

turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the druggist

stayed with Artémise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons,

and with ears strained towards the door.

Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house.

He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless

chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring.

“What a mishap!” he thought, “what a mishap!” Perhaps, after all, he had

made some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the

most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would

ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would

spread as far as Forges, as Neufchâtel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could

say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue;

he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute

him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination,

assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty

cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves.

Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt

another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if

twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity.

Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the

floor.

“Sit down,” she said; “you fidget me.”

He sat down again.

How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed

herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had

she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her

instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of

marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded

swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself,

all that she might have had! And for what? for what?

In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending

cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her

brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this

creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he

was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name

would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love

him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another!

“But it was perhaps a valgus!” suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was

meditating.

At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a

leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised her head in

order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked at the other in

silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they

by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed at her with the dull look of

a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the

sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by

sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered.

Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral

that she had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes

like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated

her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his

existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and

what still remained of it rumbled away beneath the furious blows of her

pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery.

The memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she

threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh

enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as

absent forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about

to die and were passing under her eyes.

There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up, and

through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in

the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his

handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his

hand, and both were going towards the chemist’s.

Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Charles

turned to his wife saying to her--

“Oh, kiss me, my own!”

“Leave me!” she said, red with anger.

“What is the matter?” he asked, stupefied. “Be calm; compose yourself.

You know well enough that I love you. Come!”

“Enough!” she cried with a terrible look.

And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the

barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.

Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover

what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping,

and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round

him.

When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress

waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw

their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow

beneath the warmth of that kiss.

Chapter Twelve

They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the

day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to

Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe

would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that

her husband was odious, her life frightful.

“But what can I do?” he cried one day impatiently.

“Ah! if you would--”

She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look

lost.

“Why, what?” said Rodolphe.

She sighed.

“We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!”

“You are really mad!” he said laughing. “How could that be possible?”

She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned

the conversation.

What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair

as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her

affection.

Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her

husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed

the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have

such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found

themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing

the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose

black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once

so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience

in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she

filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never

enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs.

She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he

was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and

prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince.

The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Félicité

did not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her

company, watched her at work.

With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he

greedily watched all these women’s clothes spread about him, the dimity

petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running

strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.

“What is that for?” asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the

crinoline or the hooks and eyes.

“Why, haven’t you ever seen anything?” Félicité answered laughing. “As

if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn’t wear the same.”

“Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!” And he added with a meditative air, “As

if she were a lady like madame!”

But Félicité grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six

years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, was

beginning to pay court to her.

“Let me alone,” she said, moving her pot of starch. “You’d better be

off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you

meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you’ve got a beard to your

chin.”

“Oh, don’t be cross! I’ll go and clean her boots.”

And he at once took down from the shelf Emma’s boots, all coated with

mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his

fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight.

“How afraid you are of spoiling them!” said the servant, who wasn’t so

particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff

of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.

Emma had a number in her cupboard that she squandered one after the

other, without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So

also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought

proper to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork,

and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black

trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring

to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him

another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray

the expense of this purchase.

So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him

running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar

the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction.

It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order;

this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her

about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made

himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to

this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have

a very handsome ridding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker’s at Rouen

to give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her

table.

But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and

seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed;

all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a

fortnight’s wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any

quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur

Derozeray’s account, which he was in the habit of paying every year

about Midsummer.

She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost

patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some

in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received.

“Oh, very well, take them!” said Emma.

“I was only joking,” he replied; “the only thing I regret is the whip.

My word! I’ll ask monsieur to return it to me.”

“No, no!” she said.

“Ah! I’ve got you!” thought Lheureux.

And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an

undertone, and with his usual low whistle--

“Good! we shall see! we shall see!”

She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in

put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper “from Monsieur

Derozeray’s.” Emma pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen

napoleons; it was the account. She heard Charles on the stairs; threw

the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key.

Three days after Lheureux reappeared.

“I have an arrangement to suggest to you,” he said. “If, instead of the

sum agreed on, you would take--”

“Here it is,” she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.

The tradesman was dumfounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he

was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Emma

declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of

her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change.

She promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on.

“Pshaw!” she thought, “he won’t think about it again.”

Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had

received a seal with the motto _Amor nel cor;_[14] furthermore, a scarf

for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount’s,

that Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma had

kept. These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she

insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and

overexacting.

[14] A loving heart.

Then she had strange ideas.

“When midnight strikes,” she said, “you must think of me.”

And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of

reproaches that always ended with the eternal question--

“Do you love me?”

“Why, of course I love you,” he answered.

“A great deal?”

“Certainly!”

“You haven’t loved any others?”

“Did you think you’d got a virgin?” he exclaimed laughing.

Emma cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with

puns.

“Oh,” she went on, “I love you! I love you so that I could not live

without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again,

when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, Where is

he? Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he

approaches. Oh no; no one else pleases you. There are some more

beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your

servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are

beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!”

He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as

original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty,

gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony

of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He

did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of

sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine

and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the

candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be

discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in

the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of

his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human

speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to

make bears dance when we long to move the stars.

But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him who, in no

matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights to be

got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her

quite _sans façon_.[15] He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers

was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of

voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank

into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in

his butt of Malmsey.

[15] Off-handedly.

By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary’s manners changed.

Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the

impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in her

mouth, “as if to defy the people.” At last, those who still doubted

doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the

“Hirondelle,” her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame

Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken

refuge at her son’s, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk.

Many other things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to

her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the “ways of the house”

annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were

quarrels, especially one on account of Félicité.

Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage,

had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about

forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped

through the kitchen. Then Emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew

angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to

look after those of one’s servants.

“Where were you brought up?” asked the daughter-in-law, with so

impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not perhaps

defending her own case.

“Leave the room!” said the young woman, springing up with a bound.

“Emma! Mamma!” cried Charles, trying to reconcile them.

But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping her feet as

she repeated--

“Oh! what manners! What a peasant!”

He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered

“She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!”

And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologise. So

Charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he

knelt to her; she ended by saying--

“Very well! I’ll go to her.”

And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity

of a marchioness as she said--

“Excuse me, madame.”

Then, having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her

bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow.

She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary

occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind,

so that if by chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry to

the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal; she had been waiting

three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at

the corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and call

him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in despair.

Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking on the

pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He

was there outside. She threw herself into his arms.

“Do take care!” he said.

“Ah! if you knew!” she replied.

And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly,

exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses

that he understood nothing of it.

“Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!”

“But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love like

ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They torture me! I can

bear it no longer! Save me!”

She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames

beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so

that he lost his head and said “What is, it? What do you wish?”

“Take me away,” she cried, “carry me off! Oh, I pray you!”

And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the

unexpected consent if breathed forth in a kiss.

“But--” Rodolphe resumed.

“What?”

“Your little girl!”

She reflected a few moments, then replied--

“We will take her! It can’t be helped!”

“What a woman!” he said to himself, watching her as she went. For she

had run into the garden. Someone was calling her.

On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much surprised at the

change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact, was showing herself more

docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for

pickling gherkins.

Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort of

voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the

things she was about to leave?

But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as lost in the

anticipated delight of her coming happiness.

It was an eternal subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She leant on

his shoulder murmuring--

“Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it be? It

seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if

we were rising in a balloon, as if we were setting out for the clouds.

Do you know that I count the hours? And you?”

Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had

that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from

success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances.

Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young

illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers

grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all

the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for

her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong

inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner

of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have

thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair

upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the

changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her

voice now took more mellow infections, her figure also; something subtle

and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the

line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first married, thought her

delicious and quite irresistible.

When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake

her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the

ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed as it were a

white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside Charles looked

at them. He seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. She would

grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw

her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on

her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to

be sent to the boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to

be done? Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the

neighbourhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his

patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the

savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where;

besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he

wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play

the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen,

when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats

in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters.

He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath

the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look

after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her

gaiety. At last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her

some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy;

this would last for ever.

Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her

side she awakened to other dreams.

To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a

new land, whence they would return no more. They went on and on, their

arms entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a mountain there

suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and

ships, forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose

pointed steeples were storks’ nests. They went at a walking-pace because

of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of

flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the

chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of

guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps

of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled

beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing

village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and

in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live

in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a

gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and

their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and

star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the

immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood

forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and

it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonised, azure, and bathed in

sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored

more loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn

whitened the windows, and when little Justin was already in the square

taking down the shutters of the chemist’s shop.

She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him--

“I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar.”

“You are going on a journey?” he asked.

“No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?”

He bowed.

“Besides, I shall want,” she went on, “a trunk--not too heavy--handy.”

“Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they

are being made just now.”

“And a travelling bag.”

“Decidedly,” thought Lheureux, “there’s a row on here.”

“And,” said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt, “take this;

you can pay yourself out of it.”

But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another;

did he doubt her? What childishness!

She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and Lheureux

had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him

back.

“You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak”--she seemed

to be reflecting--“do not bring it either; you can give me the maker’s

address, and tell him to have it ready for me.”

It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave

Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen. Rodolphe would

have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to

Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as

Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without

stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux

whence it would be taken direct to the “Hirondelle,” so that no one

would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion

to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer

thought about it.

He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs;

then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill;

next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all

these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the

4th September--a Monday.

At length the Saturday before arrived.

Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.

“Everything is ready?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the

terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall.

“You are sad,” said Emma.

“No; why?”

And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.

“It is because you are going away?” she went on; “because you are

leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing

in the world! you are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your

people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!”

“How sweet you are!” he said, seizing her in his arms.

“Really!” she said with a voluptuous laugh. “Do you love me? Swear it

then!”

“Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love.”

The moon, full and purple-coloured, was rising right out of the earth

at the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the branches of the

poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with

holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens

that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the

river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the

silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a heedless

serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster

candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together.

The soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches.

Emma, her eyes half closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind

that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of

their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts,

full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume

of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense

and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over

the grass. Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on

the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach

falling all alone from the espalier.

“Ah! what a lovely night!” said Rodolphe.

“We shall have others,” replied Emma; and, as if speaking to herself:

“Yet, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my heart be

so heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or

rather--? No; it is the excess of happiness. How weak I am, am I not?

Forgive me!”

“There is still time!” he cried. “Reflect! perhaps you may repent!”

“Never!” she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: “What ill

could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not

traverse with you. The longer we live together the more it will be like

an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. There will be

nothing to trouble us, no cares, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to

ourselves eternally. Oh, speak! Answer me!”

At regular intervals he answered, “Yes--Yes--” She had passed her hands

through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big

tears which were falling, “Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little

Rodolphe!”

Midnight struck.

“Midnight!” said she. “Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!”

He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for

their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay air--

“You have the passports?”

“Yes.”

“You are forgetting nothing?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Certainly.”

“It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at

midday?”

He nodded.

“Till to-morrow then!” said Emma in a last caress; and she watched him

go.

He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water’s

edge between the bulrushes--

“To-morrow!” she cried.

He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across

the meadow.

After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white

gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with

such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should

fall.

“What an imbecile I am!” he said with a fearful oath. “No matter! She

was a pretty mistress!”

And immediately Emma’s beauty, with all the pleasures of their love,

came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against

her.

“For, after all,” he exclaimed, gesticulating, “I can’t exile

myself--have a child on my hands.”

He was saying these things to give himself firmness.

“And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand

times no! That would be too stupid.”

Chapter Thirteen

No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau

under the stag’s head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had

the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting

on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded

into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly

placed a distance between them.

To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the

bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters

from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered

roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a

handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he

had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature

given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her

languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this

image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma’s features little

by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the

painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other.

Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations

relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business

notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In

order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the

others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and

things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and

hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box,

broke when it was opened.

Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style

of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or

jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love,

others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain

gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered

nothing at all.

In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each

other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised

them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself

for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into

his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to

the cupboard, saying to himself, “What a lot of rubbish!” Which summed

up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard,

had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that

which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like

them, leave a name carved upon the wall.

“Come,” said he, “let’s begin.”

He wrote--

“Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life.”

“After all, that’s true,” thought Rodolphe. “I am acting in her

interest; I am honest.”

“Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an

abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were

coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah!

unhappy that we are--insensate!”

Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.

“If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop

nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one

could make women like that listen to reason!” He reflected, then went

on--

“I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound

devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is

the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude

would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the

atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since

I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come

to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were

you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate.”

“That’s a word that always tells,” he said to himself.

“Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees,

certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that

case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your

charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable

woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I

reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal

happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the

consequences.”

“Perhaps she’ll think I’m giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much

the worse; it must be stopped!”

“The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would have

persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions,

calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would

place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For

I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you.

I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always.

Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name

to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers.”

The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut the window,

and when he had sat down again--

“I think it’s all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt

me up.”

“I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to

flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again.

No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together

very coldly of our old love. Adieu!”

And there was a last “adieu” divided into two words! “A Dieu!” which he

thought in very excellent taste.

“Now how am I to sign?” he said to himself. “‘Yours devotedly?’ No!

‘Your friend?’ Yes, that’s it.”

“Your friend.”

He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.

“Poor little woman!” he thought with emotion. “She’ll think me harder

than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can’t

cry; it isn’t my fault.” Then, having emptied some water into a glass,

Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the

paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he

came upon the one “Amor nel cor.”

“That doesn’t at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!”

After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.

The next day when he was up (at about two o’clock--he had slept late),

Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at

the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his

ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this

means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits

or game.

“If she asks after me,” he said, “you will tell her that I have gone on

a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands.

Get along and take care!”

Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the

apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound

galoshes, made his way to Yonville.

Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle of linen

on the kitchen-table with Félicité.

“Here,” said the ploughboy, “is something for you--from the master.”

She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for

some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he

himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a

present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Félicité remained.

She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take

the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found

the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her,

Emma flew to her room terrified.

Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and

she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and

ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her

fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped

before the attic door, which was closed.

Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish

it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! “Ah, no!

here,” she thought, “I shall be all right.”

Emma pushed open the door and went in.

The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples,

stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew

back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.

Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost

to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square was empty; the

stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were

motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a

kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning.

She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the letter

with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the

more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled

him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast

like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven

intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might

crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was

free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself,

“Come! come!”

The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of

her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the

oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on

end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging,

surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air

was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself

be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice

calling her.

“Emma! Emma!” cried Charles.

She stopped.

“Wherever are you? Come!”

The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint

with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a

hand on her sleeve; it was Félicité.

“Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table.”

And she had to go down to sit at table.

She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as

if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to

this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance

of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find

it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent

a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was

afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced

these words in a strange manner:

“We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems.”

“Who told you?” she said, shuddering.

“Who told me!” he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. “Why,

Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe Francais. He has

gone on a journey, or is to go.”

She gave a sob.

“What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time

to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he’s right, when one has a

fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend.

He’s a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--”

He stopped for propriety’s sake because the servant came in. She put

back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles,

without noticing his wife’s colour, had them brought to him, took one,

and bit into it.

“Ah! perfect!” said he; “just taste!”

And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.

“Do just smell! What an odour!” he remarked, passing it under her nose

several times.

“I am choking,” she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the

spasm passed; then--

“It is nothing,” she said, “it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down

and go on eating.” For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her,

attending to her, that she should not be left alone.

Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the

apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate.

Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma

uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.

In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for

Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by

Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognised him

by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the

twilight.

The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran thither. The

table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and

cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for help;

Berthe, scared, was crying; and Félicité, whose hands trembled, was

unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively.

“I’ll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar,” said the

druggist.

Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle--

“I was sure of it,” he remarked; “that would wake any dead person for

you!”

“Speak to us,” said Charles; “collect yourself; it is your Charles, who

loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!”

The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But

turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice “No, no! no one!”

She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched

at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open,

motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from

her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.

Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist,

near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the

serious occasions of life.

“Do not be uneasy,” he said, touching his elbow; “I think the paroxysm

is past.”

“Yes, she is resting a little now,” answered Charles, watching her

sleep. “Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!”

Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that

she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots.

“Extraordinary!” continued the chemist. “But it might be that the

apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to

certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both

in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the

importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their

ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a

thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more

delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt

hartshorn, of new bread--”

“Take care; you’ll wake her!” said Bovary in a low voice.

“And not only,” the druggist went on, “are human beings subject to such

anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly

aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called

catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example

whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at

present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into

convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even

makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume

Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such

ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?”

“Yes,” said Charles, who was not listening to him.

“This shows us,” went on the other, smiling with benign

self-sufficiency, “the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system.

With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very

susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear

friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence

of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless

physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification.

Then, don’t you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked

upon?”

“In what way? How?” said Bovary.

“Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. ‘That is the question,’ as

I lately read in a newspaper.”

But Emma, awaking, cried out--

“The letter! the letter!”

They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had

set in.

For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his

patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse,

putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as

Neufchâtel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again.

He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere,

his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was

Emma’s prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even

seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after

all their troubles.

About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by

pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her

strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon,

and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his

arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing

beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers,

and leaning against Charles’s shoulder. She smiled all the time.

They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew

herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked

far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great

bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.

“You will tire yourself, my darling!” said Bovary. And, pushing her

gently to make her go into the arbour, “Sit down on this seat; you’ll be

comfortable.”

“Oh! no; not there!” she said in a faltering voice.

She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness

recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more

complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the

head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the

first signs of cancer.

And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.

Chapter Fourteen

To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais for all

the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not

obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an

obligation. Then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was

mistress, became terrible. Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen

grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux especially harassed him. In fact, at

the height of Emma’s illness, the latter, taking advantage of the

circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak,

the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other

things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them. The

tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and

that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her

convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was

resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his

goods. Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop.

Félicité forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more

about them. Monsieur Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns

threatening and whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a

bill at six months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea

occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux.

So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them,

adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. Lheureux

ran off to his shop, brought back the money, and dictated another bill,

by which Bovary undertook to pay to his order on the 1st of September

next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred

and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus

lending at six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission: and

the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in

twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. He

hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not

be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money,

having thriven at the doctor’s as at a hospital, would come back to him

one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.

Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for a

supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchâtel; Monsieur Guillaumin

promised him some shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of

establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil and Rouen, which

no doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the “Lion

d’Or,” and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more

luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.

Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be

able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such

as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be

deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that

he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from

his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his

thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to

be constantly thinking of her.

The winter was severe, Madame Bovary’s convalescence slow. When it

was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that overlooked the

square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on

that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she

formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to

the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the

servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on

the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain

began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for

the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no

relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the “Hirondelle”

in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices

answered, while Hippolyte’s lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the

boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in;

then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five

o’clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school,

dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of

the shutters with their rulers one after the other.

It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He

inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion, in a

coaxing little prattle that was not without its charm. The mere thought

of his cassock comforted her.

One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself

dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the

preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the

night table covered with syrups into an altar, and while Félicité was

strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing

over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from

all feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was

beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would

be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into

vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew

from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial

joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour

presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her

like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table

seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back,

fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived

in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green

palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to

earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms.

This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing

that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her

sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion

and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length

found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she

saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a

wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then,

in the place of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all

loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She

saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the

earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become

a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her

room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might

kiss it every evening.

The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma’s religion, he thought,

might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But

not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a

certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor,

to send him “something good for a lady who was very clever.” The

bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off

hardware to niggers, packed up, pellmell, everything that was then the

fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions

and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur

de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with

a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent

blue-stockings. There were the “Think of it; the Man of the World at

Mary’s Feet, by Monsieur de ***, decorated with many Orders”; “The

Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young,” etc.

Madame Bovary’s mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself

seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much

hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance

of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking

people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with

religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that

they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was

looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped

from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic

melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive.

As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of

her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than

a king’s mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed

love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the

immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her

Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that

she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery.

It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens,

and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic

dupery.

This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more,

and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to those grand

ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La

Valliere, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed trains

of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of

Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded.

Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes for the

poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one day, on coming

home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table

eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her illness her

husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach

her to read; even when Berthe cried, she was not vexed. She had made

up her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about

everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, “Is

your stomach-ache better, my angel?”

Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania

of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen;

but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in

this quiet house, and she even stayed there till after Easter, to escape

the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never failed on Good Friday to order

chitterlings.

Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a

little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, Emma almost

every day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron,

Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from two to five o’clock

the excellent Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed any

of the tittle-tattle about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to

see her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom,

and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even

Madame Bovary; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by

taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when

he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees

unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden

entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him.

Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity.

She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there,

palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that

youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she

now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so

affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one

could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from

virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who

had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.

Then suddenly--

“So you love him?” she said.

And without waiting for any answer from Félicité, who was blushing, she

added, “There! run along; enjoy yourself!”

In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end,

despite Bovary’s remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last

manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more

wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse,

who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too

often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better

off for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family,

successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented

church less assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said

to her in a friendly way--

“You were going in a bit for the cassock!”

As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out

after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the

air “in the grove,” as he called the arbour. This was the time when

Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and

they drank together to madame’s complete restoration.

Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace

wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he

thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.

“You must,” he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to

the very extremity of the landscape, “hold the bottle perpendicularly on

the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with

little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at

restaurants.”

But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their

faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this

joke--

“Its goodness strikes the eye!”

He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even scandalised

at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction

by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor,

Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion,

and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for

morals than literature.

But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he

contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of

pleasure, taught virtue.

“_Castigat ridendo mores_,[16] Monsieur Bournisien! Thus consider the

greater part of Voltaire’s tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with

philosophical reflections, that made them a vast school of morals and

diplomacy for the people.”

[16] It corrects customs through laughter.

“I,” said Binet, “once saw a piece called the ‘Gamin de Paris,’ in which

there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a

T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the

ending--”

“Certainly,” continued Homais, “there is bad literature as there is bad

pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts

seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times

that imprisoned Galileo.”

“I know very well,” objected the cure, “that there are good works,

good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes

united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those

effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a

certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure

temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers.

Finally,” he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while

he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, “if the Church has

condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her

decrees.”

“Why,” asked the druggist, “should she excommunicate actors? For

formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the

middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called

‘Mysteries,’ which often offended against the laws of decency.”

The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the

chemist went on--

“It’s like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more than one

piquant detail, matters really libidinous!”

And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien--

“Ah! you’ll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young

girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie--”

“But it is the Protestants, and not we,” cried the other impatiently,

“who recommend the Bible.”

“No matter,” said Homais. “I am surprised that in our days, in this

century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in proscribing an

intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes

even hygienic; is it not, doctor?”

“No doubt,” replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the

same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any

ideas.

The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot

a Parthian arrow.

“I’ve known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers

kicking about.”

“Come, come!” said the cure.

“Ah! I’ve known some!” And separating the words of his sentence, Homais

repeated, “I--have--known--some!”

“Well, they were wrong,” said Bournisien, resigned to anything.

“By Jove! they go in for more than that,” exclaimed the druggist.

“Sir!” replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the druggist

was intimidated by them.

“I only mean to say,” he replied in less brutal a tone, “that toleration

is the surest way to draw people to religion.”

“That is true! that is true!” agreed the good fellow, sitting down again

on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.

Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor--

“That’s what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a

way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only

for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If anyone

could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about it.

Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he’s engaged to go to

England at a high salary. From what I hear, he’s a regular dog; he’s

rolling in money; he’s taking three mistresses and a cook along with

him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require

a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent. But they

die at the hospital, because they haven’t the sense when young to lay

by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow.”

The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary’s head, for he at

once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the

fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give

in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw

nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs

which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large,

and the falling in of Lheureux’s bills was still so far off that

there was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she

was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of

worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight

o’clock they set out in the “Hirondelle.”

The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought

himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go.

“Well, a pleasant journey!” he said to them; “happy mortals that you

are!”

Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with

four flounces--

“You are as lovely as a Venus. You’ll cut a figure at Rouen.”

The diligence stopped at the “Croix-Rouge” in the Place Beauvoisine. It

was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables

and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens

pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers--a

good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on

winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black

tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow

by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always

smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sundayclothes, has

a cafe on the street, and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden.

Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery,

the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them;

was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the

inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole

length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.

Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was

much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to

swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the

theatre, which were still closed.

Chapter Fifteen

The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between

the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills

repeated in quaint letters “Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc.” The

weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the

curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads;

and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the

border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses.

A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air

that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from

the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they made

casks.

For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a

little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in

his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his

stomach.

Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She

involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the

right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the

reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger

the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the

dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent

forward with the air of a duchess.

The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their

cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing.

They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of

business; but “business” was not forgotten; they still talked cottons,

spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen,

inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like

silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting

about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink

or applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them leaning

on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow

gloves.

Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the

ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over

the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and

first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins

squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three

knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass

instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a

country-scene.

It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to

the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing

a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked

the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared;

they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself

transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott.

She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes

re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping

her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase,

while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with

the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies,

and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her

nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery,

the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the

velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated

amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young

woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was

left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the

warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She

plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life,

would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy

appeared.

He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of

marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly

clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against

his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white

teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night

on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love

with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for

other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his

artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into

his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his

person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable

coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis

than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan

nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the

toreador.

From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms,

he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of

rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes

escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward

to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was

filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn

out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the

drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication

and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna

seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that

charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had

loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit

night when they said, “To-morrow! to-morrow!” The theatre rang with

cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of

the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they

uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the

vibrations of the last chords.

“But why,” asked Bovary, “does that gentleman persecute her?”

“No, no!” she answered; “he is her lover!”

“Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on

before said, ‘I love Lucie and she loves me!’ Besides, he went off with

her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn’t he--the

ugly little man with a cock’s feather in his hat?”

Despite Emma’s explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began

in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master

Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie,

thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that

he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered

very much with the words.

“What does it matter?” said Emma. “Do be quiet!”

“Yes, but you know,” he went on, leaning against her shoulder, “I like

to understand things.”

“Be quiet! be quiet!” she cried impatiently.

Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms

in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed

of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the

little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like

this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous,

without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if

in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the

disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some

great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty

blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that

happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.

She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So,

striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this

reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to

please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when

at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a

black cloak.

His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the

instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury,

dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal

provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint,

Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the

bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the

women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were

all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and

stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The

outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with

jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left

with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of

his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought must have an

inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion.

All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part

that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the

character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant,

extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had

willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With

him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from

capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the

flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each

evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would

have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung

for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked

at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was

certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength,

as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out,

“Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour

and all my dreams!”

The curtain fell.

The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the

fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the

crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her arm-chair with

palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran

to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water.

He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were

jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and

he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short

sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered

cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband,

who was a millowner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with

her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured

taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement.

At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath--

“Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a

crowd--SUCH a crowd!”

He added--

“Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Léon!”

“Léon?”

“Himself! He’s coming along to pay his respects.” And as he finished

these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.

He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary

extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will.

She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon

the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window.

But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an

effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a

few hurried words.

“Ah, good-day! What! you here?”

“Silence!” cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning.

“So you are at Rouen?”

“Yes.”

“And since when?”

“Turn them out! turn them out!” People were looking at them. They were

silent.

But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests,

the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all

were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous

and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the

druggist’s, and the walk to the nurse’s, the reading in the arbour,

the _tête-à-tête_ by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so

protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless

forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances

had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning

with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt

herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon

her hair.

“Does this amuse you?” said he, bending over her so closely that the end

of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly--

“Oh, dear me, no, not much.”

Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an

ice somewhere.

“Oh, not yet; let us stay,” said Bovary. “Her hair’s undone; this is

going to be tragic.”

But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the

singer seemed to her exaggerated.

“She screams too loud,” said she, turning to Charles, who was listening.

“Yes--a little,” he replied, undecided between the frankness of his

pleasure and his respect for his wife’s opinion.

Then with a sigh Léon said--

“The heat is--”

“Unbearable! Yes!”

“Do you feel unwell?” asked Bovary.

“Yes, I am stifling; let us go.”

Monsieur Léon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and

all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside

the windows of a cafe.

First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles

from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Léon; and the

latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large

office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different

in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere

Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband’s presence, nothing more to

say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end.

People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting

at the top of their voices, “_O bel ange, ma Lucie!_”[17] Then Léon, playing

the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tambourini, Rubini, Persiani,

Grisi, and, compared with them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was

nowhere.

[17] Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie.

“Yet,” interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet,

“they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving

before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me.”

“Why,” said the clerk, “he will soon give another performance.”

But Charles replied that they were going back next day. “Unless,” he

added, turning to his wife, “you would like to stay alone, kitten?”

And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented

itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the

last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted--

“You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong if

you feel that this is doing you the least good.”

The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood

discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the

clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of

silver that he made chink on the marble.

“I am really sorry,” said Bovary, “about the money which you are--”

The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat

said--

“It is settled, isn’t it? To-morrow at six o’clock?”

Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but

that nothing prevented Emma--

“But,” she stammered, with a strange smile, “I am not sure--”

“Well, you must think it over. We’ll see. Night brings counsel.” Then to

Léon, who was walking along with them, “Now that you are in our part of

the world, I hope you’ll come and ask us for some dinner now and then.”

The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover,

to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted

before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock in the cathedral

struck half-past eleven.