Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now far

more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty

that it would not end.

A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself

certain whims. She bought a gothic prie-Dieu, and in a month spent

fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen

for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves,

and wore it knotted round her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with

closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch

in this garb.

She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair _à la Chinoise_, in

flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted it on one side and rolled it

under like a man's.

She wished to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a

supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history, and

philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke up with a start,

thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming," he stammered;

and it was the noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But

her reading fared like her pieces of embroidery, all of which, only

just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to

other books.

She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any

folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she

could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid

enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop.

In spite of her vaporish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called

them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the

corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of

old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all

over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils,

her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three gray hairs on

her temples, she talked much of her old age.

She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Charles fussed

round her showing his anxiety--

"Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?"

Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table,

sitting in an armchair at his bureau under the phrenological head.

Then he wrote to his mother to beg her to come, and they had many long

consultations together on the subject of Emma.

What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all

medical treatment?

"Do you know what your wife wants?" replied Madame Bovary, senior. "She

wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she were

obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have

these vapors, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her

head, and from the idleness in which she lives."

"Yet she is always busy," said Charles.

"Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works against

religion, in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire.

But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Any one who has no

religion always ends by turning out badly."

So they decided to stop Emma from reading novels. The enterprise did not

seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she passed through

Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Emma had

discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply to

the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous

trade?

The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three

weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen

words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in

the evening before going to bed.

Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at Yonville.

The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on

end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses

from the church to the inn. On the other side there were canvas booths,

where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together

with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends

fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground

between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky

straw stuck out. Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks

through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place

and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the

shop-front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and

the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations, so great

was Homais's reputation in the neighboring villages. His robust aplomb

had fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than

all the doctors.

Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in

the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, and she amused

herself with watching the crowd of boors, when she saw a gentleman in a

green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy

gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant

walking with bent head and quite a thoughtful air.

"Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on the

doorsteps with Félicité, and, taking him for a servant of the house:

"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is here."

It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of La

Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known. La

Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just bought

the château and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however,

troubling very much about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed

to have at least fifteen thousand francs a year.

Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his man, who

wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over."

"That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning.

So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Justin to hold it.

Then addressing the countryman, already pale--

"Don't be afraid, my lad."

"No, no, sir," said the other; "get on."

And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the prick of

the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass.

"Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles.

"Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain

flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign isn't it?"

"Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then

syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution

like this man."

At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between

his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. His

hat fell off.

"I thought as much," said Bovary, pressing his finger on the vein.

The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin's hands; his knees shook,

he turned pale.

"Emma! Emma!" called Charles.

With one bound she came down the staircase.

"Some vinegar," he cried. "O dear! two at once!"

And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress.

"It is nothing," said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking Justin in his

arms. He seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall.

Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of his shirt had

got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers

about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her

cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and

then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope

still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in their pale sclerotic like

blue flowers in milk.

"We must hide this from him," said Charles.

Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the

movement she made in bending down, her skirt (it was a summer frock with

four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread

out around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma, stooping,

staggered a little as she stretched out her arms, the stuff here and

there gave with the inflections of her bust. Then she went to fetch a

bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the

chemist arrived. The servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing

his pupil with his eyes open he drew a long breath; then going round him

he looked at him from head to foot.

"Fool!" he said, "really a little fool! A fool in four letters! A

phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid of

anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous

heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about

yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for

under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in

order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to

keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an

imbecile."

Justin did not answer. The chemist went on--

"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doctor and madame.

On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. There are

now twenty people in the shop. I left everything because of the interest

I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep an eye on

the jars."

When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a

little while about fainting-fits. Madame Bovary said she had never

fainted.

"That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur Boulanger; "but some

people are very susceptible. Thus, in a duel, I have seen a second lose

consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols."

"For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood

doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would

make me faint, if I reflected upon it too much."

Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm

himself, since his fancy was over.

"It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added,

and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then he put three francs on the

corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out.

He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La

Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars,

slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects.

"She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this

doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a

Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from? Wherever did this fat

fellow pick her up?"

Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal

temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to

do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him;

so he was thinking about her and her husband.

"I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He has dirty

nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is trotting after his

patients, she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored! She would

like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman!

She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.

With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be

tender, charming! Yes; but how get rid of her afterwards?"

Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by

contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at Rouen, whom he

kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in

remembrance, he was satiated--

"Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher.

Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so finikin with her

pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns."

The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe heard only the regular

beating of the grass striking against his boots, with the cry of the

grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He again saw Emma in

her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.

"Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a

clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political

part of the enterprise. He asked himself--

"Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be having the brat

on our hands, and the servant, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of

worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it."

Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a

gimlet. And that pale complexion; I adore pale women!"

When he reached the top of the Argueil hills he had made up his mind.

"It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in now and then.

I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if need be. We

shall become friends; I'll invite them to my place. By Jove!" added he,

"there's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. I shall see

her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way."

VIII.

A VILLAGE FESTIVAL.

At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the

solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the

preparations. The pediment of the townhall had been hung with garlands

of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the

middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to

announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful

farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was

none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet

was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and,

tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless

that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into

his legs; which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement.

As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,

both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw

the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and repass

alternately; there was no end to it, and it continually began again.

There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had

washed down their houses the evening before; tricolored flags hung from

half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely

weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the colored

neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved

with their motley colors the somber monotony of the frock-coats and blue

smocks. The neighboring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses,

pulled out a long pin that fastened round them their skirts, turned up

for fear of mud; the husbands, on the contrary, in order to save their

hats, kept their handkerchiefs round them, holding one corner between

their teeth.

The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village.

People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time

to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women

with their gloves, who were going out to see the fête. What was most

admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a

platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were

against the four columns of the townhall four kinds of poles, each

bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with

inscriptions in gold letters. On one was written, "To Commerce;" on the

other, "To Agriculture;" on the third, "To Industry;" and on the fourth,

"To the Fine Arts."

But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of

Madame Lefrançois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she

muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas

booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a

tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place!

Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchâtel for the keeper of a

cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"

The chemist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers,

beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.

"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked

where he was going--

"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, to see me, who am always more cooped

up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese, taking a holiday?"

"What cheese?" asked the landlady.

"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey to

you, Madame Lefrançois, that I usually live at home like a recluse.

To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--"

"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.

"Yes, I am going," replied the chemist, astonished. "Am I not a member

of the consulting commission?"

Mère Lefrançois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying

with a smile:

"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?

Do you understand anything about it?"

"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist,--that is to say, a

chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrançois, being the

knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,

it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in

fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the

analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is

all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"

The landlady did not answer. Homais went on:

"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled

the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the

composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the

atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,

the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.

And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to

direct, criticise the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,

the diet of the domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrançois, one must

know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand,

which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are

unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and

re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must

keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be

always on the alert to find out improvements."

The landlady never took her eyes off the "Café Français," and the

chemist went on:

"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they

would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus, lately I

myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of more than seventy-two

pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with

some New Reflections on this Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural

Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honor of being received

among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if

my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame

Lefrançois seemed so preoccupied.

"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop

as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her

breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands

at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't

last long," she added; "it'll be over before a week."

Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and

whispered in his ear:

"What! you didn't know it? There'll be an execution in next week. It's

Lheureux who is selling him up; he has killed him with bills."

"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the chemist, who always found

expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.

Then the landlady began telling him this story, that she had heard from

Théodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested

Telher, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak."

"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to

Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur

Boulanger's arm."

"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my

respects. Perhaps she'd be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure

under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrançois, who was

calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off

rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing

exuberantly right and left, and taking up much room with the large

tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.

Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame

Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her,

said in a rough tone:

"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist."

She pressed his elbow.

"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out

of the corner of his eyes.

Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood

out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it

like the leaves of reeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked

straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered

by the cheekbones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the

delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.

Her head leaned towards her shoulder, and the pearly tips of her white

teeth were seen between her lips.

"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.

Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur

Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter

into the conversation.

"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!"

And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, while at the

slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your

pardon!" and raised his hat.

When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up

to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him

Madame Bovary. He called out:

"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently."

"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.

"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as

to-day I have the happiness of being with you----"

Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine

weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had

sprung up again.

"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to

furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall

I pick some? What do you think?"

"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.

"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.

The meadow began to fill, and the housewives, hustled one with their

great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get

out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue

stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who smelled of milk when one

passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,

and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to

the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers one

after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord

supported on sticks.

The beasts were there, their noses toward the cord, and making a

confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in

the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the

cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,

slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats

that buzzed round them. Ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the

halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils, looking

toward the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and

flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then

came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded

animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some

sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart,

outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,

muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, who moved no more than if he

had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.

Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,

examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One

who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he

walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de

la Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe he came forward quickly,

and smiling amiably, said:

"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"

Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had

disappeared:

"_Ma foi!_" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his."

And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,

showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in

front of some fine beast which Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He

noticed this and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses;

then he apologized for the negligence of his own. He had that

incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think

they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations

of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for

social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric

shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his

waistcoat of gray ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at

the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so

polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses' dung with

them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one

side.

"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country----"

"It's waste of time," said Emma.

"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people

is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"

Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,

the illusions lost there.

"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."

"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."

"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to

wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the

sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were

not better to join those sleeping there!"

"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."

"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he

accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.

But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great

pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen

with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the

ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,

who was carrying the church chairs about among the people. Alive to all

that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the

show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew

which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for

these seats, whose straw smelled of incense, and they lent against the

thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.

Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to

himself:

"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim

in life, if I had met some love, if I had found some one! Oh, how I

would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted

everything, overcome everything!"

"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."

"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.

"For, after all," she went on, "you are free----" she hesitated,

"rich----"

"Do not mock me," he replied.

And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a

cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell

toward the village.

It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the

members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to

begin the meeting or still wait.

At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by

two thin horses, whom a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily.

Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to

imitate him. All ran toward the enclosure; every one pushed forward. A

few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to

anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their

harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town

hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,

beating drums and marking time.

"Present!" shouted Binet.

"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."

And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting

loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns

were lowered. Then were seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman

in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft

of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most

benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were

half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his

sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognized the

mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able

to come. He himself was a councilor at the prefecture; then he added a

few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the

other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face,

their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round,

the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and

the crowd. The councilor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast

repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled,

stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the

monarchy and the honor that was being done to Yonville.

Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the

coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of

the "Lion d'Or," where a number of peasants collected to look at the

carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one

by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet

armchairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.

All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned

by the sun, were the color of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers

emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows.

All the waistcoats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had,

at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; every one rested

his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of his

trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the

leather of his heavy boots.

The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between

the pillars, while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting

on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all

those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back

every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion

with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to

the small steps of the platform.

"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his

place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something

rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty

effect."

"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took

everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and

he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art."

Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first floor

of the townhall, to the "council-room," and as it was empty, he declared

that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three

stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having

carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other.

There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying.

At last the councilor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain,

and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had

collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began:

"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on

the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment, will, I am sure,

be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to

the higher administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentlemen,

our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or

private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a

hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the

incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace

respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine

arts."

"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."

"Why?" said Emma.

But at this moment the voice of the councilor rose to an extraordinary

pitch. He declaimed:

"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined

our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man

himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled

lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins,

when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."

"Well, some one down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I

should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad

reputation----"

"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.

"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."

"But, gentlemen," continued the councilor, "if, banishing from my memory

the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the

actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there? Everywhere

commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of

communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state,

establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centers have

recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all

hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France

breathes once more!"

"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they

are right."

"How so?" she asked.

"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly

tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions

and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all

sorts of fantasies, of follies."

Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveler who has voyaged over

strange lands, and went on:

"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!"

"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."

"But is it ever found?" she asked.

"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.

"And this is what you have understood," said the councilor. "You

farmers, agricultural laborers! you pacific pioneers of a work that

belongs wholly to civilization! you men of progress and morality, you

have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable

than atmospheric disturbances!"

"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one

is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice

cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your

life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There

is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen

each other in dreams!" He looked at her. "In fine, here it is, this

treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet

one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if

one went out from darkness into light!"

And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his

hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it

fall on Emma's. She took hers away.

"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who was so blind,

so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of

another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural

populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the

country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a

word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain

ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced

intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus

contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the

support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of

duty----"

"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They

are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with

foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty,

duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the

beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the

ignominy that it imposes upon us."

"Yet--yet----" objected Madame Bovary.

"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one

beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of

poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?"

"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the

world and accept its moral code."

"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that

of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that

makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthy, like the mass of

imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is about

us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens

that give us light."

Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief.

He continued:

"And what should I do here, gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of

agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of

subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,

who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country,

brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by

means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,

and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the

baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it

not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks

in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish

ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even

necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected

on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the

ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow

for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should

never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different

products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother,

lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the

apple-tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax.

Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of

late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention."

He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide

open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him

with starting eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed

his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoléon between

his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.

The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in

their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the

platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with

out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could

hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his

helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of

Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on

his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled

beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little

face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and

sleepiness.

The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk

leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors,

and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by

the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur

Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of

phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the

crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the

bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In

fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and

these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down

some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.

Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,

speaking rapidly:

"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single

sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest

sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do

meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend together. Yet they will

make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon

each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,

they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they

are born one for the other."

His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face toward

Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes

small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelled the

perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came

over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at

Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this hair an odor of vanilla

and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to

breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leaned back in her

chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the

old diligence the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of

Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow

carriage that Léon had so often come back to her, and by this route down

there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his

window; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that

she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on the

arm of the Viscount, and that Léon was not far away, that he was coming;

and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head

by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old

desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to

and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She

opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the

ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands,

then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing

of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the

councilor intoning his phrases. He said:

"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor

to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. Apply yourselves, above

all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the

development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these

shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold

forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in the

hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose

hard labor no Government up to this day has taken into consideration,

come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured

that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages

you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and

alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices."

Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning

another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councilor,

but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by

more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise

of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture

more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had

always contributed to civilization. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was

talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of

society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns

in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had

put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in

this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur

Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little

Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing

Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and the

emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young

man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible

attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.

"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance

willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that

flow but to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us toward each

other."

And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.

"For good farming generally!" cried the president.

"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."

"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."

"Did I know I should accompany you?"

"Seventy francs."

"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained."

"Manures!"

"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!"

"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"

"For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a

charm."

"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."

"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."

"For a merino ram!"

"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."

"To Monsieur Belot of Nôtre-Dame."

"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I

not?"

"Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Lehérissé and Cullembourg,

sixty francs!"

Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering

like a captive dove that tries to fly away; but, whether she was trying

to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure, she made a

movement with her fingers. He exclaimed--

"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand

that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"

A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the

table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women

were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.

"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on:

"Flemish manure--flax-growing--drainage--long leases--domestic service."

Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme

desire made their dry lips tremble, and softly, without an effort, their

fingers intertwined.

"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerrière, for

fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value,

twenty-five francs!"

"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councilor.

She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering:

"Go up!"

"Don't be afraid!"

"Oh, how stupid she is!"

"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.

"Yes; here she is."

"Then let her come up!"

Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid

bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she

wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her

pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered

russet apple, and from the sleeves of her red jacket hung down two large

hands with knotty joints. The dust of barns, the potash of washings, and

the grease of wools had so incrusted, roughened, hardened these, that

they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by

dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble

witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of

monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion

weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had

caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she

found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by

the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the

councilor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run

away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at

her. Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of

servitude.

"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the

councilor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;

and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he

repeated in a fatherly tone:

"Approach! approach!"

"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began

shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!

Twenty-five francs! For you!"

Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude

spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her

muttering:

"I'll give it to our curé up home, to say some masses for me!"

"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.

The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had

been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into

the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the

animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green crown on

their horns.

The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the

townhall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the

battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's

arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about

alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.

The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that

they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for

forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one

stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a

whitish steam, like the vapor of a stream on an autumn morning, floated

above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the

calico of the tent, was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard

nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty

plates; his neighbors were talking; he did not answer them; they filled

his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing

noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;

her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the

folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to

all infinity before him in the vistas of the future.

He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with

her husband. Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the

danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and

give some advice to Binet.

The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess

of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not

light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon

biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meager Roman-candle

went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the

cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma

silently nestled gently against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her

chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky.

Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.

They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few drops of rain began

to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.

At this moment the councilor's carriage came out from the inn. His

coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the

distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his

body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.

"Truly," said the chemist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against

drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the

townhall on a board _ad hoc_ the names of all those who during the week

got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one

would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in

case of need. But excuse me!"

And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to

see his lathe again.

"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your

men, or to go yourself----"

"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!"

"Do not be uneasy," said the chemist, when he returned to his friends.

"Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No

sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."

"_Ma foi!_ I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never

mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fête."

Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very

beautiful."

And having bowed to one another, they separated.

Two days later, in the "Fanal de Rouen," there was a long article on the

show. Homais had composed it with _verve_ the very next morning.

"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this

crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical

sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"

Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government

was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand

reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on the

entry of the councilor, he did not forget "the martial air of our

militia," nor "our most merry village maidens," nor the "bald-headed

old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants

of our immortal phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly

sound of the drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of

the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that

Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural

society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the

joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced

the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one

showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his

good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.

"About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard

brought together the principal personages of the fête. The greatest

cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed. Monsieur Lieuvain,

the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,

Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin

sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant

fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a

veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our

little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of

a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.'

"Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And

he added: "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the

priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please,

messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

IX.

A WOODLAND IDYLL.

Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he

appeared.

The day after the show he had said to himself:

"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake."

And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he

had thought he was too late, and then he reasoned thus:

"If from the first day she loved me, she must, from impatience to see me

again, love me more. Let's go on with it!"

And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the

room, he saw Emma turn pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The

small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the

gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in

the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral.

Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first

conventional phrases.

"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."

"Seriously?" she cried.

"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it

was because I did not want to come back."

"Why?"

"Can you not guess?"

He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.

He went on:

"Emma!"

"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.

"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not

to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and

that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world

calls you thus! Besides it is not your name; it is the name of another!"

he repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes, I

think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah!

forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that

you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what force

impelled me toward you. For one does not struggle against Heaven; one

cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is

beautiful, charming, adorable."

It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself,

and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly

and fully at this glowing language.

"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least

I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night--every night--I

arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its roof glimmering in the

moonlight, the trees in the garden before your window, and the little

lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you

never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"

She turned toward him with a sob.

"Oh, you are good!" she said.

"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one

word--only one word!"

And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the floor; but a

sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and, he noticed the door

of the room was not closed.

"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humor a

whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and

Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles

came in.

"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.

The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into

obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself

together a little.

"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."

Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's

palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if

riding would not be good.

"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to

follow it up."

And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered

one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit

he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered

from giddiness.

"I'll call round," said Bovary.

"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient

for you."

"Ah! very good! I thank you."

And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur

Boulanger's kind offer?"

She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally

declared that perhaps it would look odd.

"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a

pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."

"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"

"You must order one," he answered.

The riding-habit decided her.

When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his

wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.

The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two

saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin

side-saddle.

Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she

had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his

appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white

corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.

Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also

came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.

"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are

mettlesome."

She heard a noise above her; it was Félicité drumming on the

window-panes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her

mother answered with a wave of her whip.

"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,

prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.

As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop.

Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her

figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out,

she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in

her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head;

they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses

stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.

It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds

hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent

asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the

clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roofs of

Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls,

and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house,

and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From

the height on which they were, the whole valley seemed an immense pale

lake sending off its vapor into the air. Clumps of trees here and there

stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose

above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.

Beside them, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in

the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco,

deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the

horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.

Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away

from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine

trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.

The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.

Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.

"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.

"Do you think so?" she said.

"Forward! forward!" he continued.

He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long

ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward

and removed them as they rode along. At other times to turn aside the

branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing

against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred.

There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets

alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were gray, fawn,

or golden colored, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the

thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry

of the ravens flying off amid the oaks.

They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front

on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,

although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,

saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white

stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.

She stopped. "I am tired," she said.

"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"

Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her

veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face

appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure

waves.

"But where are we going?"

He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round

him biting his mustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice

had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe

began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her

with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.

Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on

the ground with the tip of her foot.

But at the words, "Are not our destinies now one?----"

"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!"

She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having

gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said

hurriedly:

"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back."

He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:

"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"

Then smiling a strange smile, his pupils fixed, his teeth set, he

advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:

"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let us go!"

"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became

respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He

said:

"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were

mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a

place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I want you for my life. I must have

your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"

And he put out his arm around her waist. She feebly tried to disengage

herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.

But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.

"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"

He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness

on the water. Faded waterlilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the

noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves.

"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"

"Why? Emma! Emma!"

"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.

The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw

back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with

a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him.

The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the

branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or

on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as if humming-birds flying

about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something

sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose

beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a

stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she

heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she

heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing

nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his

penknife one of the two broken bridles.

They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again

the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same

stones in the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her

something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved

in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand

to kiss it.

She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee

bent on the mane of her horse, her face something flushed by the fresh

air in the red of the evening.

On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People

looked at her from the windows.

At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to

hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there

with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.

"'Emma!" he said.

"What?"

"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob,

still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, that could be bought, I am

very sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might

please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell

me!"

She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--

"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"

And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up

in her room.

At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches,

Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves

rustled and the reeds whistled.

But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never

had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something

subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover!

a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.

So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness

of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all

would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her,

the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary

existence appeared remote, far below in the shade, through the

interspaces of these heights.

Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the

lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with

the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were,

an actual part of these imaginings, and realized the love-dream of her

youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so

envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not

suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up

burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse,

without anxiety, without trouble.

The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one

another. She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with

kisses; and she, looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to

call her again by her name--to say that he loved her. They were in the

forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some wooden-shoe maker. The walls

were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated

side by side on a bed of dry leaves.

From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening.

Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a

fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there,

that she always found fault with as too short.

One morning, when Charles had gone out before daybreak, she was seized

with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La

Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while every

one was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she soon

found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps,

without looking behind her.

Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognized her lover's house. Its

two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn.

Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must

be the château. She entered it as if the doors at her approach had

opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to

the corridor, Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end

of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.

"You here? You here?" he repeated, "How did you manage to come? Ah! your

dress is damp."

"I love you," she answered, passing her arms round his neck.

This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out

early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led

to the waterside.

But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls

alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she

caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across

ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling, and clogging her thin

shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the

meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out

of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a

fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe

still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.

The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter

softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops

of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around

her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him and pressed her to his

breast.

Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables,

combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his

shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that

lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a

bottle of water.

It took them a good quarter of an hour to say good-bye. Then Emma wept.

She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than

herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come

unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.

"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!"

At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming

imprudent--that she was compromising herself.

X.

LOVERS' VOWS.

Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had

intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he

was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or

even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she

looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the

horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She

listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped

short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.

One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the

long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out

sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the

edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked

on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had

gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes,

trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for

wild ducks.

"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed. "When one sees a

gun, one should always give warning."

The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a

prefectorial order having prohibited duck-hunting except in boats,

Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them,

and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this

anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he

congratulated himself on his luck and on his cleverness.

At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once

entered upon a conversation.

"It isn't warm; it's nipping."

Emma answered nothing. He went on--

"And you're out so early?"

"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my

child is."

"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me,

since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the

bird at the mouth of the gun----"

"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her

heel.

"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.

Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he

would form unfavorable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the

worst possible excuse, every one at Yonville knowing that the little

Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was

living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet,

then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he

would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her

brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before

her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.

Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of

distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she

caught sight of in the shop was the tax-collector again. He was standing

in front of the counter, lighted by the gleams of the red bottle, and

was saying:

"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."

"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to

Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't

worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the

stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor" (for the chemist

much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by

it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now,

take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from

the little room; you know very well that the armchairs are not to be

taken out of the drawing-room."

And to put his armchair back in its place he was darting away from the

counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.

"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm

ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid,

isn't it?"

Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some

copper-water with which to remove rust from his hunting things.

Emma shuddered. The chemist began, saying:

"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp."

"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are

people who like it."

She was stifling.

"And give me----"

"Will he never go?" thought she.

"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and

three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the

varnished leather of my togs."

The chemist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared,

Irma in her arms, Napoléon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat

down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a

footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her

papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on

labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to

time were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words

from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.

"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais.

"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in

his waste-book.

"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.

"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the chemist.

But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard

nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.

"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.

"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.

The next day the lovers discussed how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma

wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to

find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one.

All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night

he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the

gate, which Charles thought lost.

To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She

jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a

mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild

with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled

him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up

a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But

Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.

"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."

"Yes, I am coming," she answered.

Then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell asleep.

She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed.

Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm

around her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden.

It was in the arbor, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Léon

had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought

of him now.

The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they

heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of

the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the

darkness and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and

swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The

cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips

seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger;

and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their

souls sonorous, crystalline, and reverberating in multiplied vibrations.

When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room

between the car-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen

candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down

there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the

whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not

refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.

She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more

dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of

approaching steps in the alley.

"Some one is coming!" she said.

He blew out the light.

"Have you your pistols?"

"Why?"

"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.

"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence

with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger."

She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort

of indecency and a naïve coarseness that scandalized her.

Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had

spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for

he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called

devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had treated him to a

lecture, which he did not think in the best taste.

Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on

exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was

asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She

often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then

she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! Rodolphe

had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled him with

caressing words as one would soothe a forsaken child, and she sometimes

even said to him, gazing at the moon:

"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love."

But she was so pretty! He had possessed so few women of such

ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for

him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride

and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense

disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was

lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up

appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.

He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry,

nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love,

which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water

of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it.

She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe

concealed his indifference less and less.

She did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether she

did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of

feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their

voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual

seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.

Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having

succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the

end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another

like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.

It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance

of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter.

Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following

lines:--

"MY DEAR CHILDREN,--I hope this will find you in good health, and

that it will be as good as the others, for it seems to me a little

more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time,

for a change, I'll give you a turkey-cock, unless you have a

preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you

please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my

cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees.

The harvest has not been over-good either. Finally, I don't know

when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the

house since I am alone, my poor Emma."

Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped

his pen to dream a little while.

"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other

day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd,

having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be

pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I

heard from a pedlar, who, traveling through your part of the country

this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual working

hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had

some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said

not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I

conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear

children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It

grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter,

Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the

garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it is to

have jam made for her by-and-bye, that I will keep in the cupboard

for when she comes.

"Good-bye my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my

son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best

compliments, your loving father,

"THÉODORE ROUAULT."

She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The mistakes

in spelling interwove with one another, but Emma followed the kindly

thought that chattered through it all like a hen half hidden in a hedge

of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a

little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she

almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the

tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in

the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in

the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the summer evenings

all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and

galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes

the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like

rebounding balls of gold. What happiness she had had at that time, what

freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of

them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her

successive conditions of life,--maidenhood, her marriage, and her

love;--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a

traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his

road.

But what, then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary

catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking

round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.

An April ray was dancing on the china of the _étagère_; the fire burned;

beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was

bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.

In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst

of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach

at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt.

Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she

leant forward, beating the air with both her arms.

"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love

you, my poor child! How I love you!"

Then, noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at

once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings,

her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the

return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a

little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite

thunder-stricken at this excess of tenderness.

That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.

"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim."

And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed

herself cold and almost contemptuous.

"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"

And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the

handkerchief she took out.

Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if

it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no

opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much

embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the chemist came just in

time to provide her with an opportunity.

XI.

AN EXPERIMENT AND A FAILURE.

He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and

as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that

Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations

for strephopody or club-foot.

"For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See" (and he enumerated on

his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain

relief and beautifying the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator.

Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the

'Lion d'Or'? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all

the travellers, and then" (Homais lowered his voice and looked round

him), "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the

subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is

talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?"

In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was not

clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by

which his reputation and fortune would be increased! She only wished to

lean on something more solid than love.

Charles, urged by the chemist and by her, allowed himself to be

persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every evening,

holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it.

While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say,

_katastrephopody_, _endostrephopody_, and _exostrephopody_ (or better,

the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with

the _hypostrephopody_ and _anastrephopody_), otherwise torsion downwards

and upwards, Monsieur Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting

the lad at the inn to submit to the operation.

"You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick,

like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns."

Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.

"However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. It's for your

sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of

your hideous deformity, together with that waddling of the lumbar

regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in

the exercise of your calling."

Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would

feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more

likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily.

Then he attacked him through his vanity:--

"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to

go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!"

And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this

obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science.

The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never

interfered with other people's business, Madame Lefrançois, Artémise,

the neighbors, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache--every one persuaded

him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it

would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for

the operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles

consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an

angel.

So, by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a

kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that

weighed about eight pounds, in which iron, wood, sheet-iron, leather,

screws, and nuts had not been spared.

But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first

of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.

He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which,

however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an

equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with

a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus, wide in foot like a

horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which

the black nails looked as if made of iron, the club-foot ran about like

a deer from morn till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place,

jumping around the carts, thrusting his limping foot forward. He seemed

even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had

acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and of energy; and

when he was doing some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its

fellow.

Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendo Achillis,

and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to

afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to

risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of

injuring some important region that he did not know.

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

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

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

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

minds so strained as had the doctor when he approached Hippolyte, his

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

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

bandages--every bandage to be found at the chemist's. It was Monsieur

Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as

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

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

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

Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses.

"Come, be calm," said the chemist; "later you will show your gratitude

to your benefactor."

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

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

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

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

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

at dessert he even wished to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he permitted

himself only on Sundays when there was company.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

them to read.

"Read it yourself," said Bovary.

He read:

"'Despite the prejudices that still cover a part of the face of Europe

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

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

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

loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished

practitioners----"

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

"No, no! not at all! What next!"

"'----Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not used the

scientific term, because you know in a newspaper every one would not

perhaps understand. The masses must----"

"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"

"I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most

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

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

the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow Lefrançois, at the Place

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

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

veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The

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

drops of blood appeared on the skin, as if to show that the rebellious

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

strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain.

His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired.

Everything tends to show that his convalescence will be brief; and who

knows whether, at our next village festivity, we shall not see our good

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

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

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

Honor to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the

amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honor, thrice honor!

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

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

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

the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'"

* * *

This did not prevent Mère Lefrançois from coming five days after,

scared, and crying out--

"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"

Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who caught sight of

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

himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking every one who was going up

the stairs--

"Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?"

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

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

break it.