[21] People dressed as longshoremen.

The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of one on the

harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed them to

a little room on the fourth floor.

The men were whispering in a corner, no doubt consorting about expenses.

There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shopman--what company

for her! As to the women, Emma soon perceived from the tone of their

voices that they must almost belong to the lowest class. Then she was

frightened, pushed back her chair, and cast down her eyes.

The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was on fire, her eyes

smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her head she seemed to feel the

floor of the ball-room rebounding again beneath the rhythmical pulsation

of the thousands of dancing feet. And now the smell of the punch, the

smoke of the cigars, made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her

to the window.

Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour broadened out

in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The livid river was

shivering in the wind; there was no one on the bridges; the street lamps

were going out.

She revived, and began thinking of Berthe asleep yonder in the servant’s

room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron passed by, and made a

deafening metallic vibration against the walls of the houses.

She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Léon she must get

back, and at last was alone at the Hotel de Boulogne. Everything, even

herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a

bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there

grow young again.

She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, and the

Faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked some gardens. She

walked rapidly; the fresh air calming her; and, little by little, the

faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the lights, the supper,

those women, all disappeared like mists fading away. Then, reaching the

“Croix-Rouge,” she threw herself on the bed in her little room on the

second floor, where there were pictures of the “Tour de Nesle.” At four

o’clock Hivert awoke her.

When she got home, Félicité showed her behind the clock a grey paper.

She read--

“In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment.”

What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening before another paper

had been brought that she had not yet seen, and she was stunned by these

words--

“By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary.” Then,

skipping several lines, she read, “Within twenty-four hours, without

fail--” But what? “To pay the sum of eight thousand francs.” And there

was even at the bottom, “She will be constrained thereto by every

form of law, and notably by a writ of distraint on her furniture and

effects.”

What was to be done? In twenty-four hours--tomorrow. Lheureux, she

thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she saw through all his

devices, the object of his kindnesses. What reassured her was the very

magnitude of the sum.

However, by dint of buying and not paying, of borrowing, signing bills,

and renewing these bills that grew at each new falling-in, she had ended

by preparing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux which he was impatiently

awaiting for his speculations.

She presented herself at his place with an offhand air.

“You know what has happened to me? No doubt it’s a joke!”

“How so?”

He turned away slowly, and, folding his arms, said to her--

“My good lady, did you think I should go on to all eternity being your

purveyor and banker, for the love of God? Now be just. I must get back

what I’ve laid out. Now be just.”

She cried out against the debt.

“Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it. There’s a judgment.

It’s been notified to you. Besides, it isn’t my fault. It’s Vincart’s.”

“Could you not--?”

“Oh, nothing whatever.”

“But still, now talk it over.”

And she began beating about the bush; she had known nothing about it; it

was a surprise.

“Whose fault is that?” said Lheureux, bowing ironically. “While I’m

slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about.”

“Ah! no lecturing.”

“It never does any harm,” he replied.

She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty white

and slender hand against the shopkeeper’s knee.

“There, that’ll do! Anyone’d think you wanted to seduce me!”

“You are a wretch!” she cried.

“Oh, oh! go it! go it!”

“I will show you up. I shall tell my husband.”

“All right! I too. I’ll show your husband something.”

And Lheureux drew from his strong box the receipt for eighteen hundred

francs that she had given him when Vincart had discounted the bills.

“Do you think,” he added, “that he’ll not understand your little theft,

the poor dear man?”

She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a pole-axe.

He was walking up and down from the window to the bureau, repeating all

the while--

“Ah! I’ll show him! I’ll show him!” Then he approached her, and in a

soft voice said--

“It isn’t pleasant, I know; but, after all, no bones are broken, and,

since that is the only way that is left for you paying back my money--”

“But where am I to get any?” said Emma, wringing her hands.

“Bah! when one has friends like you!”

And he looked at her in so keen, so terrible a fashion, that she

shuddered to her very heart.

“I promise you,” she said, “to sign--”

“I’ve enough of your signatures.”

“I will sell something.”

“Get along!” he said, shrugging his shoulders; “you’ve not got

anything.”

And he called through the peep-hole that looked down into the shop--

“Annette, don’t forget the three coupons of No. 14.”

The servant appeared. Emma understood, and asked how much money would be

wanted to put a stop to the proceedings.

“It is too late.”

“But if I brought you several thousand francs--a quarter of the sum--a

third--perhaps the whole?”

“No; it’s no use!”

And he pushed her gently towards the staircase.

“I implore you, Monsieur Lheureux, just a few days more!” She was

sobbing.

“There! tears now!”

“You are driving me to despair!”

“What do I care?” said he, shutting the door.

Chapter Seven

She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff, with two

assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up the inventory for

the distraint.

They began with Bovary’s consulting-room, and did not write down

the phrenological head, which was considered an “instrument of his

profession”; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the saucepans,

the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all the nick-nacks on

the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room;

and her whole existence to its most intimate details, was, like a corpse

on whom a post-mortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three

men.

Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white

choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time--“Allow

me, madame. You allow me?” Often he uttered exclamations. “Charming!

very pretty.” Then he began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn

inkstand in his left hand.

When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a

desk there in which Rodolphe’s letters were locked. It had to be opened.

“Ah! a correspondence,” said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet smile. “But

allow me, for I must make sure the box contains nothing else.” And he

tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she

grew angered to see this coarse hand, with fingers red and pulpy like

slugs, touching these pages against which her heart had beaten.

They went at last. Félicité came back. Emma had sent her out to watch

for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly installed the

man in possession under the roof, where he swore he would remain.

During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched him with

a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in every line of his

face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the chimney-piece ornamented

with Chinese screens, over the large curtains, the armchairs, all

those things, in a word, that had, softened the bitterness of her life,

remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, that, far from crushing,

irritated her passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on

the fire-dogs.

Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise.

“Is anyone walking upstairs?” said Charles.

“No,” she replied; “it is a window that has been left open, and is

rattling in the wind.”

The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the brokers whose

names she knew. They were at their country-places or on journeys. She

was not discouraged; and those whom she did manage to see she asked for

money, declaring she must have some, and that she would pay it back.

Some laughed in her face; all refused.

At two o’clock she hurried to Léon, and knocked at the door. No one

answered. At length he appeared.

“What brings you here?”

“Do I disturb you?”

“No; but--” And he admitted that his landlord didn’t like his having

“women” there.

“I must speak to you,” she went on.

Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.

“No, no! Down there, in our home!”

And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.

On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She

said to him--

“Léon, you will do me a service?”

And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added--

“Listen, I want eight thousand francs.”

“But you are mad!”

“Not yet.”

And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained

her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law

detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Léon, he would set

about finding this indispensable sum.

“How on earth can I?”

“What a coward you are!” she cried.

Then he said stupidly, “You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps,

with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be stopped.”

All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that

they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Léon, could be

security instead of her.

“Go, try, try! I will love you so!”

He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with solemn

face--

“I have been to three people with no success.”

Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners,

motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her

feet. He heard her murmuring--

“If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some.”

“But where?”

“At your office.” And she looked at him.

An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids

drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the

young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman

who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any

explanation he smote his forehead, crying--

“Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope” (this

was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); “and I will

bring it you to-morrow,” he added.

Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected.

Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--

“However, if you don’t see me by three o’clock do not wait for me, my

darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!”

He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength

left for any sentiment.

Four o’clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically

obeying the force of old habits.

The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp,

when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in

Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the

Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed

out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of

a bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock, stood the

beadle.

Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had

entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out before her, less

profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil,

giddy, staggering, almost fainting.

“Take care!” cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was

thrown open.

She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the

shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it?

She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.

Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She

was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep

herself from falling.

Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All

within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking

at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on

reaching the “Croix-Rouge,” she saw the good Homais, who was watching

a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the

“Hirondelle.” In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six

cheminots for his wife.

Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves,

that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food

that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which

the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the

table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras

and huge boars’ heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The

druggist’s wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite

her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never

failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker’s in the

Rue Massacre.

“Charmed to see you,” he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the

“Hirondelle.” Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting,

and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic.

But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he

exclaimed--

“I can’t understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable

industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work.

Progress, my word! creeps at a snail’s pace. We are floundering about in

mere barbarism.”

The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it

were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.

“This,” said the chemist, “is a scrofulous affection.”

And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first

time, murmured something about “cornea,” “opaque cornea,” “sclerotic,”

“facies,” then asked him in a paternal tone--

“My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of

getting drunk at the public, you’d do better to die yourself.”

He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind

man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last

Monsieur Homais opened his purse--

“Now there’s a sou; give me back two lairds, and don’t forget my advice:

you’ll be the better for it.”

Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the druggist

said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic pomade of his own

composition, and he gave his address--“Monsieur Homais, near the market,

pretty well known.”

“Now,” said Hivert, “for all this trouble you’ll give us your

performance.”

The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back,

whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed

his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a

famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder

a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine

thus to throw it away.

The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant out

through the window, crying--

“No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the

diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries.”

The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes

gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue

overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied, discouraged, almost

asleep.

“Come what may come!” she said to herself. “And then, who knows? Why, at

any moment could not some extraordinary event occur? Lheureux even might

die!”

At nine o’clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of voices

in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a large bill

fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was climbing on to

a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this moment the rural guard

seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais came out of his shop, and Mere

Lefrançois, in the midst of the crowd, seemed to be perorating.

“Madame! madame!” cried Félicité, running in, “it’s abominable!”

And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that she had

just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all her furniture

was for sale.

Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and mistress had

no secret one from the other. At last Félicité sighed--

“If I were you, madame, I should go to Monsieur Guillaumin.”

“Do you think--”

And this question meant to say--

“You who know the house through the servant, has the master spoken

sometimes of me?”

“Yes, you’d do well to go there.”

She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads, and

that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the Place), she

took the path by the river, outside the village.

She reached the notary’s gate quite breathless. The sky was sombre, and

a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell, Theodore in a

red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to open the door almost

familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and showed her into the dining-room.

A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up the

niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the oak-stained

paper hung Steuben’s “Esmeralda” and Schopin’s “Potiphar.” The

ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs,

the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a scrupulous, English

cleanliness; the windows were ornamented at each corner with stained

glass.

“Now this,” thought Emma, “is the dining-room I ought to have.”

The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his breast

with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and quickly put

on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked on the right side,

whence looked out the ends of three fair curls drawn from the back of

the head, following the line of his bald skull.

After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast, apologising

profusely for his rudeness.

“I have come,” she said, “to beg you, sir--”

“What, madame? I am listening.”

And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin knew

it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from whom he always

got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was asked to make.

So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the bills,

small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made out at long

dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when, gathering together

all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had bidden his friend Vincart

take in his own name all the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass

for a tiger with his fellow-citizens.

She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheureux, to which the

notary replied from time to time with some insignificant word. Eating

his cutlet and drinking his tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue

cravat, into which were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a

small gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous

fashion. But noticing that her feet were damp, he said--

“Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the porcelain.”

She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a gallant tone--

“Beautiful things spoil nothing.”

Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began

telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her wants.

He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without leaving off

eating, he had turned completely round towards her, so that his knee

brushed against her boot, whose sole curled round as it smoked against

the stove.

But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and declared

he was very sorry he had not had the management of her fortune before,

for there were hundreds of ways very convenient, even for a lady, of

turning her money to account. They might, either in the turf-peats

of Grumesnil or building-ground at Havre, almost without risk, have

ventured on some excellent speculations; and he let her consume herself

with rage at the thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly

have made.

“How was it,” he went on, “that you didn’t come to me?”

“I hardly know,” she said.

“Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary, who

ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very devoted to

you. You do not doubt that, I hope?”

He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss, then

held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her fingers whilst

he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid voice murmured like a

running brook; a light shone in his eyes through the glimmering of his

spectacles, and his hand was advancing up Emma’s sleeve to press her

arm. She felt against her cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed

her horribly.

She sprang up and said to him--

“Sir, I am waiting.”

“For what?” said the notary, who suddenly became very pale.

“This money.”

“But--” Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire, “Well,

yes!”

He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his

dressing-gown.

“For pity’s sake, stay. I love you!”

He seized her by her waist. Madame Bovary’s face flushed purple. She

recoiled with a terrible look, crying--

“You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am to be

pitied--not to be sold.”

And she went out.

The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine

embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of them at

last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an adventure might

have carried him too far.

“What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!” she said to herself,

as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the path. The

disappointment of her failure increased the indignation of her outraged

modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued her implacably, and,

strengthening herself in her pride, she had never felt so much esteem

for herself nor so much contempt for others. A spirit of warfare

transformed her. She would have liked to strike all men, to spit in

their faces, to crush them, and she walked rapidly straight on, pale,

quivering, maddened, searching the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes,

and as it were rejoicing in the hate that was choking her.

When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go on;

and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?

Félicité was waiting for her at the door. “Well?”

“No!” said Emma.

And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the various

persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help her. But each

time that Félicité named someone Emma replied--

“Impossible! they will not!”

“And the master’ll soon be in.”

“I know that well enough. Leave me alone.”

She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now; and

when Charles came in she would have to say to him--

“Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours. In

your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and it is I,

poor man, who have ruined you.”

Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly, and at

last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.

“Yes,” she murmured, grinding her teeth, “he will forgive me, he who

would give a million if I would forgive him for having known me! Never!

never!”

This thought of Bovary’s superiority to her exasperated her. Then,

whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, immediately,

to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the same; so she must wait

for this horrible scene, and bear the weight of his magnanimity. The

desire to return to Lheureux’s seized her--what would be the use? To

write to her father--it was too late; and perhaps, she began to repent

now that she had not yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of

a horse in the alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter

than the plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the

square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to Lestiboudois in

front of the church, saw her go in to the tax-collector’s.

She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up to

the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props, stationed

themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of Binet’s room.

He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those

indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed

out one within the other, the whole as straight as an obelisk, and of no

use whatever; and he was beginning on the last piece--he was nearing his

goal. In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his

tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the

two wheels were turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his

nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete

happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations,

which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a

realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream.

“Ah! there she is!” exclaimed Madame Tuvache.

But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was saying.

At last these ladies thought they made out the word “francs,” and Madame

Tuvache whispered in a low voice--

“She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes.”

“Apparently!” replied the other.

They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the

candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet stroked

his beard with satisfaction.

“Do you think she wants to order something of him?” said Madame Tuvache.

“Why, he doesn’t sell anything,” objected her neighbour.

The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he

did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came

nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no longer spoke.

“Is she making him advances?” said Madame Tuvache. Binet was scarlet to

his very ears. She took hold of his hands.

“Oh, it’s too much!”

And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for the

tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at Lutzen,

had been through the French campaign, and had even been recommended for

the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a serpent, recoiled as far as he

could from her, crying--

“Madame! what do you mean?”

“Women like that ought to be whipped,” said Madame Tuvache.

“But where is she?” continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared

whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue,

and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost

in conjectures.

“Nurse Rollet,” she said on reaching the nurse’s, “I am choking; unlace

me!” She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her with a

petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she did not

answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax.

“Oh, leave off!” she murmured, fancying she heard Binet’s lathe.

“What’s bothering her?” said the nurse to herself. “Why has she come

here?”

She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from

her home.

Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw things but

vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic persistence. She looked

at the scales on the walls, two brands smoking end to end, and a long

spider crawling over her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began

to collect her thoughts. She remembered--one day--Léon--Oh! how long

ago that was--the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were

perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon

began to recall the day before.

“What time is it?” she asked.

Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side

of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying--

“Nearly three.”

“Ah! thanks, thanks!”

For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,

perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told the

nurse to run to her house to fetch him.

“Be quick!”

“But, my dear lady, I’m going, I’m going!”

She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.

Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she already

saw herself at Lheureux’s spreading out her three bank-notes on his

bureau. Then she would have to invent some story to explain matters to

Bovary. What should it be?

The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no clock

in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the length of time.

She began walking round the garden, step by step; she went into the path

by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping that the woman would have

come back by another road. At last, weary of waiting, assailed by fears

that she thrust from her, no longer conscious whether she had been here

a century or a moment, she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and

stopped her ears. The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken

Mere Rollet said to her--

“There is no one at your house!”

“What?”

“Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you; they’re

looking for you.”

Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about

her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back

instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and

uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of lightning in

a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so

generous! And besides, should he hesitate to do her this service, she

would know well enough how to constrain him to it by re-waking, in a

single moment, their lost love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not

seeing that she was hastening to offer herself to that which but a while

ago had so angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.

Chapter Eight

She asked herself as she walked along, “What am I going to say? How

shall I begin?” And as she went on she recognised the thickets,

the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the château yonder. All the

sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching

heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting

snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass.

She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She reached

the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees. They were

swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their

kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but brought

out no one.

She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters that led

to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which several doors in a

row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right

at the end, on the left. When she placed her fingers on the lock her

strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost wished he

would not be there, though this was her only hope, her last chance of

salvation. She collected her thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening

herself by the feeling of present necessity, went in.

He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a

pipe.

“What! it is you!” he said, getting up hurriedly.

“Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice.”

And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her

lips.

“You have not changed; you are charming as ever!”

“Oh,” she replied bitterly, “they are poor charms since you disdained

them.”

Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in

vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.

She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him,

so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed; in the pretext

he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the

honour, the very life of a third person.

“No matter!” she said, looking at him sadly. “I have suffered much.”

He replied philosophically--

“Such is life!”

“Has life,” Emma went on, “been good to you at least, since our

separation?”

“Oh, neither good nor bad.”

“Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted.”

“Yes, perhaps.”

“You think so?” she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. “Oh, Rodolphe!

if you but knew! I loved you so!”

It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their

fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of

pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she

said to him--

“How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit

of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you

about all that and you will see. And you--you fled from me!”

For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence

of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Emma went

on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing than an amorous kitten--

“You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse

them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man;

you have everything to make one love you. But we’ll begin again, won’t

we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh,

speak!”

And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear,

like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.

He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand was

caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored like a

golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he

kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips.

“Why, you have been crying! What for?”

She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an outburst of her

love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of

resistance, and then he cried out--

“Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and

cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it. Tell me!” He was

kneeling by her.

“Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs.”

“But--but--” said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave

expression.

“You know,” she went on quickly, “that my husband had placed his whole

fortune at a notary’s. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don’t

pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall

have the money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand francs,

we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very moment, and,

counting upon your friendship, I have come to you.”

“Ah!” thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, “that was what she came for.”

At last he said with a calm air--

“Dear madame, I have not got them.”

He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them,

although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand

for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and

most destructive.

First she looked at him for some moments.

“You have not got them!” she repeated several times. “You have not got

them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me.

You are no better than the others.”

She was betraying, ruining herself.

Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was “hard up” himself.

“Ah! I pity you,” said Emma. “Yes--very much.”

And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against its

panoply, “But when one is so poor one doesn’t have silver on the butt of

one’s gun. One doesn’t buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell,” she went

on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, “nor silver-gilt whistles for one’s

whips,” and she touched them, “nor charms for one’s watch. Oh, he wants

for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself;

you live well. You have a château, farms, woods; you go hunting; you

travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that,” she cried, taking up two

studs from the mantelpiece, “but the least of these trifles, one can get

money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!”

And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain breaking as

it struck against the wall.

“But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all, worked

for you with my hands, I would have begged on the highroads for a smile,

for a look, to hear you say ‘Thanks!’ And you sit there quietly in your

arm-chair, as if you had not made me suffer enough already! But for you,

and you know it, I might have lived happily. What made you do it? Was

it a bet? Yet you loved me--you said so. And but a moment since--Ah!

it would have been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with

your kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you

swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years you

held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our plans for

the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your letter! it tore my

heart! And then when I come back to him--to him, rich, happy, free--to

implore the help the first stranger would give, a suppliant, and

bringing back to him all my tenderness, he repulses me because it would

cost him three thousand francs!”

“I haven’t got them,” replied Rodolphe, with that perfect calm with

which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield.

She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her, and she

passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the heaps of dead

leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in

front of the gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to

open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless, almost falling,

she stopped. And now turning round, she once more saw the impassive

château, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the

windows of the facade.

She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of herself

than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed to hear

bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the fields. The earth

beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed

to her immense brown waves breaking into foam. Everything in her

head, of memories, ideas, went off at once like a thousand pieces of

fireworks. She saw her father, Lheureux’s closet, their room at home,

another landscape. Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and

managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did

not in the least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was

in, that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her

love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as wounded men,

dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds.

Night was falling, crows were flying about.

Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in the air

like fulminating balls when they strike, and were whirling, whirling,

to melt at last upon the snow between the branches of the trees. In the

midst of each of them appeared the face of Rodolphe. They multiplied and

drew near her, penetrating her. It all disappeared; she recognised the

lights of the houses that shone through the fog.

Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was panting as

if her heart would burst. Then in an ecstasy of heroism, that made

her almost joyous, she ran down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the

foot-path, the alley, the market, and reached the chemist’s shop. She

was about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might come, and

slipping in by the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the

walls, she went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck

on the stove was burning. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a

dish.

“Ah! they are dining; I will wait.”

He returned; she tapped at the window. He went out.

“The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the--”

“What?”

And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her face, that stood

out white against the black background of the night. She seemed to

him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a phantom. Without

understanding what she wanted, he had the presentiment of something

terrible.

But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet, melting voice, “I

want it; give it to me.”

As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of the forks

on the plates in the dining-room.

She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from

sleeping.

“I must tell master.”

“No, stay!” Then with an indifferent air, “Oh, it’s not worth while;

I’ll tell him presently. Come, light me upstairs.”

She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened. Against

the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum.

“Justin!” called the druggist impatiently.

“Let us go up.”

And he followed her. The key turned in the lock, and she went straight

to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue

jar, tore out the cork, plunged in her hand, and withdrawing it full of

a white powder, she began eating it.

“Stop!” he cried, rushing at her.

“Hush! someone will come.”

He was in despair, was calling out.

“Say nothing, or all the blame will fall on your master.”

Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with something of the serenity

of one that had performed a duty.

When Charles, distracted by the news of the distraint, returned home,

Emma had just gone out. He cried aloud, wept, fainted, but she did not

return. Where could she be? He sent Félicité to Homais, to Monsieur

Tuvache, to Lheureux, to the “Lion d’Or,” everywhere, and in the

intervals of his agony he saw his reputation destroyed, their fortune

lost, Berthe’s future ruined. By what?--Not a word! He waited till six

in the evening. At last, unable to bear it any longer, and fancying she

had gone to Rouen, he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no

one, again waited, and returned home. She had come back.

“What was the matter? Why? Explain to me.”

She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter, which she sealed

slowly, adding the date and the hour. Then she said in a solemn tone:

“You are to read it to-morrow; till then, I pray you, do not ask me a

single question. No, not one!”

“But--”

“Oh, leave me!”

She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she felt in her

mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and again closed her eyes.

She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were not suffering.

But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the clock, the

crackling of the fire, and Charles breathing as he stood upright by her

bed.

“Ah! it is but a little thing, death!” she thought. “I shall fall asleep

and all will be over.”

She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall. The frightful

taste of ink continued.

“I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty,” she sighed.

“What is it?” said Charles, who was handing her a glass.

“It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking.”

She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly time to

draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow.

“Take it away,” she said quickly; “throw it away.”

He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, afraid that

the slightest movement might make her vomit. But she felt an icy cold

creeping from her feet to her heart.

“Ah! it is beginning,” she murmured.

“What did you say?”

She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full of

agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very heavy

were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o’clock the vomiting began

again.

Charles noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was a sort of

white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain.

“This is extraordinary--very singular,” he repeated.

But she said in a firm voice, “No, you are mistaken.”

Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his hand over her

stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back terror-stricken.

Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were shaken by

a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the sheets in which

her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her unequal pulse was now almost

imperceptible.

Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed as if rigid in

the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered, her dilated

eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all questions she replied only

with a shake of the head; she even smiled once or twice. Gradually, her

moaning grew louder; a hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she

was better and that she would get up presently. But she was seized with

convulsions and cried out--

“Ah! my God! It is horrible!”

He threw himself on his knees by her bed.

“Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven’s sake!”

And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such as she had never

seen.

“Well, there--there!” she said in a faint voice. He flew to the

writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: “Accuse no one.” He

stopped, passed his hands across his eyes, and read it over again.

“What! help--help!”

He could only keep repeating the word: “Poisoned! poisoned!” Félicité

ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the market-place; Madame Lefrancois

heard it at the “Lion d’Or”; some got up to go and tell their

neighbours, and all night the village was on the alert.

Distraught, faltering, reeling, Charles wandered about the room. He

knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never

believed that there could be so terrible a sight.

He went home to write to Monsieur Canivet and to Doctor Lariviere. He

lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough copies. Hippolyte went

to Neufchâtel, and Justin so spurred Bovary’s horse that he left it

foundered and three parts dead by the hill at Bois-Guillaume.

Charles tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not read it;

the lines were dancing.

“Be calm,” said the druggist; “we have only to administer a powerful

antidote. What is the poison?”

Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic.

“Very well,” said Homais, “we must make an analysis.”

For he knew that in cases of poisoning an analysis must be made; and the

other, who did not understand, answered--

“Oh, do anything! save her!”

Then going back to her, he sank upon the carpet, and lay there with his

head leaning against the edge of her bed, sobbing.

“Don’t cry,” she said to him. “Soon I shall not trouble you any more.”

“Why was it? Who drove you to it?”

She replied. “It had to be, my dear!”

“Weren’t you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!”

“Yes, that is true--you are good--you.”

And she passed her hand slowly over his hair. The sweetness of this

sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being dissolving

in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just when she was

confessing more love for him than ever. And he could think of nothing;

he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent need for some immediate

resolution gave the finishing stroke to the turmoil of his mind.

So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and meanness,

and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated no one now; a

twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts, and, of all earthly

noises, Emma heard none but the intermittent lamentations of this poor

heart, sweet and indistinct like the echo of a symphony dying away.

“Bring me the child,” she said, raising herself on her elbow.

“You are not worse, are you?” asked Charles.

“No, no!”

The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on the

servant’s arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare

feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the disordered room, and

half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the table. They

reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year’s day and Mid-Lent,

when thus awakened early by candle-light she came to her mother’s bed to

fetch her presents, for she began saying--

“But where is it, mamma?” And as everybody was silent, “But I can’t see

my little stocking.”

Félicité held her over the bed while she still kept looking towards the

mantelpiece.

“Has nurse taken it?” she asked.

And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her adulteries

and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her head, as at the

loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to her mouth. But Berthe

remained perched on the bed.

“Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma! How pale you are! how hot you are!”

Her mother looked at her. “I am frightened!” cried the child, recoiling.

Emma took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled.

“That will do. Take her away,” cried Charles, who was sobbing in the

alcove.

Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and at

every insignificant word, at every respiration a little more easy, he

regained hope. At last, when Canivet came in, he threw himself into his

arms.

“Ah! it is you. Thanks! You are good! But she is better. See! look at

her.”

His colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, as he said of

himself, “never beating about the bush,” he prescribed, an emetic in

order to empty the stomach completely.

She soon began vomiting blood. Her lips became drawn. Her limbs were

convulsed, her whole body covered with brown spots, and her pulse

slipped beneath the fingers like a stretched thread, like a harp-string

nearly breaking.

After this she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison, railed

at it, and implored it to be quick, and thrust away with her stiffened

arms everything that Charles, in more agony than herself, tried to make

her drink. He stood up, his handkerchief to his lips, with a rattling

sound in his throat, weeping, and choked by sobs that shook his whole

body. Félicité was running hither and thither in the room. Homais,

motionless, uttered great sighs; and Monsieur Canivet, always retaining

his self-command, nevertheless began to feel uneasy.

“The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the cause

ceases--”

“The effect must cease,” said Homais, “that is evident.”

“Oh, save her!” cried Bovary.

And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing the

hypothesis, “It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm,” Canivet was about to

administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the

windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to

their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It

was Doctor Lariviere.

The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary

raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled off his

skull-cap long before the doctor had come in.

He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that

generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving

their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and

wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he was angry; and his

students so revered him that they tried, as soon as they were themselves

in practice, to imitate him as much as possible. So that in all the

towns about they were found wearing his long wadded merino overcoat

and black frock-coat, whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny

hands--very beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be

more ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles,

and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous,

fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he

would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect

had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating

than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every

lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along,

full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness

of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and

irreproachable life.

He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the cadaverous

face of Emma stretched out on her back with her mouth open. Then, while

apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his fingers up and down

beneath his nostrils, and repeated--

“Good! good!”

But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary watched him; they

looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he was to the sight

of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill.

He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed him.

“She is very ill, isn’t she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything! Oh, think

of something, you who have saved so many!”

Charles caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly,

imploringly, half-fainting against his breast.

“Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be done.”

And Doctor Lariviere turned away.

“You are going?”

“I will come back.”

He went out only to give an order to the coachman, with Monsieur

Canivet, who did not care either to have Emma die under his hands.

The chemist rejoined them on the Place. He could not by temperament keep

away from celebrities, so he begged Monsieur Lariviere to do him the

signal honour of accepting some breakfast.

He sent quickly to the “Lion d’Or” for some pigeons; to the butcher’s

for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for cream; and

to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself aided in the

preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she pulled together the

strings of her jacket--

“You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn’t been

told the night before--”

“Wine glasses!” whispered Homais.

“If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed trotters.”

“Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!”

He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some details as

to the catastrophe.

“We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then intolerable

pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma.”

“But how did she poison herself?”

“I don’t know, doctor, and I don’t even know where she can have procured

the arsenious acid.”

Justin, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to tremble.

“What’s the matter?” said the chemist.

At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the ground with

a crash.

“Imbecile!” cried Homais, “awkward lout! block-head! confounded ass!”

But suddenly controlling himself--

“I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately

introduced a tube--”

“You would have done better,” said the physician, “to introduce your

fingers into her throat.”

His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a severe

lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and so

verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day very modest. He smiled

without ceasing in an approving manner.

Homais dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought of

Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic

reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him.

He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the

manchineel, vipers.

“I have even read that various persons have found themselves

under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by

black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement fumigation.

At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn up by one of our

pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de

Gassicourt!”

Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines that

are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make his coffee

at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised it, and mixed it

himself.

“Saccharum, doctor?” said he, offering the sugar.

Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the

physician’s opinion on their constitutions.

At last Monsieur Lariviere was about to leave, when Madame Homais asked

for a consultation about her husband. He was making his blood too thick

by going to sleep every evening after dinner.

“Oh, it isn’t his blood that’s too thick,” said the physician.

And, smiling a little at his unnoticed joke, the doctor opened the

door. But the chemist’s shop was full of people; he had the greatest

difficulty in getting rid of Monsieur Tuvache, who feared his spouse

would get inflammation of the lungs, because she was in the habit of

spitting on the ashes; then of Monsieur Binet, who sometimes experienced

sudden attacks of great hunger; and of Madame Caron, who suffered

from tinglings; of Lheureux, who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had

rheumatism; and of Madame Lefrancois, who had heartburn. At last the

three horses started; and it was the general opinion that he had not

shown himself at all obliging.

Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur

Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.

Homais, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens

attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was

personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the

shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.

Nevertheless, not shrinking from what he called his mission, he returned

to Bovary’s in company with Canivet whom Monsieur Lariviere, before

leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit; and he would, but for

his wife’s objections, have taken his two sons with him, in order

to accustom them to great occasions; that this might be a lesson, an

example, a solemn picture, that should remain in their heads later on.

The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the

work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six

small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix between

two lighted candles.

Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately wide

open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that hideous

and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they wanted already to

cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue and with eyes red as

fire, Charles, not weeping, stood opposite her at the foot of the bed,

while the priest, bending one knee, was muttering words in a low voice.

She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing

suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of

a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first

mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were

beginning.

The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her

neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the

Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest

kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and

the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give

extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly

pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze

and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had

curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that

had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the

feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and

that would now walk no more.

The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil into

the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that

she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ and abandon

herself to the divine mercy.

Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed

candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be

surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper,

but for Monsieur Bournisien would have fallen to the ground.

However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of

serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.

The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Bovary

that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it

meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered the day when, so near

death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to

despair, he thought.

In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream;

then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained

some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then

she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows.

Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue protruded

from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler, like the two

globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one might have thought

her already dead but for the fearful labouring of her ribs, shaken

by violent breathing, as if the soul were struggling to free itself.

Félicité knelt down before the crucifix, and the druggist himself

slightly bent his knees, while Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at

the Place. Bournisien had again begun to pray, his face bowed against

the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the

room. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched

towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at

every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the

death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers

mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all seemed lost

in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a passing

bell.

Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the

clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that sang--

“Maids in the warmth of a summer day

Dream of love and of love always”

Emma raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone, her eyes

fixed, staring.

“Where the sickle blades have been,

Nannette, gathering ears of corn,

Passes bending down, my queen,

To the earth where they were born.”

“The blind man!” she cried. And Emma began to laugh, an atrocious,

frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor

wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a menace.

“The wind is strong this summer day,

Her petticoat has flown away.”

She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She

was dead.

Chapter Nine

There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction;

so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign

ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that she did not

move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying--

“Farewell! farewell!”

Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room.

“Restrain yourself!”

“Yes.” said he, struggling, “I’ll be quiet. I’ll not do anything. But

leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!”

And he wept.

“Cry,” said the chemist; “let nature take her course; that will solace

you.”

Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs into the

sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the Place he

was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged himself as far as

Yonville, in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was asking

every passer-by where the druggist lived.

“There now! as if I hadn’t got other fish to fry. Well, so much the

worse; you must come later on.”

And he entered the shop hurriedly.

He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing potion for Bovary, to

invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and work it up into an

article for the “Fanal,” without counting the people who were waiting to

get the news from him; and when the Yonvillers had all heard his story

of the arsenic that she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla

cream. Homais once more returned to Bovary’s.

He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an arm-chair

near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the flags of the floor.

“Now,” said the chemist, “you ought yourself to fix the hour for the

ceremony.”

“Why? What ceremony?” Then, in a stammering, frightened voice, “Oh, no!

not that. No! I want to see her here.”

Homais, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on the

whatnot to water the geraniums.

“Ah! thanks,” said Charles; “you are good.”

But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that this

action of the druggist recalled to him.

Then to distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little horticulture:

plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his head in sign of approbation.

“Besides, the fine days will soon be here again.”

“Ah!” said Bovary.

The druggist, at his wit’s end, began softly to draw aside the small

window-curtain.

“Hallo! there’s Monsieur Tuvache passing.”

Charles repeated like a machine---

“Monsieur Tuvache passing!”

Homais did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral

arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him to

them.

He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after sobbing

for some time, wrote--

“I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes, and a

wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders. Three coffins,

one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no one say anything to me.

I shall have strength. Over all there is to be placed a large piece of

green velvet. This is my wish; see that it is done.”

The two men were much surprised at Bovary’s romantic ideas. The chemist

at once went to him and said--

“This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--”

“What’s that to you?” cried Charles. “Leave me! You did not love her.

Go!”

The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He discoursed

on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great, was very good: one

must submit to his decrees without a murmur; nay, must even thank him.

Charles burst out into blasphemies: “I hate your God!”

“The spirit of rebellion is still upon you,” sighed the ecclesiastic.

Bovary was far away. He was walking with great strides along by the

wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised to heaven

looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf stirred.

A fine rain was falling: Charles, whose chest was bare, at last began to

shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen.

At six o’clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on the

Place; it was the “Hirondelle” coming in, and he remained with his

forehead against the windowpane, watching all the passengers get

out, one after the other. Félicité put down a mattress for him in the

drawing-room. He threw himself upon it and fell asleep.

Although a philosopher, Monsieur Homais respected the dead. So bearing

no grudge to poor Charles, he came back again in the evening to sit up

with the body; bringing with him three volumes and a pocket-book for

taking notes.

Monsieur Bournisien was there, and two large candles were burning at the

head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove. The druggist, on

whom the silence weighed, was not long before he began formulating some

regrets about this “unfortunate young woman.” and the priest replied

that there was nothing to do now but pray for her.

“Yet,” Homais went on, “one of two things; either she died in a state of

grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need of our prayers;

or else she departed impertinent (that is, I believe, the ecclesiastical

expression), and then--”

Bournisien interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the less

necessary to pray.

“But,” objected the chemist, “since God knows all our needs, what can be

the good of prayer?”

“What!” cried the ecclesiastic, “prayer! Why, aren’t you a Christian?”

“Excuse me,” said Homais; “I admire Christianity. To begin with, it

enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a morality--”

“That isn’t the question. All the texts-”

“Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts

have been falsified by the Jesuits.”

Charles came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the

curtains.

Emma’s head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her

mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her

face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind

of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to

disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if

spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her

knees, and then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Charles

that infinite masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her.

The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the

river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Monsieur

Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily, and Homais’ pen was

scratching over the paper.

“Come, my good friend,” he said, “withdraw; this spectacle is tearing

you to pieces.”

Charles once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their

discussions.

“Read Voltaire,” said the one, “read D’Holbach, read the

‘Encyclopaedia’!”

“Read the ‘Letters of some Portuguese Jews,’” said the other; “read ‘The

Meaning of Christianity,’ by Nicolas, formerly a magistrate.”

They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without

listening to each other. Bournisien was scandalized at such audacity;

Homais marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on the point of

insulting one another when Charles suddenly reappeared. A fascination

drew him. He was continually coming upstairs.

He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself in a

contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful.

He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and he

said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might perhaps

succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he, and cried in a

low voice, “Emma! Emma!” His strong breathing made the flames of the

candles tremble against the wall.

At daybreak Madame Bovary senior arrived. Charles as he embraced her

burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist had done,

to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the funeral. He became so

angry that she was silent, and he even commissioned her to go to town at

once and buy what was necessary.

Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe

to Madame Homais’; Félicité was in the room upstairs with Madame

Lefrancois.

In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their hands,

unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and formed a large

semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered faces, and swinging one

leg crossed over the other knee, they uttered deep sighs at intervals;

each one was inordinately bored, and yet none would be the first to go.

Homais, when he returned at nine o’clock (for the last two days only

Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of

camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar

full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant,

Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Bovary senior were busy about Emma,

finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil

that covered her to her satin shoes.

Félicité was sobbing--“Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!”

“Look at her,” said the landlady, sighing; “how pretty she still is!

Now, couldn’t you swear she was going to get up in a minute?”

Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head

a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting,

from her mouth.

“Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!” cried Madame Lefrancois. “Now,

just come and help,” she said to the chemist. “Perhaps you’re afraid?”

“I afraid?” replied he, shrugging his shoulders. “I dare say! I’ve seen

all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We

used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify

a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to

the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science.”

The cure on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on

the reply of the druggist, went on--“The blow, you see, is still too

recent.”

Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people,

to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion

on the celibacy of priests.

“For,” said the chemist, “it is unnatural that a man should do without

women! There have been crimes--”

“But, good heaven!” cried the ecclesiastic, “how do you expect an

individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for

example?”

Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he

enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited

various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military

men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall

from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister--

His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the

over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the

chemist.

“Come, take a pinch of snuff,” he said to him. “Take it; it’ll relieve

you.”

A continual barking was heard in the distance. “Do you hear that dog

howling?” said the chemist.

“They smell the dead,” replied the priest. “It’s like bees; they leave

their hives on the decease of any person.”

Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped

asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on moving his lips

gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall

his big black boot, and began to snore.

They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up

faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in

the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their

side, that seemed to be sleeping.

Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he came to

bid her farewell.

The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour

blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in. There were

few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the candles fell in great

drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles watched them burn, tiring his

eyes against the glare of their yellow flame.

The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma was

lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own

self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--the silence,

the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground.

Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the

thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their

house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard the laughter of the happy

boys beneath the apple-trees: the room was filled with the perfume

of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like

electricity. The dress was still the same.

For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes,

her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of despair followed

another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing

sea.

A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers,

palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of horror that

awoke the other two.

They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Félicité came up to

say that he wanted some of her hair.

“Cut some off,” replied the druggist.

And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in

hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several

places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Homais gave two

or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that

beautiful black hair.

The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not

without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each other

reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur Bournisien sprinkled

the room with holy water and Homais threw a little chlorine water on the

floor.

Félicité had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each

of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And the

druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in the morning

sighed--

“My word! I should like to take some sustenance.”

The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say mass,

came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a little without

knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that comes upon us after

times of sadness, and at the last glass the priest said to the druggist,

as he clapped him on the shoulder--

“We shall end by understanding one another.”

In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker’s men, who were coming

in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture of hearing the

hammer resound against the wood. Next day they lowered her into her

oak coffin, that was fitted into the other two; but as the bier was

too large, they had to fill up the gaps with the wool of a mattress. At

last, when the three lids had been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was

placed outside in front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the

people of Yonville began to flock round.

Old Rouault arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the black

cloth!

Chapter Ten

He had only received the chemist’s letter thirty-six hours after the

event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Homais had so worded it

that it was impossible to make out what it was all about.

First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next, he

understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last, he had put

on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to his boots, and set

out at full speed; and the whole of the way old Rouault, panting, was

torn by anguish. Once even he was obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he

heard voices round about him; he felt himself going mad.

Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He shuddered,

horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles

for the church, and that he would go barefooted from the cemetery at

Bertaux to the chapel of Vassonville.

He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the

door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a

bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose

feet struck fire as it dashed along.

He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors would

discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the miraculous cures

he had been told about. Then she appeared to him dead. She was there;

before his eyes, lying on her back in the middle of the road. He reined

up, and the hallucination disappeared.

At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of coffee

one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in the name in

writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it there, but did

not dare to open it.

At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone’s spite, the jest

of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have known it. But

no! There was nothing extraordinary about the country; the sky was blue,

the trees swayed; a flock of sheep passed. He saw the village; he was

seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great

blows, the girths dripping with blood.

When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into Bovary’s

arms: “My girl! Emma! my child! tell me--”

The other replied, sobbing, “I don’t know! I don’t know! It’s a curse!”

The druggist separated them. “These horrible details are useless. I will

tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people coming. Dignity!

Come now! Philosophy!”

The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several times.

“Yes! courage!”

“Oh,” cried the old man, “so I will have, by God! I’ll go along o’ her

to the end!”

The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And seated in

a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and repass in front of

them continually the three chanting choristers.

The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur Bournisien,

in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He bowed before the

tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his arms. Lestiboudois

went about the church with his whalebone stick. The bier stood near the

lectern, between four rows of candles. Charles felt inclined to get up

and put them out.

Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw himself

into the hope of a future life in which he should see her again. He

imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far away, for a long

time. But when he thought of her lying there, and that all was over,

that they would lay her in the earth, he was seized with a fierce,

gloomy, despairful rage. At times he thought he felt nothing more, and

he enjoyed this lull in his pain, whilst at the same time he reproached

himself for being a wretch.

The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the stones,

striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the end of the

church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man in a coarse brown

jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte, the stable-boy at the

“Lion d’Or.” He had put on his new leg.

One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection, and the

coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate.

“Oh, make haste! I am in pain!” cried Bovary, angrily throwing him a

five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow.

They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He remembered that

once, in the early times, they had been to mass together, and they had

sat down on the other side, on the right, by the wall. The bell began

again. There was a great moving of chairs; the bearers slipped their

three staves under the coffin, and everyone left the church.

Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in again,

pale, staggering.

People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at the

head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with a nod those

who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors, stood amidst the

crowd.

The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a little. The

priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys recited the _De

profundis_,[22] and their voices echoed over the fields, rising and

falling with their undulations. Sometimes they disappeared in the

windings of the path; but the great silver cross rose always before the

trees.

[22] Psalm CXXX.

The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each of them

carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Charles felt himself

growing weaker at this continual repetition of prayers and torches,

beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of cassocks. A fresh breeze was

blowing; the rye and colza were sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at

the roadsides and on the hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds

filled the air; the jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the

crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal

running away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy

clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris. Charles as

he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered mornings like this,

when, after visiting some patient, he came out from one and returned to

her.

The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to time,

laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more slowly, and it

advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that pitches with every wave.

They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in the

grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all round; and while

the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the sides kept noiselessly

slipping down at the corners.

Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them.

He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was

heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up. Then Bournisien took

the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois; with his left hand all the

time sprinkling water, with the right he vigorously threw in a large

spadeful; and the wood of the coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth

that dread sound that seems to us the reverberation of eternity.

The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his neighbour. This

was Homais. He swung it gravely, then handed it to Charles, who sank to

his knees in the earth and threw in handfuls of it, crying, “Adieu!” He

sent her kisses; he dragged himself towards the grave, to engulf himself

with her. They led him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps,

like the others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over.

Old Rouault on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which Homais

in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing. He also noticed

that Monsieur Binet had not been present, and that Tuvache had “made

off” after mass, and that Theodore, the notary’s servant wore a blue

coat, “as if one could not have got a black coat, since that is the

custom, by Jove!” And to share his observations with others he went from

group to group. They were deploring Emma’s death, especially Lheureux,

who had not failed to come to the funeral.

“Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!”

The druggist continued, “Do you know that but for me he would have

committed some fatal attempt upon himself?”

“Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in my

shop.”

“I haven’t had leisure,” said Homais, “to prepare a few words that I

would have cast upon her tomb.”

Charles on getting home undressed, and old Rouault put on his blue

blouse. It was a new one, and as he had often during the journey wiped

his eyes on the sleeves, the dye had stained his face, and the traces of

tears made lines in the layer of dust that covered it.

Madame Bovary senior was with them. All three were silent. At last the

old fellow sighed--

“Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you had

just lost your first deceased? I consoled you at that time. I thought of

something to say then, but now--” Then, with a loud groan that shook his

whole chest, “Ah! this is the end for me, do you see! I saw my wife go,

then my son, and now to-day it’s my daughter.”

He wanted to go back at once to Bertaux, saying that he could not sleep

in this house. He even refused to see his granddaughter.

“No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only you’ll kiss her many times

for me. Good-bye! you’re a good fellow! And then I shall never forget

that,” he said, slapping his thigh. “Never fear, you shall always have

your turkey.”

But when he reached the top of the hill he turned back, as he had turned

once before on the road of Saint-Victor when he had parted from her. The

windows of the village were all on fire beneath the slanting rays of the

sun sinking behind the field. He put his hand over his eyes, and saw

in the horizon an enclosure of walls, where trees here and there formed

black clusters between white stones; then he went on his way at a gentle

trot, for his nag had gone lame.

Despite their fatigue, Charles and his mother stayed very long that

evening talking together. They spoke of the days of the past and of the

future. She would come to live at Yonville; she would keep house for

him; they would never part again. She was ingenious and caressing,

rejoicing in her heart at gaining once more an affection that had

wandered from her for so many years. Midnight struck. The village as

usual was silent, and Charles, awake, thought always of her.

Rodolphe, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the wood all

day, was sleeping quietly in his château, and Léon, down yonder, always

slept.

There was another who at that hour was not asleep.

On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees weeping,

and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow beneath the load

of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night.

The gate suddenly grated. It was Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his

spade, that he had forgotten. He recognised Justin climbing over the

wall, and at last knew who was the culprit who stole his potatoes.

Chapter Eleven

The next day Charles had the child brought back. She asked for her

mamma. They told her she was away; that she would bring her back some

playthings. Berthe spoke of her again several times, then at last

thought no more of her. The child’s gaiety broke Bovary’s heart, and he

had to bear besides the intolerable consolations of the chemist.

Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on anew his

friend Vincart, and Charles pledged himself for exorbitant sums; for he

would never consent to let the smallest of the things that had belonged

to HER be sold. His mother was exasperated with him; he grew even more

angry than she did. He had altogether changed. She left the house.

Then everyone began “taking advantage” of him. Mademoiselle Lempereur

presented a bill for six months’ teaching, although Emma had never taken

a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had shown Bovary); it was an

arrangement between the two women. The man at the circulating library

demanded three years’ subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due

for some twenty letters, and when Charles asked for an explanation, she

had the delicacy to reply--

“Oh, I don’t know. It was for her business affairs.”

With every debt he paid Charles thought he had come to the end of them.

But others followed ceaselessly. He sent in accounts for professional

attendance. He was shown the letters his wife had written. Then he had

to apologise.

Félicité now wore Madame Bovary’s gowns; not all, for he had kept some

of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room, locking

himself up there; she was about her height, and often Charles, seeing

her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and cried out--

“Oh, stay, stay!”

But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by Theodore,

stealing all that was left of the wardrobe.

It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to inform

him of the “marriage of Monsieur Léon Dupuis her son, notary at Yvetot,

to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of Bondeville.” Charles, among the

other congratulations he sent him, wrote this sentence--

“How glad my poor wife would have been!”

One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up to the

attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper. He opened it

and read: “Courage, Emma, courage. I would not bring misery into your

life.” It was Rodolphe’s letter, fallen to the ground between the boxes,

where it had remained, and that the wind from the dormer window had just

blown towards the door. And Charles stood, motionless and staring, in

the very same place where, long ago, Emma, in despair, and paler even

than he, had thought of dying. At last he discovered a small R at the

bottom of the second page. What did this mean? He remembered Rodolphe’s

attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when they

had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of the letter

deceived him.

“Perhaps they loved one another platonically,” he said to himself.

Besides, Charles was not of those who go to the bottom of things; he

shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the immensity

of his woe.

Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have

coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he

was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his

despair, and that was boundless, because it was now unrealisable.

To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her

predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to

wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her,

signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave.

He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the

drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom,

her own room, remained as before. After his dinner Charles went up

there. He pushed the round table in front of the fire, and drew up her

armchair. He sat down opposite it. A candle burnt in one of the gilt

candlesticks. Berthe by his side was painting prints.

He suffered, poor man, at seeing her so badly dressed, with laceless

boots, and the arm-holes of her pinafore torn down to the hips; for the

charwoman took no care of her. But she was so sweet, so pretty, and her

little head bent forward so gracefully, letting the dear fair hair fall

over her rosy cheeks, that an infinite joy came upon him, a happiness

mingled with bitterness, like those ill-made wines that taste of

resin. He mended her toys, made her puppets from cardboard, or sewed up

half-torn dolls. Then, if his eyes fell upon the workbox, a ribbon lying

about, or even a pin left in a crack of the table, he began to dream,

and looked so sad that she became as sad as he.

No one now came to see them, for Justin had run away to Rouen, where he

was a grocer’s assistant, and the druggist’s children saw less and less

of the child, Monsieur Homais not caring, seeing the difference of their

social position, to continue the intimacy.

The blind man, whom he had not been able to cure with the pomade, had

gone back to the hill of Bois-Guillaume, where he told the travellers of

the vain attempt of the druggist, to such an extent, that Homais when

he went to town hid himself behind the curtains of the “Hirondelle” to

avoid meeting him. He detested him, and wishing, in the interests of his

own reputation, to get rid of him at all costs, he directed against

him a secret battery, that betrayed the depth of his intellect and the

baseness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one could read

in the “Fanal de Rouen” editorials such as these--

“All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy have, no

doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a wretch suffering from

a horrible facial wound. He importunes, persecutes one, and levies a

regular tax on all travellers. Are we still living in the monstrous

times of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds were permitted to display in

our public places leprosy and scrofulas they had brought back from the

Crusades?”

Or--

“In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to our great

towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. Some are seen going

about alone, and these are not, perhaps, the least dangerous. What are

our ediles about?”

Then Homais invented anecdotes--

“Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse--” And then

followed the story of an accident caused by the presence of the blind

man.

He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he was released.

He began again, and Homais began again. It was a struggle. Homais won

it, for his foe was condemned to life-long confinement in an asylum.

This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was no longer a dog

run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten in the parish, of which

he did not immediately inform the public, guided always by the love of

progress and the hate of priests. He instituted comparisons between the

elementary and clerical schools to the detriment of the latter; called

to mind the massacre of St. Bartholomew a propos of a grant of one

hundred francs to the church, and denounced abuses, aired new views.

That was his phrase. Homais was digging and delving; he was becoming

dangerous.

However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism, and soon a

book, a work was necessary to him. Then he composed “General Statistics

of the Canton of Yonville, followed by Climatological Remarks.” The

statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with great

questions: the social problem, moralisation of the poorer classes,

pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at being

a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two

chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.

He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast

of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he

was the first to introduce “cocoa” and “revalenta” into the

Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric

Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off

his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite dazzled before the golden

spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for

this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi.

He had fine ideas about Emma’s tomb. First he proposed a broken column

with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of

rotunda, or else a “mass of ruins.” And in all his plans Homais always

stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable

symbol of sorrow.

Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to look at some tombs

at a funeral furnisher’s, accompanied by an artist, one Vaufrylard, a

friend of Bridoux’s, who made puns all the time. At last, after having

examined some hundred designs, having ordered an estimate and made

another journey to Rouen, Charles decided in favour of a mausoleum,

which on the two principal sides was to have a “spirit bearing an

extinguished torch.”

As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so fine as _Sta

viator_,[23] and he got no further; he racked his brain, he constantly

repeated _Sta viator_. At last he hit upon _Amabilen conjugem

calcas_,[24] which was adopted.

[23] Rest traveler.

[24] Tread upon a loving wife.

A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually thinking of Emma, was

forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image fading from his

memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt

of her; it was always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he was

about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms.

For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur

Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up.

Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais.

He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every

other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who

died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows.

In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he was far from being

able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux refused to renew any more

bills. A distraint became imminent. Then he appealed to his mother, who

consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but with a great

many recriminations against Emma; and in return for her sacrifice she

asked for a shawl that had escaped the depredations of Félicité. Charles

refused to give it her; they quarrelled.

She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to have the

little girl, who could help her in the house, to live with her. Charles

consented to this, but when the time for parting came, all his courage

failed him. Then there was a final, complete rupture.

As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his

child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had

red spots on her cheeks.

Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the

chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him in the

laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of

paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras’ table in

a breath. He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men.

Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais hankered after the cross

of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it.

“First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a

boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense,

various works of public utility, such as” (and he recalled his pamphlet

entitled, “Cider, its manufacture and effects,” besides observation

on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of

statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); “without counting

that I am a member of several learned societies” (he was member of a

single one).

“In short!” he cried, making a pirouette, “if it were only for

distinguishing myself at fires!”

Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He secretly did the

prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself--in a word,

prostituted himself. He even addressed a petition to the sovereign

in which he implored him to “do him justice”; he called him “our good

king,” and compared him to Henri IV.

And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his

nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to bear it

any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the

Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from

the top to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded arms,

meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men.

From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his

investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret drawer of

a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day, however, he

sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Léon’s

letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them

to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the

drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He

found a box and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe’s portrait flew full

in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters.

People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one,

refused even to visit his patients. Then they said “he shut himself up

to drink.”

Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge,

and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man,

who wept aloud as he walked up and down.

In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him and led her to

the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only light left in

the Place was that in Binet’s window.

The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no

one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be

able to speak of her.

But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles

like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the “Favorites du

Commerce,” and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands,

insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening to go over “to the

opposition shop.”

One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse--his

last resource--he met Rodolphe.

They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Rodolphe,

who had only sent his card, first stammered some apologies, then grew

bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and

very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the

public-house.

Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and

Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed

to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would

have liked to have been this man.

The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out

with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Charles

was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he followed the

succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew

redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at

last a moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on

Rodolphe, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same

look of weary lassitude came back to his face.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in a

broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow--

“No, I don’t blame you now.”

He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made--

“It is the fault of fatality!”

Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand

from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean.

The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays

of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their

shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were

blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was

suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled

his aching heart.

At seven o’clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon,

went to fetch him to dinner.

His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth

open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.

“Come along, papa,” she said.

And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the

ground. He was dead.

Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist’s request, Monsieur Canivet came

thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing.

When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes

remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary’s going to

her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Rouault was

paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and

sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living.

Since Bovary’s death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville

without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an

enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and

public opinion protects him.

He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.