Part III

Chapter One

Monsieur Léon, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the

dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the grisettes,

who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the best-mannered of the

students; he wore his hair neither too long nor too short, didn’t spend

all his quarter’s money on the first day of the month, and kept on good

terms with his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained from

them, as much from cowardice as from refinement.

Often when he stayed in his room to read, or else when sitting of an

evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his Code fall to

the ground, and the memory of Emma came back to him. But gradually this

feeling grew weaker, and other desires gathered over it, although it

still persisted through them all. For Léon did not lose all hope; there

was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a

golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree.

Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion

reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to possess

her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with his gay

companions, and he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had

not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By

the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some

illustrious physician, a person driving his carriage and wearing many

orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like a child; but

here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife of this small doctor

he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he would shine. Self-possession

depends on its environment. We don’t speak on the first floor as on the

fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her

virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset.

On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Léon had followed them

through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at the

“Croix-Rouge,” he turned on his heel, and spent the night meditating a

plan.

So the next day about five o’clock he walked into the kitchen of the

inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and that

resolution of cowards that stops at nothing.

“The gentleman isn’t in,” answered a servant.

This seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs.

She was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she apologised

for having neglected to tell him where they were staying.

“Oh, I divined it!” said Léon.

He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by, instinct. She

began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly, Léon told her that he

had spent his morning in looking for her in all the hotels in the town

one after the other.

“So you have made up your mind to stay?” he added.

“Yes,” she said, “and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom oneself to

impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands upon one.”

“Oh, I can imagine!”

“Ah! no; for you, you are a man!”

But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off into

certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiated much on the misery of

earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains

entombed.

To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called

forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully bored during

the whole course of his studies. The law irritated him, other vocations

attracted him, and his mother never ceased worrying him in every one

of her letters. As they talked they explained more and more fully the

motives of their sadness, working themselves up in their progressive

confidence. But they sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition

of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express

it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did not

say that he had forgotten her.

Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked

balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she

ran across the fields in the morning to her lover’s house. The noises

of the town hardly reached them, and the room seemed small, as if

on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Emma, in a dimity

dressing-gown, leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the

yellow wall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background behind her,

and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in

the middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her

hair.

“But pardon me!” she said. “It is wrong of me. I weary you with my

eternal complaints.”

“No, never, never!”

“If you knew,” she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful eyes,

in which a tear was trembling, “all that I had dreamed!”

“And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I

dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the

crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me.

In an engraver’s shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one

of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the

moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there

continually; I stayed there hours together.” Then in a trembling voice,

“She resembled you a little.”

Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the

irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips.

“Often,” he went on, “I wrote you letters that I tore up.”

She did not answer. He continued--

“I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I

recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages

through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours.”

She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption.

Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes

on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin

of them with her toes.

At last she sighed.

“But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a

useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we

should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.”

He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having

himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not

satisfy.

“I should much like,” she said, “to be a nurse at a hospital.”

“Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any

calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor.”

With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Emma interrupted him to speak of

her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be

suffering now! Léon at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening

he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug

with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they

would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now

adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always

thins out the sentiment.

But at this invention of the rug she asked, “But why?”

“Why?” He hesitated. “Because I loved you so!” And congratulating

himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Léon watched her face out

of the corner of his eyes.

It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The

mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her

blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied--

“I always suspected it.”

Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence,

whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They

recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the

furniture of her room, the whole of her house.

“And our poor cactuses, where are they?”

“The cold killed them this winter.”

“Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as

of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds,

and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers.”

“Poor friend!” she said, holding out her hand to him.

Léon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep

breath--

“At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that

took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no

doubt, do not remember it.”

“I do,” she said; “go on.”

“You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on

the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and

without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you.

Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and

I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and

unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the

street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and

counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache’s;

you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy

door that had closed after you.”

Madame Bovary, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All

these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was

like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to

time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed--

“Yes, it is true--true--true!”

They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine

quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels.

They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a

buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the

fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past,

the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the

sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which

still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills

representing four scenes from the “Tour de Nesle,” with a motto in

Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of

dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs.

She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then she sat down

again.

“Well!” said Léon.

“Well!” she replied.

He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she

said to him--

“How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to

me?”

The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from

the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the

happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her

earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another.

“I have sometimes thought of it,” she went on.

“What a dream!” murmured Léon. And fingering gently the blue binding of

her long white sash, he added, “And who prevents us from beginning now?”

“No, my friend,” she replied; “I am too old; you are too young. Forget

me! Others will love you; you will love them.”

“Not as you!” he cried.

“What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it.”

She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must

remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship.

Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself know,

quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the

necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young

man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his

trembling hands attempted.

“Ah! forgive me!” he cried, drawing back.

Emma was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous to her

than the boldness of Rodolphe when he advanced to her open-armed. No man

had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An exquisite candour emanated from

his being. He lowered his long fine eyelashes, that curled upwards.

His cheek, with the soft skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her

person, and Emma felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it.

Then, leaning towards the clock as if to see the time--

“Ah! how late it is!” she said; “how we do chatter!”

He understood the hint and took up his hat.

“It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Bovary has left me

here especially for that. Monsieur Lormeaux, of the Rue Grand-Pont, was

to take me and his wife.”

And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day.

“Really!” said Léon.

“Yes.”

“But I must see you again,” he went on. “I wanted to tell you--”

“What?”

“Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go; it is

impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not understood

me; you have not guessed--”

“Yet you speak plainly,” said Emma.

“Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity’s sake, let me see you

once--only once!”

“Well--” She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, “Oh, not here!”

“Where you will.”

“Will you--” She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, “To-morrow at eleven

o’clock in the cathedral.”

“I shall be there,” he cried, seizing her hands, which she disengaged.

And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Emma with her head

bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her neck.

“You are mad! Ah! you are mad!” she said, with sounding little laughs,

while the kisses multiplied.

Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the consent of

her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity.

Léon stepped back to go out. He stopped on the threshold; then he

whispered with a trembling voice, “Tomorrow!”

She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the next room.

In the evening Emma wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in which she

cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not, for the sake of

their happiness, meet again. But when the letter was finished, as she

did not know Léon’s address, she was puzzled.

“I’ll give it to him myself,” she said; “he will come.”

The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony, Léon

himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on white

trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent he had into

his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he uncurled it again,

in order to give it a more natural elegance.

“It is still too early,” he thought, looking at the hairdresser’s

cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old fashion

journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, thought it

was time, and went slowly towards the porch of Notre Dame.

It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver plate sparkled in the

jeweller’s windows, and the light falling obliquely on the cathedral

made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock of birds

fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil bell-turrets; the square,

resounding with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered its

pavement, roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly

spaced out between moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds;

the fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas, amidst

melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were twisting

paper round bunches of violets.

The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought flowers

for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled with pride, as if

this homage that he meant for another had recoiled upon himself.

But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The

beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the

left doorway, under the “Dancing Marianne,” with feather cap, and rapier

dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and

as shining as a saint on a holy pyx.

He came towards Léon, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity

assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children--

“The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The gentleman

would like to see the curiosities of the church?”

“No!” said the other.

And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to look at

the Place. Emma was not coming yet. He went up again to the choir.

The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of the

arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the reflections of

the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were continued farther on upon

the flag-stones, like a many-coloured carpet. The broad daylight from

without streamed into the church in three enormous rays from the three

opened portals. From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed,

making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal

lustres hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and

from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose

sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo

reverberating under the lofty vault.

Léon with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never seemed

so good to him. She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking

back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her

gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he

had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue.

The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down

to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone

resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she

might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours.

But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a

blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at

it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the

button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards

Emma.

The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who

took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him

to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a

sort, and almost committing sacrilege.

But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined

cloak--it was she! Léon rose and ran to meet her.

Emma was pale. She walked fast.

“Read!” she said, holding out a paper to him. “Oh, no!”

And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin,

where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.

The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless

experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a

rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness;

then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end.

Emma prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden

resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine

aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She

breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases,

and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the

tumult of her heart.

She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward,

hurriedly saying--

“Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to

see the curiosities of the church?”

“Oh, no!” cried the clerk.

“Why not?” said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the

Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything.

Then, in order to proceed “by rule,” the beadle conducted them right to

the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large

circle of block-stones without inscription or carving--

“This,” he said majestically, “is the circumference of the beautiful

bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its

equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy--”

“Let us go on,” said Léon.

The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of

the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture

of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his

espaliers, went on--

“This simple stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of

Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at

the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465.”

Léon bit his lips, fuming.

“And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the

prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval and of

Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the

king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the

23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below,

this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person.

It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of

annihilation?”

Madame Bovary put up her eyeglasses. Léon, motionless, looked at her,

no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture,

so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of gossip and

indifference.

The everlasting guide went on--

“Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de

Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died

in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now

turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both

cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis

XII. He did a great deal for the cathedral. In his will he left thirty

thousand gold crowns for the poor.”

And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel

full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that

certainly might once have been an ill-made statue.

“Truly,” he said with a groan, “it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de

Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir,

who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the

earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by

which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the

gargoyle windows.”

But Léon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Emma’s

arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely

munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to

see. So calling him back, he cried--

“Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!”

“No, thank you!” said Léon.

“You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less

than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--”

Léon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly

two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would

vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong

cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like

the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier.

“But where are we going?” she said.

Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Bovary

was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they

heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Léon

turned back.

“Sir!”

“What is it?”

And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing

against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works

“which treated of the cathedral.”

“Idiot!” growled Léon, rushing out of the church.

A lad was playing about the close.

“Go and get me a cab!”

The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they

were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.

“Ah! Léon! Really--I don’t know--if I ought,” she whispered. Then with a

more serious air, “Do you know, it is very improper--”

“How so?” replied the clerk. “It is done at Paris.”

And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.

Still the cab did not come. Léon was afraid she might go back into the

church. At last the cab appeared.

“At all events, go out by the north porch,” cried the beadle, who was

left alone on the threshold, “so as to see the Resurrection, the Last

Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames.”

“Where to, sir?” asked the coachman.

“Where you like,” said Léon, forcing Emma into the cab.

And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont,

crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and

stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille.

“Go on,” cried a voice that came from within.

The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour

Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop.

“No, straight on!” cried the same voice.

The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted

quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his

leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side

alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters.

It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp

pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the

isles.

But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La

Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d’Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of

the Jardin des Plantes.

“Get on, will you?” cried the voice more furiously.

And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the

Quai’des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by

the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old

men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green

with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard

Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills.

It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered

about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont

Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue

Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien,

Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the “Vieille

Tour,” the “Trois Pipes,” and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time

the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses.

He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these

individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at

once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his

perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up

against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and

almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression.

And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the

streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken

eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds

drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb,

and tossing about like a vessel.

Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun

beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed

beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps

of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white

butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom.

At about six o’clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the

Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down,

and without turning her head.

Chapter Two

On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the

diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at

last started.

Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would

return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her

heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at

once the chastisement and atonement of adultery.

She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard,

hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment inquiring about

the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the

“Hirondelle” as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix.

Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened

them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Félicité,

who was on the lookout in front of the farrier’s shop. Hivert pulled

in his horses and, the servant, climbing up to the window, said

mysteriously--

“Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais. It’s for something

important.”

The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small

pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the time for jam-making,

and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in

front of the chemist’s shop one might admire a far larger heap, and that

surpassed the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have

over ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy.

She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the “Fanal de

Rouen” lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She pushed open

the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full

of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on

the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Homais, small

and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with forks in their

hands. Justin was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was

screaming--

“Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum.”

“What is it? What is the matter?”

“What is it?” replied the druggist. “We are making preserves; they are

simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too

much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from indolence, from

laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key

of the Capharnaum.”

It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of

the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there

alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon

it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there

afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses,

infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his

celebrity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it so,

that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers,

was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge

where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the

exercise of his predilections, so that Justin’s thoughtlessness seemed

to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants,

he repeated--

“Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and caustic

alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I

shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate

operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions,

and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for

pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as

if a magistrate--”

“Now be calm,” said Madame Homais.

And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried “Papa! papa!”

“No, let me alone,” went on the druggist “let me alone, hang it! My

word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That’s it! go it! respect

nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste,

pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!”

“I thought you had--” said Emma.

“Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn’t you see

anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer,

articulate something.”

“I--don’t--know,” stammered the young fellow.

“Ah! you don’t know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue

glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I

have even written ‘Dangerous!’ And do you know what is in it? Arsenic!

And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!”

“Next to it!” cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. “Arsenic! You

might have poisoned us all.”

And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in

their entrails.

“Or poison a patient!” continued the druggist. “Do you want to see me

in the prisoner’s dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see

me dragged to the scaffold? Don’t you know what care I take in managing

things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified

myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes

us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles’

sword over our heads.”

Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the

druggist went on in breathless phrases--

“That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That is

how you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on

you! For without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who

provides you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of

figuring one day with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull

hard at the oar if you’re to do that, and get, as, people say,

callosities upon your hands. _Fabricando fit faber, age quod

agis_.”[18]

[18] The worker lives by working, do what he will.

He was so exasperated he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese

or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he was in one

of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it

contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the

seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses.

And he went on--

“I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up! I should

certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and

the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you’ll never be fit for anything

but to herd animals with horns! You have no aptitude for science! You

hardly know how to stick on a label! And there you are, dwelling with me

snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!”

But Emma, turning to Madame Homais, “I was told to come here--”

“Oh, dear me!” interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, “how am I to

tell you? It is a misfortune!”

She could not finish, the druggist was thundering--“Empty it! Clean it!

Take it back! Be quick!”

And seizing Justin by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of

his pocket. The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker, and, having

picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth.

“CONJUGAL--LOVE!” he said, slowly separating the two words. “Ah! very

good! very good! very pretty! And illustrations! Oh, this is too much!”

Madame Homais came forward.

“No, do not touch it!”

The children wanted to look at the pictures.

“Leave the room,” he said imperiously; and they went out.

First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand, rolling

his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came straight to his

pupil, and, planting himself in front of him with crossed arms--

“Have you every vice, then, little wretch? Take care! you are on a

downward path. Did not you reflect that this infamous book might fall

in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their minds, tarnish the

purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoleon. He is already formed like a man.

Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they have not read it? Can you certify

to me--”

“But really, sir,” said Emma, “you wished to tell me--”

“Ah, yes! madame. Your father-in-law is dead.”

In fact, Monsieur Bovary senior had expired the evening before suddenly

from an attack of apoplexy as he got up from table, and by way of

greater precaution, on account of Emma’s sensibility, Charles had begged

Homais to break the horrible news to her gradually. Homais had thought

over his speech; he had rounded, polished it, made it rhythmical; it was

a masterpiece of prudence and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy;

but anger had got the better of rhetoric.

Emma, giving up all chance of hearing any details, left the pharmacy;

for Monsieur Homais had taken up the thread of his vituperations.

However, he was growing calmer, and was now grumbling in a paternal tone

whilst he fanned himself with his skull-cap.

“It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was a

doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is not ill a

man should know, and I would even venture to say that a man must know.

But later--later! At any rate, not till you are man yourself and your

temperament is formed.”

When Emma knocked at the door. Charles, who was waiting for her, came

forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his voice--

“Ah! my dear!”

And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips

the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her

face shuddering.

But she made answer, “Yes, I know, I know!”

He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event without any

sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband had not received

the consolations of religion, as he had died at Daudeville, in the

street, at the door of a cafe after a patriotic dinner with some

ex-officers.

Emma gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance’s sake,

she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to try, she

resolutely began eating, while Charles opposite her sat motionless in a

dejected attitude.

Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of

distress. Once he sighed, “I should have liked to see him again!”

She was silent. At last, understanding that she must say something, “How

old was your father?” she asked.

“Fifty-eight.”

“Ah!”

And that was all.

A quarter of an hour after he added, “My poor mother! what will become

of her now?”

She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so

taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say

nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And, shaking off

his own--

“Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?” he asked.

“Yes.”

When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma; and as

she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little

all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher--in

a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an

interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium

seized her.

They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards.

It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma’s luggage. In order to put it down

he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump.

“He doesn’t even remember any more about it,” she thought, looking at

the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with perspiration.

Bovary was searching at the bottom of his purse for a centime, and

without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation for him

in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a personified

reproach to his incurable incapacity.

“Hallo! you’ve a pretty bouquet,” he said, noticing Léon’s violets on

the chimney.

“Yes,” she replied indifferently; “it’s a bouquet I bought just now from

a beggar.”

Charles picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with tears,

against them, smelt them delicately.

She took them quickly from his hand and put them in a glass of water.

The next day Madame Bovary senior arrived. She and her son wept much.

Emma, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The following day

they had a talk over the mourning. They went and sat down with their

workboxes by the waterside under the arbour.

Charles was thinking of his father, and was surprised to feel so much

affection for this man, whom till then he had thought he cared little

about. Madame Bovary senior was thinking of her husband. The worst

days of the past seemed enviable to her. All was forgotten beneath the

instinctive regret of such a long habit, and from time to time whilst

she sewed, a big tear rolled along her nose and hung suspended there a

moment. Emma was thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since

they had been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and

not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to recall the

slightest details of that past day. But the presence of her husband and

mother-in-law worried her. She would have liked to hear nothing, to see

nothing, so as not to disturb the meditation on her love, that, do what

she would, became lost in external sensations.

She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were scattered

around her. Madame Bovary senior was plying her scissor without looking

up, and Charles, in his list slippers and his old brown surtout that he

used as a dressing-gown, sat with both hands in his pockets, and did not

speak either; near them Berthe, in a little white pinafore, was raking

sand in the walks with her spade. Suddenly she saw Monsieur Lheureux,

the linendraper, come in through the gate.

He came to offer his services “under the sad circumstances.” Emma

answered that she thought she could do without. The shopkeeper was not

to be beaten.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I should like to have a private talk

with you.” Then in a low voice, “It’s about that affair--you know.”

Charles crimsoned to his ears. “Oh, yes! certainly.” And in his

confusion, turning to his wife, “Couldn’t you, my darling?”

She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Charles said to his

mother, “It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household trifle.” He

did not want her to know the story of the bill, fearing her reproaches.

As soon as they were alone, Monsieur Lheureux in sufficiently clear

terms began to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then to talk of

indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest, and of his own

health, which was always so-so, always having ups and downs. In fact, he

had to work devilish hard, although he didn’t make enough, in spite of

all people said, to find butter for his bread.

Emma let him talk on. She had bored herself so prodigiously the last two

days.

“And so you’re quite well again?” he went on. “Ma foi! I saw your

husband in a sad state. He’s a good fellow, though we did have a little

misunderstanding.”

She asked what misunderstanding, for Charles had said nothing of the

dispute about the goods supplied to her.

“Why, you know well enough,” cried Lheureux. “It was about your little

fancies--the travelling trunks.”

He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind his

back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an unbearable

manner. Did he suspect anything?

She was lost in all kinds of apprehensions. At last, however, he went

on--

“We made it up, all the same, and I’ve come again to propose another

arrangement.”

This was to renew the bill Bovary had signed. The doctor, of course,

would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself, especially just

now, when he would have a lot of worry. “And he would do better to give

it over to someone else--to you, for example. With a power of attorney

it could be easily managed, and then we (you and I) would have our

little business transactions together.”

She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade,

Lheureux declared that madame must require something. He would send her

a black barege, twelve yards, just enough to make a gown.

“The one you’ve on is good enough for the house, but you want another

for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in. I’ve the eye of an

American!”

He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to measure

it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to make himself

agreeable, useful, “enfeoffing himself,” as Homais would have said, and

always dropping some hint to Emma about the power of attorney. He never

mentioned the bill; she did not think of it. Charles, at the beginning

of her convalescence, had certainly said something about it to her,

but so many emotions had passed through her head that she no longer

remembered it. Besides, she took care not to talk of any money

questions. Madame Bovary seemed surprised at this, and attributed the

change in her ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during

her illness.

But as soon as she was gone, Emma greatly astounded Bovary by her

practical good sense. It would be necessary to make inquiries, to look

into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a sale by auction

or a liquidation. She quoted technical terms casually, pronounced the

grand words of order, the future, foresight, and constantly exaggerated

the difficulties of settling his father’s affairs so much, that at last

one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage

and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all

bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux’s lessons.

Charles naively asked her where this paper came from.

“Monsieur Guillaumin”; and with the utmost coolness she added, “I don’t

trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we

ought to consult--we only know--no one.”

“Unless Léon--” replied Charles, who was reflecting. But it was

difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make the

journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a contest of

mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected waywardness--

“No, I will go!”

“How good you are!” he said, kissing her forehead.

The next morning she set out in the “Hirondelle” to go to Rouen to

consult Monsieur Léon, and she stayed there three days.

Chapter Three

They were three full, exquisite days--a true honeymoon. They were at

the Hotel-de-Boulogne, on the harbour; and they lived there, with drawn

blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor, and iced syrups were

brought them early in the morning.

Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the

islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the dockyard the

caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of vessels. The smoke of

the tar rose up between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the

water, undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques

of Florentine bronze.

They rowed down in the midst of moored boats, whose long oblique cables

grazed lightly against the bottom of the boat. The din of the town

gradually grew distant; the rolling of carriages, the tumult of voices,

the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. She took off her bonnet,

and they landed on their island.

They sat down in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern, at whose door hung

black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay down

upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and they would fain,

like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which

seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was

not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that

they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves;

but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had

not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the

gratification of their desires.

At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands.

They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in silence. The square

oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the stillness, seemed to mark

time, like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder

that trailed behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water.

Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the

orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing--

“One night, do you remember, we were sailing,” etc.

Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds

carried off the trills that Léon heard pass like the flapping of wings

about him.

She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop,

through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black

dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender,

taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards

heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she

reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight.

Léon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet

silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said--

“Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot

of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne,

cornets--everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome

man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying,

‘Now tell us something, Adolphe--Dolpe,’ I think.”

She shivered.

“You are in pain?” asked Léon, coming closer to her.

“Oh, it’s nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air.”

“And who doesn’t want for women, either,” softly added the sailor,

thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment.

Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again.

Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his letters to

Mere Rollet, and she gave him such precise instructions about a double

envelope that he admired greatly her amorous astuteness.

“So you can assure me it is all right?” she said with her last kiss.

“Yes, certainly.”

“But why,” he thought afterwards as he came back through the streets

alone, “is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?”

Chapter Four

Léon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided

their company, and completely neglected his work.

He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote to her. He called

her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories.

Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew,

so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office.

When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the

church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that

delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that

millionaires must experience when they come back to their native

village.

He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He

watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared.

Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She

thought he “had grown and was thinner,” while Artémise, on the contrary,

thought him stouter and darker.

He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the

tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the “Hirondelle,” had

definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at

five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern “was late.”

Léon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor’s door.

Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour.

The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that

evening, nor all the next day.

He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the

lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and

they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes.

Their separation was becoming intolerable. “I would rather die!” said

Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. “Adieu! adieu! When shall I

see you again?”

They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that

she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular

opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma

never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of

hope. Some money was coming to her.

On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large

stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had commended;

she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn’t

“drinking the sea,” politely undertook to supply her with one. She could

no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him,

and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not

understand either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and

even paid her private visits.

It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that

she seemed seized with great musical fervour.

One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece

four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing

any difference, cried--

“Bravo! very goodl You are wrong to stop. Go on!”

“Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty.”

The next day he begged her to play him something again.

“Very well; to please you!”

And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes

and blundered; then, stopping short--

“Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--” She bit her lips

and added, “Twenty francs a lesson, that’s too dear!”

“Yes, so it is--rather,” said Charles, giggling stupidly. “But it seems

to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of

no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities.”

“Find them!” said Emma.

The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could

no longer keep back the words.

“How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day. Well,

Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who are at

La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that from an

excellent mistress!”

She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But when

she passed by it (if Bovary were there), she sighed--

“Ah! my poor piano!”

And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them she

had given up music, and could not begin again now for important reasons.

Then people commiserated her--

“What a pity! she had so much talent!”

They even spoke to Bovary about it. They put him to shame, and

especially the chemist.

“You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie

fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madame to

study; you are economising on the subsequent musical education of

your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to

instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau’s, still rather

new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it, like

mothers nursing their own children and vaccination.”

So Charles returned once more to this question of the piano. Emma

replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor piano,

that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it go was to

Bovary like the indefinable suicide of a part of herself.

“If you liked,” he said, “a lesson from time to time, that wouldn’t

after all be very ruinous.”

“But lessons,” she replied, “are only of use when followed up.”

And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband’s permission to go

to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month she was even

considered to have made considerable progress.

Chapter Five

She went on Thursdays. She got up and dressed silently, in order not to

awaken Charles, who would have made remarks about her getting ready too

early. Next she walked up and down, went to the windows, and looked out

at the Place. The early dawn was broadening between the pillars of the

market, and the chemist’s shop, with the shutters still up, showed in

the pale light of the dawn the large letters of his signboard.

When the clock pointed to a quarter past seven, she went off to the

“Lion d’Or,” whose door Artémise opened yawning. The girl then made

up the coals covered by the cinders, and Emma remained alone in the

kitchen. Now and again she went out. Hivert was leisurely harnessing his

horses, listening, moreover, to Mere Lefrancois, who, passing her head

and nightcap through a grating, was charging him with commissions and

giving him explanations that would have confused anyone else. Emma kept

beating the soles of her boots against the pavement of the yard.

At last, when he had eaten his soup, put on his cloak, lighted his pipe,

and grasped his whip, he calmly installed himself on his seat.

The “Hirondelle” started at a slow trot, and for about a mile stopped

here and there to pick up passengers who waited for it, standing at the

border of the road, in front of their yard gates.

Those who had secured seats the evening before kept it waiting; some

even were still in bed in their houses. Hivert called, shouted, swore;

then he got down from his seat and went and knocked loudly at the doors.

The wind blew through the cracked windows.

The four seats, however, filled up. The carriage rolled off; rows of

apple-trees followed one upon another, and the road between its two long

ditches, full of yellow water, rose, constantly narrowing towards the

horizon.

Emma knew it from end to end; she knew that after a meadow there was

a sign-post, next an elm, a barn, or the hut of a lime-kiln tender.

Sometimes even, in the hope of getting some surprise, she shut her eyes,

but she never lost the clear perception of the distance to be traversed.

At last the brick houses began to follow one another more closely, the

earth resounded beneath the wheels, the “Hirondelle” glided between the

gardens, where through an opening one saw statues, a periwinkle plant,

clipped yews, and a swing. Then on a sudden the town appeared. Sloping

down like an amphitheatre, and drowned in the fog, it widened out

beyond the bridges confusedly. Then the open country spread away with

a monotonous movement till it touched in the distance the vague line of

the pale sky. Seen thus from above, the whole landscape looked immovable

as a picture; the anchored ships were massed in one corner, the river

curved round the foot of the green hills, and the isles, oblique in

shape, lay on the water, like large, motionless, black fishes. The

factory chimneys belched forth immense brown fumes that were blown away

at the top. One heard the rumbling of the foundries, together with the

clear chimes of the churches that stood out in the mist. The leafless

trees on the boulevards made violet thickets in the midst of the

houses, and the roofs, all shining with the rain, threw back unequal

reflections, according to the height of the quarters in which they were.

Sometimes a gust of wind drove the clouds towards the Saint Catherine

hills, like aerial waves that broke silently against a cliff.

A giddiness seemed to her to detach itself from this mass of existence,

and her heart swelled as if the hundred and twenty thousand souls that

palpitated there had all at once sent into it the vapour of the passions

she fancied theirs. Her love grew in the presence of this vastness, and

expanded with tumult to the vague murmurings that rose towards her. She

poured it out upon the square, on the walks, on the streets, and the

old Norman city outspread before her eyes as an enormous capital, as a

Babylon into which she was entering. She leant with both hands against

the window, drinking in the breeze; the three horses galloped, the

stones grated in the mud, the diligence rocked, and Hivert, from afar,

hailed the carts on the road, while the bourgeois who had spent the

night at the Guillaume woods came quietly down the hill in their little

family carriages.

They stopped at the barrier; Emma undid her overshoes, put on other

gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty paces farther she got down

from the “Hirondelle.”

The town was then awakening. Shop-boys in caps were cleaning up the

shop-fronts, and women with baskets against their hips, at intervals

uttered sonorous cries at the corners of streets. She walked with

downcast eyes, close to the walls, and smiling with pleasure under her

lowered black veil.

For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the most direct road.

She plunged into dark alleys, and, all perspiring, reached the bottom

of the Rue Nationale, near the fountain that stands there. It is the

quarter for theatres, public-houses, and whores. Often a cart would

pass near her, bearing some shaking scenery. Waiters in aprons were

sprinkling sand on the flagstones between green shrubs. It all smelt of

absinthe, cigars, and oysters.

She turned down a street; she recognised him by his curling hair that

escaped from beneath his hat.

Léon walked along the pavement. She followed him to the hotel. He went

up, opened the door, entered--What an embrace!

Then, after the kisses, the words gushed forth. They told each other the

sorrows of the week, the presentiments, the anxiety for the letters; but

now everything was forgotten; they gazed into each other’s faces with

voluptuous laughs, and tender names.

The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat. The curtains

were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and bulged out too

much towards the bell-shaped bedside; and nothing in the world was so

lovely as her brown head and white skin standing out against this purple

colour, when, with a movement of shame, she crossed her bare arms,

hiding her face in her hands.

The warm room, with its discreet carpet, its gay ornaments, and its

calm light, seemed made for the intimacies of passion. The curtain-rods,

ending in arrows, their brass pegs, and the great balls of the fire-dogs

shone suddenly when the sun came in. On the chimney between the

candelabra there were two of those pink shells in which one hears the

murmur of the sea if one holds them to the ear.

How they loved that dear room, so full of gaiety, despite its rather

faded splendour! They always found the furniture in the same place, and

sometimes hairpins, that she had forgotten the Thursday before, under

the pedestal of the clock. They lunched by the fireside on a little

round table, inlaid with rosewood. Emma carved, put bits on his plate

with all sorts of coquettish ways, and she laughed with a sonorous and

libertine laugh when the froth of the champagne ran over from the

glass to the rings on her fingers. They were so completely lost in

the possession of each other that they thought themselves in their

own house, and that they would live there till death, like two spouses

eternally young. They said “our room,” “our carpet,” she even said “my

slippers,” a gift of Léon’s, a whim she had had. They were pink satin,

bordered with swansdown. When she sat on his knees, her leg, then too

short, hung in the air, and the dainty shoe, that had no back to it, was

held only by the toes to her bare foot.

He for the first time enjoyed the inexpressible delicacy of feminine

refinements. He had never met this grace of language, this reserve of

clothing, these poses of the weary dove. He admired the exaltation of

her soul and the lace on her petticoat. Besides, was she not “a lady”

and a married woman--a real mistress, in fine?

By the diversity of her humour, in turn mystical or mirthful, talkative,

taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened in him a thousand desires,

called up instincts or memories. She was the mistress of all the novels,

the heroine of all the dramas, the vague “she” of all the volumes

of verse. He found again on her shoulder the amber colouring of the

“Odalisque Bathing”; she had the long waist of feudal chatelaines, and

she resembled the “Pale Woman of Barcelona.” But above all she was the

Angel!

Often looking at her, it seemed to him that his soul, escaping towards

her, spread like a wave about the outline of her head, and descended

drawn down into the whiteness of her breast. He knelt on the ground

before her, and with both elbows on her knees looked at her with a

smile, his face upturned.

She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with intoxication--

“Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something so sweet comes

from your eyes that helps me so much!”

She called him “child.” “Child, do you love me?”

And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her lips that

fastened to his mouth.

On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as he bent his arm

beneath a golden garland. They had laughed at it many a time, but when

they had to part everything seemed serious to them.

Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating, “Till Thursday,

till Thursday.”

Suddenly she seized his head between her hands, kissed him hurriedly on

the forehead, crying, “Adieu!” and rushed down the stairs.

She went to a hairdresser’s in the Rue de la Comedie to have her hair

arranged. Night fell; the gas was lighted in the shop. She heard the

bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the performance, and she saw,

passing opposite, men with white faces and women in faded gowns going in

at the stage-door.

It was hot in the room, small, and too low where the stove was hissing

in the midst of wigs and pomades. The smell of the tongs, together with

the greasy hands that handled her head, soon stunned her, and she dozed

a little in her wrapper. Often, as he did her hair, the man offered her

tickets for a masked ball.

Then she went away. She went up the streets; reached the Croix-Rouge,

put on her overshoes, that she had hidden in the morning under the seat,

and sank into her place among the impatient passengers. Some got out

at the foot of the hill. She remained alone in the carriage. At every

turning all the lights of the town were seen more and more completely,

making a great luminous vapour about the dim houses. Emma knelt on the

cushions and her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed;

called on Léon, sent him tender words and kisses lost in the wind.

On the hillside a poor devil wandered about with his stick in the midst

of the diligences. A mass of rags covered his shoulders, and an old

staved-in beaver, turned out like a basin, hid his face; but when he

took it off he discovered in the place of eyelids empty and bloody

orbits. The flesh hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids

that congealed into green scale down to the nose, whose black nostrils

sniffed convulsively. To speak to you he threw back his head with an

idiotic laugh; then his bluish eyeballs, rolling constantly, at the

temples beat against the edge of the open wound. He sang a little song

as he followed the carriages--

“Maids an the warmth of a summer day

Dream of love, and of love always”

And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green leaves.

Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma, bareheaded, and she drew

back with a cry. Hivert made fun of him. He would advise him to get a

booth at the Saint Romain fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his young

woman was.

Often they had started when, with a sudden movement, his hat entered the

diligence through the small window, while he clung with his other arm

to the footboard, between the wheels splashing mud. His voice, feeble

at first and quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in the night like the

indistinct moan of a vague distress; and through the ringing of the

bells, the murmur of the trees, and the rumbling of the empty vehicle,

it had a far-off sound that disturbed Emma. It went to the bottom of

her soul, like a whirlwind in an abyss, and carried her away into the

distances of a boundless melancholy. But Hivert, noticing a weight

behind, gave the blind man sharp cuts with his whip. The thong lashed

his wounds, and he fell back into the mud with a yell. Then the

passengers in the “Hirondelle” ended by falling asleep, some with open

mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning against their neighbour’s

shoulder, or with their arm passed through the strap, oscillating

regularly with the jolting of the carriage; and the reflection of the

lantern swinging without, on the crupper of the wheeler; penetrating

into the interior through the chocolate calico curtains, threw

sanguineous shadows over all these motionless people. Emma, drunk with

grief, shivered in her clothes, feeling her feet grow colder and colder,

and death in her soul.

Charles at home was waiting for her; the “Hirondelle” was always late

on Thursdays. Madame arrived at last, and scarcely kissed the child. The

dinner was not ready. No matter! She excused the servant. This girl now

seemed allowed to do just as she liked.

Often her husband, noting her pallor, asked if she were unwell.

“No,” said Emma.

“But,” he replied, “you seem so strange this evening.”

“Oh, it’s nothing! nothing!”

There were even days when she had no sooner come in than she went up to

her room; and Justin, happening to be there, moved about noiselessly,

quicker at helping her than the best of maids. He put the matches

ready, the candlestick, a book, arranged her nightgown, turned back the

bedclothes.

“Come!” said she, “that will do. Now you can go.”

For he stood there, his hands hanging down and his eyes wide open, as if

enmeshed in the innumerable threads of a sudden reverie.

The following day was frightful, and those that came after still more

unbearable, because of her impatience to once again seize her happiness;

an ardent lust, inflamed by the images of past experience, and that

burst forth freely on the seventh day beneath Léon’s caresses. His

ardours were hidden beneath outbursts of wonder and gratitude. Emma

tasted this love in a discreet, absorbed fashion, maintained it by all

the artifices of her tenderness, and trembled a little lest it should be

lost later on.

She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy voice--

“Ah! you too, you will leave me! You will marry! You will be like all

the others.”

He asked, “What others?”

“Why, like all men,” she replied. Then added, repulsing him with a

languid movement--

“You are all evil!”

One day, as they were talking philosophically of earthly disillusions,

to experiment on his jealousy, or yielding, perhaps, to an over-strong

need to pour out her heart, she told him that formerly, before him, she

had loved someone.

“Not like you,” she went on quickly, protesting by the head of her child

that “nothing had passed between them.”

The young man believed her, but none the less questioned her to find out

what he was.

“He was a ship’s captain, my dear.”

Was this not preventing any inquiry, and, at the same time, assuming a

higher ground through this pretended fascination exercised over a man

who must have been of warlike nature and accustomed to receive homage?

The clerk then felt the lowliness of his position; he longed for

epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that would please her--he gathered that

from her spendthrift habits.

Emma nevertheless concealed many of these extravagant fancies, such as

her wish to have a blue tilbury to drive into Rouen, drawn by an

English horse and driven by a groom in top-boots. It was Justin who had

inspired her with this whim, by begging her to take him into her

service as _valet-de-chambre_,[19] and if the privation of it did not

lessen the pleasure of her arrival at each rendezvous, it certainly

augmented the bitterness of the return.

[19] Manservant.

Often, when they talked together of Paris, she ended by murmuring, “Ah!

how happy we should be there!”

“Are we not happy?” gently answered the young man passing his hands over

her hair.

“Yes, that is true,” she said. “I am mad. Kiss me!”

To her husband she was more charming than ever. She made him

pistachio-creams, and played him waltzes after dinner. So he thought

himself the most fortunate of men and Emma was without uneasiness, when,

one evening suddenly he said--

“It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, isn’t it, who gives you lessons?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I saw her just now,” Charles went on, “at Madame Liegeard’s. I

spoke to her about you, and she doesn’t know you.”

This was like a thunderclap. However, she replied quite naturally--

“Ah! no doubt she forgot my name.”

“But perhaps,” said the doctor, “there are several Demoiselles Lempereur

at Rouen who are music-mistresses.”

“Possibly!” Then quickly--“But I have my receipts here. See!”

And she went to the writing-table, ransacked all the drawers, rummaged

the papers, and at last lost her head so completely that Charles

earnestly begged her not to take so much trouble about those wretched

receipts.

“Oh, I will find them,” she said.

And, in fact, on the following Friday, as Charles was putting on one

of his boots in the dark cabinet where his clothes were kept, he felt

a piece of paper between the leather and his sock. He took it out and

read--

“Received, for three months’ lessons and several pieces of music, the

sum of sixty-three francs.--Felicie Lempereur, professor of music.”

“How the devil did it get into my boots?”

“It must,” she replied, “have fallen from the old box of bills that is

on the edge of the shelf.”

From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which

she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania,

a pleasure carried to such an extent that if she said she had the day

before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken

the left.

One morning, when she had gone, as usual, rather lightly clothed, it

suddenly began to snow, and as Charles was watching the weather from the

window, he caught sight of Monsieur Bournisien in the chaise of Monsieur

Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. Then he went down to give the

priest a thick shawl that he was to hand over to Emma as soon as he

reached the “Croix-Rouge.” When he got to the inn, Monsieur Bournisien

asked for the wife of the Yonville doctor. The landlady replied that

she very rarely came to her establishment. So that evening, when he

recognised Madame Bovary in the “Hirondelle,” the cure told her his

dilemma, without, however, appearing to attach much importance to it,

for he began praising a preacher who was doing wonders at the Cathedral,

and whom all the ladies were rushing to hear.

Still, if he did not ask for any explanation, others, later on, might

prove less discreet. So she thought well to get down each time at the

“Croix-Rouge,” so that the good folk of her village who saw her on the

stairs should suspect nothing.

One day, however, Monsieur Lheureux met her coming out of the Hotel

de Boulogne on Léon’s arm; and she was frightened, thinking he would

gossip. He was not such a fool. But three days after he came to her

room, shut the door, and said, “I must have some money.”

She declared she could not give him any. Lheureux burst into

lamentations and reminded her of all the kindnesses he had shown her.

In fact, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma up to the present had

paid only one. As to the second, the shopkeeper, at her request, had

consented to replace it by another, which again had been renewed for a

long date. Then he drew from his pocket a list of goods not paid for; to

wit, the curtains, the carpet, the material for the armchairs, several

dresses, and divers articles of dress, the bills for which amounted to

about two thousand francs.

She bowed her head. He went on--

“But if you haven’t any ready money, you have an estate.” And he

reminded her of a miserable little hovel situated at Barneville, near

Aumale, that brought in almost nothing. It had formerly been part of a

small farm sold by Monsieur Bovary senior; for Lheureux knew everything,

even to the number of acres and the names of the neighbours.

“If I were in your place,” he said, “I should clear myself of my debts,

and have money left over.”

She pointed out the difficulty of getting a purchaser. He held out the

hope of finding one; but she asked him how she should manage to sell it.

“Haven’t you your power of attorney?” he replied.

The phrase came to her like a breath of fresh air. “Leave me the bill,”

said Emma.

“Oh, it isn’t worth while,” answered Lheureux.

He came back the following week and boasted of having, after much

trouble, at last discovered a certain Langlois, who, for a long time,

had had an eye on the property, but without mentioning his price.

“Never mind the price!” she cried.

But they would, on the contrary, have to wait, to sound the fellow.

The thing was worth a journey, and, as she could not undertake it, he

offered to go to the place to have an interview with Langlois. On his

return he announced that the purchaser proposed four thousand francs.

Emma was radiant at this news.

“Frankly,” he added, “that’s a good price.”

She drew half the sum at once, and when she was about to pay her account

the shopkeeper said--

“It really grieves me, on my word! to see you depriving yourself all at

once of such a big sum as that.”

Then she looked at the bank-notes, and dreaming of the unlimited number

of rendezvous represented by those two thousand francs, she stammered--

“What! what!”

“Oh!” he went on, laughing good-naturedly, “one puts anything one likes

on receipts. Don’t you think I know what household affairs are?” And he

looked at her fixedly, while in his hand he held two long papers that he

slid between his nails. At last, opening his pocket-book, he spread out

on the table four bills to order, each for a thousand francs.

“Sign these,” he said, “and keep it all!”

She cried out, scandalised.

“But if I give you the surplus,” replied Monsieur Lheureux impudently,

“is that not helping you?”

And taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the account, “Received of

Madame Bovary four thousand francs.”

“Now who can trouble you, since in six months you’ll draw the arrears

for your cottage, and I don’t make the last bill due till after you’ve

been paid?”

Emma grew rather confused in her calculations, and her ears tingled

as if gold pieces, bursting from their bags, rang all round her on

the floor. At last Lheureux explained that he had a very good friend,

Vincart, a broker at Rouen, who would discount these four bills. Then

he himself would hand over to madame the remainder after the actual debt

was paid.

But instead of two thousand francs he brought only eighteen hundred, for

the friend Vincart (which was only fair) had deducted two hundred francs

for commission and discount. Then he carelessly asked for a receipt.

“You understand--in business--sometimes. And with the date, if you

please, with the date.”

A horizon of realisable whims opened out before Emma. She was prudent

enough to lay by a thousand crowns, with which the first three bills

were paid when they fell due; but the fourth, by chance, came to the

house on a Thursday, and Charles, quite upset, patiently awaited his

wife’s return for an explanation.

If she had not told him about this bill, it was only to spare him such

domestic worries; she sat on his knees, caressed him, cooed to him, gave

him a long enumeration of all the indispensable things that had been got

on credit.

“Really, you must confess, considering the quantity, it isn’t too dear.”

Charles, at his wit’s end, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux,

who swore he would arrange matters if the doctor would sign him two

bills, one of which was for seven hundred francs, payable in three

months. In order to arrange for this he wrote his mother a pathetic

letter. Instead of sending a reply she came herself; and when Emma

wanted to know whether he had got anything out of her, “Yes,” he

replied; “but she wants to see the account.” The next morning at

daybreak Emma ran to Lheureux to beg him to make out another account for

not more than a thousand francs, for to show the one for four thousand

it would be necessary to say that she had paid two-thirds, and confess,

consequently, the sale of the estate--a negotiation admirably carried

out by the shopkeeper, and which, in fact, was only actually known later

on.

Despite the low price of each article, Madame Bovary senior, of course,

thought the expenditure extravagant.

“Couldn’t you do without a carpet? Why have recovered the arm-chairs? In

my time there was a single arm-chair in a house, for elderly persons--at

any rate it was so at my mother’s, who was a good woman, I can tell you.

Everybody can’t be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste! I should

be ashamed to coddle myself as you do! And yet I am old. I need looking

after. And there! there! fitting up gowns! fallals! What! silk for

lining at two francs, when you can get jaconet for ten sous, or even for

eight, that would do well enough!”

Emma, lying on a lounge, replied as quietly as possible--“Ah! Madame,

enough! enough!”

The other went on lecturing her, predicting they would end in the

workhouse. But it was Bovary’s fault. Luckily he had promised to destroy

that power of attorney.

“What?”

“Ah! he swore he would,” went on the good woman.

Emma opened the window, called Charles, and the poor fellow was obliged

to confess the promise torn from him by his mother.

Emma disappeared, then came back quickly, and majestically handed her a

thick piece of paper.

“Thank you,” said the old woman. And she threw the power of attorney

into the fire.

Emma began to laugh, a strident, piercing, continuous laugh; she had an

attack of hysterics.

“Oh, my God!” cried Charles. “Ah! you really are wrong! You come here

and make scenes with her!”

His mother, shrugging her shoulders, declared it was “all put on.”

But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took his wife’s part, so that

Madame Bovary, senior, said she would leave. She went the very next day,

and on the threshold, as he was trying to detain her, she replied--

“No, no! You love her better than me, and you are right. It is natural.

For the rest, so much the worse! You will see. Good day--for I am not

likely to come soon again, as you say, to make scenes.”

Charles nevertheless was very crestfallen before Emma, who did not hide

the resentment she still felt at his want of confidence, and it needed

many prayers before she would consent to have another power of attorney.

He even accompanied her to Monsieur Guillaumin to have a second one,

just like the other, drawn up.

“I understand,” said the notary; “a man of science can’t be worried with

the practical details of life.”

And Charles felt relieved by this comfortable reflection, which gave his

weakness the flattering appearance of higher pre-occupation.

And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in their room with

Léon! She laughed, cried, sang, sent for sherbets, wanted to smoke

cigarettes, seemed to him wild and extravagant, but adorable, superb.

He did not know what recreation of her whole being drove her more and

more to plunge into the pleasures of life. She was becoming irritable,

greedy, voluptuous; and she walked about the streets with him carrying

her head high, without fear, so she said, of compromising herself.

At times, however, Emma shuddered at the sudden thought of meeting

Rodolphe, for it seemed to her that, although they were separated

forever, she was not completely free from her subjugation to him.

One night she did not return to Yonville at all. Charles lost his head

with anxiety, and little Berthe would not go to bed without her mamma,

and sobbed enough to break her heart. Justin had gone out searching the

road at random. Monsieur Homais even had left his pharmacy.

At last, at eleven o’clock, able to bear it no longer, Charles

harnessed his chaise, jumped in, whipped up his horse, and reached the

“Croix-Rouge” about two o’clock in the morning. No one there! He thought

that the clerk had perhaps seen her; but where did he live? Happily,

Charles remembered his employer’s address, and rushed off there.

Day was breaking, and he could distinguish the escutcheons over the

door, and knocked. Someone, without opening the door, shouted out the

required information, adding a few insults to those who disturb people

in the middle of the night.

The house inhabited by the clerk had neither bell, knocker, nor porter.

Charles knocked loudly at the shutters with his hands. A policeman

happened to pass by. Then he was frightened, and went away.

“I am mad,” he said; “no doubt they kept her to dinner at Monsieur

Lormeaux’.” But the Lormeaux no longer lived at Rouen.

“She probably stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Why, Madame Dubreuil

has been dead these ten months! Where can she be?”

An idea occurred to him. At a cafe he asked for a Directory, and

hurriedly looked for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived at

No. 74 Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.

As he was turning into the street, Emma herself appeared at the other

end of it. He threw himself upon her rather than embraced her, crying--

“What kept you yesterday?”

“I was not well.”

“What was it? Where? How?”

She passed her hand over her forehead and answered, “At Mademoiselle

Lempereur’s.”

“I was sure of it! I was going there.”

“Oh, it isn’t worth while,” said Emma. “She went out just now; but for

the future don’t worry. I do not feel free, you see, if I know that the

least delay upsets you like this.”

This was a sort of permission that she gave herself, so as to get

perfect freedom in her escapades. And she profited by it freely, fully.

When she was seized with the desire to see Léon, she set out upon any

pretext; and as he was not expecting her on that day, she went to fetch

him at his office.

It was a great delight at first, but soon he no longer concealed the

truth, which was, that his master complained very much about these

interruptions.

“Pshaw! come along,” she said.

And he slipped out.

She wanted him to dress all in black, and grow a pointed beard, to

look like the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his lodgings;

thought them poor. He blushed at them, but she did not notice this, then

advised him to buy some curtains like hers, and as he objected to the

expense--

“Ah! ah! you care for your money,” she said laughing.

Each time Léon had to tell her everything that he had done since their

last meeting. She asked him for some verses--some verses “for herself,”

a “love poem” in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a

rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in

a “Keepsake.” This was less from vanity than from the one desire of

pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes;

he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words

and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this

corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity and

dissimulation?

Chapter Six

During the journeys he made to see her, Léon had often dined at the

chemist’s, and he felt obliged from politeness to invite him in turn.

“With pleasure!” Monsieur Homais replied; “besides, I must invigorate

my mind, for I am getting rusty here. We’ll go to the theatre, to the

restaurant; we’ll make a night of it.”

“Oh, my dear!” tenderly murmured Madame Homais, alarmed at the vague

perils he was preparing to brave.

“Well, what? Do you think I’m not sufficiently ruining my health living

here amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy? But there! that is

the way with women! They are jealous of science, and then are opposed to

our taking the most legitimate distractions. No matter! Count upon

me. One of these days I shall turn up at Rouen, and we’ll go the pace

together.”

The druggist would formerly have taken good care not to use such an

expression, but he was cultivating a gay Parisian style, which he

thought in the best taste; and, like his neighbour, Madame Bovary, he

questioned the clerk curiously about the customs of the capital; he

even talked slang to dazzle the bourgeois, saying bender, crummy, dandy,

macaroni, the cheese, cut my stick and “I’ll hook it,” for “I am going.”

So one Thursday Emma was surprised to meet Monsieur Homais in the

kitchen of the “Lion d’Or,” wearing a traveller’s costume, that is to

say, wrapped in an old cloak which no one knew he had, while he carried

a valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his establishment in the

other. He had confided his intentions to no one, for fear of causing the

public anxiety by his absence.

The idea of seeing again the place where his youth had been spent no

doubt excited him, for during the whole journey he never ceased talking,

and as soon as he had arrived, he jumped quickly out of the diligence

to go in search of Léon. In vain the clerk tried to get rid of him.

Monsieur Homais dragged him off to the large Cafe de la Normandie,

which he entered majestically, not raising his hat, thinking it very

provincial to uncover in any public place.

Emma waited for Léon three quarters of an hour. At last she ran to

his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing him of

indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the

afternoon, her face pressed against the window-panes.

At two o’clock they were still at a table opposite each other. The large

room was emptying; the stove-pipe, in the shape of a palm-tree, spread

its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and near them, outside the

window, in the bright sunshine, a little fountain gurgled in a white

basin, where; in the midst of watercress and asparagus, three torpid

lobsters stretched across to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on

their sides.

Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated with the

luxury than the rich fare, the Pommard wine all the same rather excited his

faculties; and when the omelette _au rhum_[20] appeared, he began propounding

immoral theories about women. What seduced him above all else was chic. He

admired an elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and as to bodily

qualities, he didn’t dislike a young girl.

[20] In rum.

Léon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking,

eating, and talking.

“You must be very lonely,” he said suddenly, “here at Rouen. To be sure

your lady-love doesn’t live far away.”

And the other blushed--

“Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville--”

The young man stammered something.

“At Madame Bovary’s, you’re not making love to--”

“To whom?”

“The servant!”

He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all prudence, Léon,

in spite of himself protested. Besides, he only liked dark women.

“I approve of that,” said the chemist; “they have more passion.”

And whispering into his friend’s ear, he pointed out the symptoms by

which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even launched into

an ethnographic digression: the German was vapourish, the French woman

licentious, the Italian passionate.

“And negresses?” asked the clerk.

“They are an artistic taste!” said Homais. “Waiter! two cups of coffee!”

“Are we going?” at last asked Léon impatiently.

“Ja!”

But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the establishment

and made him a few compliments. Then the young man, to be alone, alleged

he had some business engagement.

“Ah! I will escort you,” said Homais.

And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he talked

of his wife, his children; of their future, and of his business; told

him in what a decayed condition it had formerly been, and to what a

degree of perfection he had raised it.

Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Léon left him abruptly, ran

up the stairs, and found his mistress in great excitement. At mention of

the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons;

it wasn’t his fault; didn’t she know Homais--did she believe that he

would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and,

sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous

pose, full of concupiscence and supplication.

She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him seriously,

almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red eyelids were lowered,

she gave him her hands, and Léon was pressing them to his lips when a

servant appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.

“You will come back?” she said.

“Yes.”

“But when?”

“Immediately.”

“It’s a trick,” said the chemist, when he saw Léon. “I wanted to

interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let’s go and have

a glass of garus at Bridoux’.”

Léon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist joked

him about quill-drivers and the law.

“Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents you? Be a

man! Let’s go to Bridoux’. You’ll see his dog. It’s very interesting.”

And as the clerk still insisted--

“I’ll go with you. I’ll read a paper while I wait for you, or turn over

the leaves of a ‘Code.’”

Léon, bewildered by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’ chatter, and,

perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as it

were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating--

“Let’s go to Bridoux’. It’s just by here, in the Rue Malpalu.”

Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that indefinable

feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts, he allowed

himself to be led off to Bridoux’, whom they found in his small yard,

superintending three workmen, who panted as they turned the large

wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water. Homais gave them some good

advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times Léon

tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm saying--

“Presently! I’m coming! We’ll go to the ‘Fanal de Rouen’ to see the

fellows there. I’ll introduce you to Thornassin.”

At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the hotel.

Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She

detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an

insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from

him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a

woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.

Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no doubt,

calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates

us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt

sticks to our fingers.

They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their

love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers,

verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion

striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly

promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then

she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This

disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him

more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off

the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding

snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the

door was closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one

movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.

Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering

lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague

and dreary that seemed to Léon to glide between them subtly as if to

separate them.

He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must

have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of

pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he

rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked, by her personality.

He begrudged Emma this constant victory. He even strove not to love her;

then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like

drunkards at the sight of strong drinks.

She did not fail, in truth, to lavish all sorts of attentions upon him,

from the delicacies of food to the coquettries of dress and languishing

looks. She brought roses to her breast from Yonville, which she threw

into his face; was anxious about his health, gave him advice as to his

conduct; and, in order the more surely to keep her hold on him, hoping

perhaps that heaven would take her part, she tied a medal of the

Virgin round his neck. She inquired like a virtuous mother about his

companions. She said to him--

“Don’t see them; don’t go out; think only of ourselves; love me!”

She would have liked to be able to watch over his life; and the idea

occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near the hotel

there was always a kind of loafer who accosted travellers, and who would

not refuse. But her pride revolted at this.

“Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does it matter to me?

As If I cared for him!”

One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone along

the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she sat down on a

form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that time had been! How she

longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure

to herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in

the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed

before her eyes. And Léon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the

others.

“Yet I love him,” she said to herself.

No matter! She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this

insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay of everything

on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a being strong and

beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement,

a poet’s heart in an angel’s form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing

out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find

him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of

seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom,

every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left

upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.

A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard

from the convent-clock. Four o’clock! And it seemed to her that she had

been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be

contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space.

Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more about money

matters than an archduchess.

Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald, came to her

house, saying he had been sent by Monsieur Vincart of Rouen. He took out

the pins that held together the side-pockets of his long green overcoat,

stuck them into his sleeve, and politely handed her a paper.

It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, and which

Lheureux, in spite of all his professions, had paid away to Vincart. She

sent her servant for him. He could not come. Then the stranger, who

had remained standing, casting right and left curious glances, that his

thick, fair eyebrows hid, asked with a naive air--

“What answer am I to take Monsieur Vincart?”

“Oh,” said Emma, “tell him that I haven’t it. I will send next week; he

must wait; yes, till next week.”

And the fellow went without another word.

But the next day at twelve o’clock she received a summons, and the sight

of the stamped paper, on which appeared several times in large letters,

“Maitre Hareng, bailiff at Buchy,” so frightened her that she rushed in

hot haste to the linendraper’s. She found him in his shop, doing up a

parcel.

“Your obedient!” he said; “I am at your service.”

But Lheureux, all the same, went on with his work, helped by a young

girl of about thirteen, somewhat hunch-backed, who was at once his clerk

and his servant.

Then, his clogs clattering on the shop-boards, he went up in front

of Madame Bovary to the first door, and introduced her into a narrow

closet, where, in a large bureau in sapon-wood, lay some ledgers,

protected by a horizontal padlocked iron bar. Against the wall, under

some remnants of calico, one glimpsed a safe, but of such dimensions

that it must contain something besides bills and money. Monsieur

Lheureux, in fact, went in for pawnbroking, and it was there that he had

put Madame Bovary’s gold chain, together with the earrings of poor old

Tellier, who, at last forced to sell out, had bought a meagre store

of grocery at Quincampoix, where he was dying of catarrh amongst his

candles, that were less yellow than his face.

Lheureux sat down in a large cane arm-chair, saying: “What news?”

“See!”

And she showed him the paper.

“Well how can I help it?”

Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he had given not to

pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.

“But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own throat.”

“And what will happen now?” she went on.

“Oh, it’s very simple; a judgment and then a distraint--that’s about

it!”

Emma kept down a desire to strike him, and asked gently if there was no

way of quieting Monsieur Vincart.

“I dare say! Quiet Vincart! You don’t know him; he’s more ferocious than

an Arab!”

Still Monsieur Lheureux must interfere.

“Well, listen. It seems to me so far I’ve been very good to you.” And

opening one of his ledgers, “See,” he said. Then running up the page

with his finger, “Let’s see! let’s see! August 3d, two hundred francs;

June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23d, forty-six. In April--”

He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.

“Not to speak of the bills signed by Monsieur Bovary, one for seven

hundred francs, and another for three hundred. As to your little

installments, with the interest, why, there’s no end to ‘em; one gets

quite muddled over ‘em. I’ll have nothing more to do with it.”

She wept; she even called him “her good Monsieur Lheureux.” But he

always fell back upon “that rascal Vincart.” Besides, he hadn’t a brass

farthing; no one was paying him now-a-days; they were eating his coat

off his back; a poor shopkeeper like him couldn’t advance money.

Emma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was biting the feathers of a

quill, no doubt became uneasy at her silence, for he went on--

“Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I might--”

“Besides,” said she, “as soon as the balance of Barneville--”

“What!”

And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemed much surprised.

Then in a honied voice--

“And we agree, you say?”

“Oh! to anything you like.”

On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures, and

declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affair was shady,

and that he was being bled, he wrote out four bills for two hundred and

fifty francs each, to fall due month by month.

“Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it’s settled. I don’t

play the fool; I’m straight enough.”

Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of which,

however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.

“When I think that there’s a dress at threepence-halfpenny a yard, and

warranted fast colours! And yet they actually swallow it! Of course you

understand one doesn’t tell them what it really is!” He hoped by this

confession of dishonesty to others to quite convince her of his probity

to her.

Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipure that he had

lately picked up “at a sale.”

“Isn’t it lovely?” said Lheureux. “It is very much used now for the

backs of arm-chairs. It’s quite the rage.”

And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the guipure in some blue

paper and put it in Emma’s hands.

“But at least let me know--”

“Yes, another time,” he replied, turning on his heel.

That same evening she urged Bovary to write to his mother, to ask her

to send as quickly as possible the whole of the balance due from the

father’s estate. The mother-in-law replied that she had nothing more,

the winding up was over, and there was due to them besides Barneville an

income of six hundred francs, that she would pay them punctually.

Then Madame Bovary sent in accounts to two or three patients, and she

made large use of this method, which was very successful. She was always

careful to add a postscript: “Do not mention this to my husband; you

know how proud he is. Excuse me. Yours obediently.” There were some

complaints; she intercepted them.

To get money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old

odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing

her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she picked up nick-nacks

secondhand, that, in default of anyone else, Monsieur Lheureux would

certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers, Chinese

porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from Félicité, from Madame

Lefrancois, from the landlady at the Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no

matter where.

With the money she at last received from Barneville she paid two bills;

the other fifteen hundred francs fell due. She renewed the bills, and

thus it was continually.

Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make a calculation, but she

discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them

possible. Then she recommenced, soon got confused, gave it all up, and

thought no more about it.

The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen leaving it with angry

faces. Handkerchiefs were lying about on the stoves, and little Berthe,

to the great scandal of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes in

them. If Charles timidly ventured a remark, she answered roughly that it

wasn’t her fault.

What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? He explained

everything through her old nervous illness, and reproaching himself with

having taken her infirmities for faults, accused himself of egotism, and

longed to go and take her in his arms.

“Ah, no!” he said to himself; “I should worry her.”

And he did not stir.

After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he took little Berthe

on his knees, and unfolding his medical journal, tried to teach her

to read. But the child, who never had any lessons, soon looked up with

large, sad eyes and began to cry. Then he comforted her; went to fetch

water in her can to make rivers on the sand path, or broke off branches

from the privet hedges to plant trees in the beds. This did not spoil

the garden much, all choked now with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois

for so many days. Then the child grew cold and asked for her mother.

“Call the servant,” said Charles. “You know, dearie, that mamma does not

like to be disturbed.”

Autumn was setting in, and the leaves were already falling, as they did

two years ago when she was ill. Where would it all end? And he walked up

and down, his hands behind his back.

Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there all

day long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning Turkish

pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian’s shop. In order

not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of

manoeuvring, she at last succeeded in banishing him to the second floor,

while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures of

orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out,

and Charles hurried to her.

“Oh, go away!” she would say.

Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner flame

to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all desire, she threw

open her window, breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her

masses of hair, too heavy, and, gazing upon the stars, longed for some

princely love. She thought of him, of Léon. She would then have given

anything for a single one of those meetings that surfeited her.

These were her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous, and when he

alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally,

which happened pretty well every time. He tried to make her understand

that they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller

hotel, but she always found some objection.

One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her bag (they were

old Roualt’s wedding present), begging him to pawn them at once for her,

and Léon obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him. He was afraid of

compromising himself.

Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress’s ways were growing

odd, and that they were perhaps not wrong in wishing to separate him

from her.

In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her

that he was “ruining himself with a married woman,” and the good lady at

once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious

creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of

love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in

the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open

his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such

an intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself. He

implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice

in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage’s sake.

At last Léon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached

himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry and

lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without reckoning

the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the stove in the

morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle

down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every

bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment,

has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises.

The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears

within him the debris of a poet.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his

heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music,

dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.

They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession

that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he

was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of

marriage.

But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at

the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from

corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting

all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Léon of her

baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some

catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not

the courage to make up her mind to it herself.

She none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of the

notion that a woman must write to her lover.

But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out

of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading, her strongest

lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible, that she palpitated

wondering, without, however, the power to imagine him clearly, so lost

was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in

that azure land where silk ladders hang from balconies under the breath

of flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was

coming, and would carry her right away in a kiss.

Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied

her more than great debauchery.

She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received

summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would have liked

not to be alive, or to be always asleep.

On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening went to

a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a club wig, and

three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced all night to the wild

tones of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning

she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six

masks, _débardeuses_[21] and sailors, Léon’s comrades, who were talking

about having supper.