society of the good sisters who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,
which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very
little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she
who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living
thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the class-rooms, and
amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was
softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.
Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with
their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the
cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill.
When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her
face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The
comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
unexpected sweetness.
In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the
study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the
Lectures of the Abbé Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the
"Génie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to
the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing
through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her
heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us
only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. Accustomed to calm
aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement.
She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields
only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out
of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to
the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more
sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.
At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love-songs
of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.
She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the
sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long
chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions
killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, somber
forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions,
gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of
age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. With
Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed
of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in
some old manor-house, like those long-waisted châtelaines who, in the
shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in
hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse
from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and
enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc,
Héloise, Agnès Sorel, the beautiful Ferronnière, and Clémence Isaure
stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also
were seen, lost in shadow and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak,
the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St.
Bartholomew's, the plume of the Béarnais, and always the remembrance of
the plates painted in honor of Louis XIV.
In the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;--mild
compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria
of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes"
given them as New Year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately
handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the
most part as counts or viscounts.
She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the
balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his
arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or
there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through
parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage, driven at a
trot by two small postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on
sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open
window half draped by a black curtain. The naïve ones, a tear on their
cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,
smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a
marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
shoes. And you too were there, Sultans with long pipes, reclining
beneath arbors in the arms of Bayadères; Djiaours, Turkish sabers, Greek
caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that
often show us at once palm-trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion
to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very
neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in
the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a
steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head
lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one
by one in the silence of the dormitory, to the distant noise of some
belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.
When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a
funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter
sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
buried some day in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,
and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the
Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
brow.
The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from
them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
horses: she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the
mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.
Emma at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought
herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing
more to feel.
But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
great bird with rose-colored wings, had hung in the splendor of the
skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she
lived was the happiness she had dreamed.
VII.
DISILLUSION.
She thought sometimes that, after all, this was the happiest time of her
life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of
it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with
sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most
suave. In post-chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up
steep roads, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the
mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a
waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of
lemon-trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in
hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her
that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar
to the soil, that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over
balconies in Swiss châlets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch
cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails,
and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills?
Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to some one.
But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable
as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage.
If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but
once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have
gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a
hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater
became the gulf that separated her from him.
Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and every
one's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting
emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said,
while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from
Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could
not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in
a novel.
A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold
activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements
of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing,
wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm,
this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.
Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand
there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes
half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers,
little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers
glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb,
and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the
other end of the village when the window was open, and often the
bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bareheaded and in list
slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.
Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the
patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a
bill. When they had a neighbor to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have
some dainty dish--piled up pyramids of green-gages on vine leaves,
served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying
finger-glasses for dessert. From all this, much consideration was
extended to Bovary.
Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.
He showed with pride in the sitting-room two small pencil sketches by
her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the
wall-paper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at
his door in his wool-work slippers.
He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked
for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on
him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one
after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been,
the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he
finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off
the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to
bed, and lay on his back and snored.
As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief
would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was
all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of
the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore
thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely
towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that was "quite good
enough for the country."
His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
when there had been some violent scene at her place; and yet Madame
Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought
"her ways too fine for their position;" the wood, the sugar, and the
candles disappeared as at "a grand establishment," and the amount of
firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses.
She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to
keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with
these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words
"daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by
little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice
trembling with anger.
In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the
favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion
from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched
her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the
windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as
remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to
adore her so exclusively.
Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved
his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,
and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madame
Bovary had gone he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or
two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma Emma
proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his
patients.
And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make
herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the
passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many
melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before,
and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.
When she had thus for a while struck the flint of her heart without
getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not
experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in
conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that
Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became
regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony
of dinner.
A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had
given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for
she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see
before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far
as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an
angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amid the vegetation of
the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut.
She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last
she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and
wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the
patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always
closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts,
aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round
and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing
the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. Then
gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that
she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to herself,
"Good heavens! why did I marry?"
She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would not have
been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would
have been these unrealized events, this different life, this unknown
husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been
handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old
companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In
town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theaters, and the
lights of the ball-room, they were living lives where the heart expands,
the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose
dormer-window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was
weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. She
recalled the prize-days, when she mounted the platform to receive her
little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and
open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her
seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was
full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows;
the music-master with his violin-case bowed in passing by. How far off
all this! How far away!
She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long,
delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles."
Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned
slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud
as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.
Occasionally there came gusts of wind, breezes from the sea rolling in
one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even
to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their
summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl
round her shoulders and rose.
In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lighted the short moss
that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky
showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,
and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out
against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali,
and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the highroad, threw herself into an
armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.
But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her
life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.
Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to
re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the
Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a
great deal of wood, and in the Conseil Général always enthusiastically
demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had
suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by
giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes
to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some
superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry-trees did not
thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it
his business to thank him personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty
figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not
think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other
hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.
One Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in
their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on
behind and a bonnet-box in front on the apron. Besides these Charles
held a bandbox between his knees.
They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being
lighted to show the carriage-drive.
VIII.
GLIMPSES OF THE WORLD.
The château, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting
wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense
green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees
set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,
syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green
along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;
through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs
scattered over the field bordered by two gently-sloping well-timbered
hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel
lines the coach-houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old
château.
Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants
appeared; the Marquis came forward, and offering his arm to the doctor's
wife, conducted her to the vestibule.
It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of
footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.
Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
overlooking the garden led to the billiard-room, through whose door one
could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the
drawing-room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces,
their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled
silently as they made their strokes. On the dark wainscoting of the
walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black
letters. She read:
"Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yverbonville, Count de la
Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnaye, killed at the battle of
Coutras on the 20th of October 1587."
And on another:
"Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral
of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the
battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May 1692; died at
Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693."
One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the
lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room.
Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in
delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all
these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there
some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked
at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the
buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf.
The Marquis opened the drawing-room door; one of the ladies (the
Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on
an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her
a long time. She was about forty years old, with fine shoulders, a hook
nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair
a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young
woman was by her side in a high-backed chair, and gentlemen with flowers
in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.
At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down
at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the
dining-room with the Marquis and Marchioness.
Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a
blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes
of the viands, and the odor of the truffles. The silver dish-covers
reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal
covered with light steam reflected pale rays from one to the other;
bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the
large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a
bishop's miter, held between its two gaping folds a small oval-shaped
roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open
baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke
was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and
frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offered ready-carved
dishes between the shoulders of the guests, and with a touch of the
spoon gave the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with
copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed
motionless on the room full of life.
Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their
glasses.
But at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent
over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child,
an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His
eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black
ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdière,
once on a time favorite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the
Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it
was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de
Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch,
full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and
frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him
in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly
Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as
to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed
of queens!
Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it
cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted
pine-apples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than
elsewhere.
The ladies afterward went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.
Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her
début. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,
and put on the barège dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers
were tight across the belly.
"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.
"Dancing?" repeated Emma.
"Yes!"
"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.
Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added.
Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish
dressing.
He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes
seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating toward the ears, shone
with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,
with artificial dewdrops on the tips of the leaves. She wore a gown of
pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
green.
Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.
"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."
One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
went downstairs restraining herself from running.
Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She
sat down on a form near the door.
The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line
of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid smiling
faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed
hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair,
well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or
bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of
corn, and cornflowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with
forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.
Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and
waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,
swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight
movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate
phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the
louis-d'or that were being thrown down upon the card-tables in the next
room; then all struck in again, the cornet-à-piston uttered its sonorous
note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and
parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again.
A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here
and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished
themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their
differences in age, dress, or face.
Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate
pomades. They had the complexion of wealth,--that clear complexion that
is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the
veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite
nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low
cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they
wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs, with embroidered initials, that
gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an
air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the
young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily
satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that
peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in
which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of
thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women.
A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.
They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoli,
Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum
by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation
full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very
young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romulus,"
and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
that had disfigured the name of his horse.
The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. Guests
were flocking to the billiard-room. A servant got upon a chair and broke
the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her
head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the
window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to
her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse
under the apple-trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming
with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the
refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then,
faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was
there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She
was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a
silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth.
A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentleman was passing.
"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has
fallen behind the sofa?"
The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw
the hand of the young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,
into his hat. The gentleman picking up the fan, offered it to the lady
respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began
smelling her bouquet.
After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups _à la
bisque_ and _au lait d'amandes_, puddings _à la Trafalgar_, and all
sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the
carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corner of
the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering
through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were
still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on
their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door.
At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.
Every one was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the
Marquis only the guests staying at the castle were still there about a
dozen persons.
One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and
whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time
to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and
that she would get through it very well.
They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at
her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They
started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging
her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where,
panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his
breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to
her seat. She leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her
hands.
When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing-room three
waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the
Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.
Every one looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid
body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure
curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how
to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.
Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the good-nights, or
rather good-mornings, the guests of the château retired to bed.
Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His knees were going up
into his body. He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright
at the card-tables, watching them play whist, without understanding
anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled
off his boots.
Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.
The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the
damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still
murmuring in her ears, and she tried to keep herself awake in order to
prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to
give up.
Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the château,
trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the
evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,
blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and
cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.
There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten
minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. Next,
Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small
basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went
to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs,
rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from overfilled nests
of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was
at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the château.
The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables.
Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the
horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when
any one went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness-room
shone like the flooring of a drawing-room. The carriage harness was
piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the
whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.
Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The
dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and all the parcels being
crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and
Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.
Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge
of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little
horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose
reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened
on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.
They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen
with cigars between their lips passed, laughing. Emma thought she
recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the
movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the
trot or gallop.
A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces
that had broken.
But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the
ground between the horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a
green silk border and blazoned in the center like the door of a
carriage.
"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening
after dinner."
"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.
"Sometimes, when I get a chance."
He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.
When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper.
Nastasie answered rudely.
"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you
warning."
For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.
Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.
"How good it is to be at home again!"
Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She
had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowerhood, kept him
company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest
acquaintance in the place.
"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.
"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.
Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being
made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with his lips protruded,
spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.
"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.
He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the
pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar-case threw it quickly to the back
of the cupboard.
The next day was a long one. She walked above her little garden, up and
down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier,
before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of
once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed
already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day
before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard
had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevasses that a
storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was
resigned. She devoutly put away in her closets her beautiful dress, down
to the satin shoes whose sole were yellowed with the slippery wax of the
dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth
something had come over it that could not be effaced.
The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma. Whenever
the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah! I was
there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." And little by little the
faces grew confused in her remembrance. She forgot the tune of the
quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so
distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.
IX.
IDLE DREAMS.
Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds
of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar-case. She
looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odor of the lining--a
mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps it
was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some
rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had
occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the
pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the
canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and
all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same
silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with
him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-manteled chimneys
between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at
Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague name! She
repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her
ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the
labels of her pomade-pots.
At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts
singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the
iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon
deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to
herself.
And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing
villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the
end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into
which her dream died.
She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map
she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at
every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white
squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of
her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind
and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles
of theatres.
She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des
Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of
first nights, races, and soirées, took an interest in the début of a
singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the
addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In
Eugène Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and
George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.
Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while
Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always
returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made
comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened
round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened
out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.
Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an
atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult
were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma
perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in
themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over
polished floors in drawing-rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables
covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were skirts with
trains; deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the
society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the
women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men,
unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to
death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards
the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,
where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the
motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as
kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence
outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of
storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it
was lost, with no particular place, and as if non-existent. The nearer
things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All
her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class
imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a
peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched as
far as eye could see an immense land of joys and of passions. She
confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of
the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love,
like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Sighs
by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the
fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be
separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from
boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled
flower-stands, a bed on a raised dais, nor from the flashing of precious
stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.
The lad from the posting-house, who came to groom the mare every
morning, passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there
were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this
was the groom in knee-breeches with whom she had to be content! His work
done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put
up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the
servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could
into the manger.
To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma
took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet
face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in
the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before
coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her,--tried to make a
lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not
to be sent away; and, as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,
Félicité every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone
in her bed after she had said her prayers.
Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. Madame
was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing-gown, that showed
between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chemisette with three
gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her
small garnet-colored slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over
her instep. She had bought herself a blotting-book, writing-case,
pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she
dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,
and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She
longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same
time to die and to live in Paris.
Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt
of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he
found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
woman, charming with an odor of freshness, though no one could say
whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous
her chemise.
She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on
her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the
servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on
their watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her
mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory
_nécessaire_ with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood
these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the
pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a
golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life.
He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established. The
country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children,
never went to the public-house, and, moreover, his morals inspired
confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest
complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact,
prescribed only sedatives, from time to time an emetic, a footbath, or
leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people
copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the
"devil's own wrist."
Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "La Ruche Médicale," a
new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little
after dinner, but in about five minutes, the warmth of the room added to
the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin
on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the
lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was
not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their
books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age when rheumatism
sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coats? She
could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been
illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the
newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition. An Yvetot
doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated
him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives.
When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed
loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed her
forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she
felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the
passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.
"What a man! what a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips.
Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his
manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles;
after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he
made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting
fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up
to the temples.
Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest into his
waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the soiled gloves he
was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it
was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.
Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in
a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had
seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an
ever-open ear, an ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to
her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to
the pendulum of the clock.
At bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to
happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the
solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of
the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would
bring it her, toward what shore it would drive her, if it would be a
shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the
port-holes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that
day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that
it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for
the morrow.
Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear-trees
began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.
From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to
October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give
another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or
visits.
After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained
empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would
thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing
nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some
event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences,
and the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it
so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.
She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?
Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking
with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel
the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while
boring herself with practising. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery
she left in the cupboard. What was the good? what was the good? Sewing
irritated her. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she
sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.
How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull
attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over
some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the
highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and
the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away
over the fields.
But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the
peasants in new blouses, the little bareheaded children skipping along
in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six
men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door
of the inn.
The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with rime,
and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass,
sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp
had to be lighted.
On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the
cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one
to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the
espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent
under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the
many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the
curé in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right
foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white
scabs on his face.
Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with
the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever.
She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of
shame restrained her.
Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skull-cap opened
the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre
over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by
three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the
bell of a public-house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear
the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop
creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving
of a fashion-plate stuck against a window-pane and the wax bust of a
woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted
calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big
town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbor, near the
theater--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church,
sombre, and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she
always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skull-cap over
his ears and his waistcoat of lasting.
Sometimes in the afternoon, outside the window of her room, the head of
a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with
a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately
began, and on the organ, in a little drawing-room, dancers the size of a
finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in
frock-coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the
sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking-glass held
together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his
handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and
again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the
milestone, with his knee he raised his instrument, whose hard straps
tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried,
the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink
taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other
places at the theaters, sung in drawing-rooms, danced to at night under
lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless
sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing-girl on the
flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leaped with the notes, swung from
dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some
coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his
organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him
going.
But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this
small room on the ground-floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking
door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness of life
seemed served up on her plate, and with the smoke of the boiled beef
arose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow
eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused
herself with drawing lines along the oil-cloth table-cover with the
point of her knife.
She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame
Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much
surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now
passed whole days without dressing, wore gray cotton stockings, and
burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they
were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that
Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth
of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow
her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that
mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she
had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good
woman did not mention it again.
Emma was growing _difficile_, capricious. She ordered dishes for
herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, and
the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out,
then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light frocks. After
she had well scolded her servant, she gave her presents or sent her out
to see the neighbors, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver
in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily
accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who
always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the
paternal hands.
Toward the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself
brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes.
Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in
the room, spat on the fire-dogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry,
and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him
with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover,
she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at
times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with
that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral,
all which made her husband open his eyes widely.
Would this misery last forever? Would she never issue from it? Yet she
was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen
duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she
execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls to
weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent
pleasures, with all the wildness, that she did not know, but that these
must surely yield.
She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart. Charles
prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only
seemed to irritate her the more.
On certain days she chattered with feverish rapidity, and this
over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she
remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was
pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.
As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her
illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea,
began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.
From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and
completely lost her appetite.
It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and
when he was "beginning to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her
to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of
air was needed.
After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in
the Neufchâtel arrondissement there was a considerable market-town
called Yonville l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a
week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number
of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his
predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being
satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's
health did not improve.
One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,
something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding-bouquet. The
orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin
ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up
more quickly than dry straw. Then it was like a red bush in the cinders,
slowly devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard berries
burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shrivelled paper
corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at
last flew up the chimney.
When they left Tostes in the month of March, Madame Bovary was
pregnant.