MADAME BOVARY
Part I
Chapter One
We were in class
when the head-master came in, followed by a "new
fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a
school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had
been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just
surprised at his work.
The head-master
made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the
class-master, he said to him in a low voice—
"Monsieur Roger,
here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll
be in the second. If his work and conduct are
satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper
classes, as becomes his age."
The "new fellow,"
standing in the corner behind the door so that he
could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about
fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut
square on his forehead like a village chorister's;
he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although
he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket
of green cloth with black buttons must have been
tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening
of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare.
His legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath
yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces, He wore
stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.
We began repeating
the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as
attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to
cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two
o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to
tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.
When we came back
to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps
on the ground so as to have our hands more free; we
used from the door to toss them under the form, so
that they hit against the wall and made a lot of
dust: it was "the thing."
But, whether he had
not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt
it, the "new fellow," was still holding his cap on
his knees even after prayers were over. It was one
of those head-gears of composite order, in which we
can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock
hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of
those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has
depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval,
stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round
knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet
and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that
a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon
covered with complicated braiding, from which hung,
at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold
threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new;
its peak shone.
"Rise," said the
master.
He stood up; his
cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped
to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with
his elbow; he picked it up once more.
"Get rid of your
helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag.
There was a burst
of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put
the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know
whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the
ground, or put it on his head. He sat down again and
placed it on his knee.
"Rise," repeated
the master, "and tell me your name."
The new boy
articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible
name.
"Again!"
The same sputtering
of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of
the class.
"Louder!" cried the
master; "louder!"
The "new fellow"
then took a supreme resolution, opened an
inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of
his voice as if calling someone in the word
"Charbovari."
A hubbub broke out,
rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they
yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari!
Charbovari"), then died away into single notes,
growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now
and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a
form whence rose here and there, like a damp cracker
going off, a stifled laugh.
However, amid a
rain of impositions, order was gradually
re-established in the class; and the master having
succeeded in catching the name of "Charles Bovary,"
having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and
re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and
sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the
master's desk. He got up, but before going
hesitated.
"What are you
looking for?" asked the master.
"My c-a-p," timidly
said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round
him.
"Five hundred lines
for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice
stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst.
"Silence!" continued the master indignantly, wiping
his brow with his handkerchief, which he had just
taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new boy,' you will
conjugate 'ridiculus sum'** twenty times."
Then, in a gentler
tone, "Come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't
been stolen."
*A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat.
**I am ridiculous.
Quiet was restored.
Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained
for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although
from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the
tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his
face with one hand and continued motionless, his
eyes lowered.
In the evening, at
preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk,
arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled
his paper. We saw him working conscientiously,
looking up every word in the dictionary, and taking
the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the
willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the
class below. But though he knew his rules passably,
he had little finish in composition. It was the cure
of his village who had taught him his first Latin;
his parents, from motives of economy, having sent
him to school as late as possible.
His father,
Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired
assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in
certain conscription scandals, and forced at this
time to leave the service, had taken advantage of
his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty
thousand francs that offered in the person of a
hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his
good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his
spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran
into his moustache, his fingers always garnished
with rings and dressed in loud colours, he had the
dash of a military man with the easy go of a
commercial traveller.
Once married, he
lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune,
dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain
pipes, not coming in at night till after the
theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law died,
leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in
for the business," lost some money in it, then
retired to the country, where he thought he would
make money.
But, as he knew no
more about farming than calico, as he rode his
horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his
cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate
the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased his
hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not
long in finding out that he would do better to give
up all speculation.
For two hundred
francs a year he managed to live on the border of
the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of
place half farm, half private house; and here,
soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his luck,
jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age
of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined
to live at peace.
His wife had adored
him once on a time; she had bored him with a
thousand servilities that had only estranged him the
more. Lively once, expansive and affectionate, in
growing older she had become (after the fashion of
wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar)
ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. She had suffered
so much without complaint at first, until she had
seem him going after all the village drabs, and
until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at
night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride
revolted. After that she was silent, burying her
anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till
her death. She was constantly going about looking
after business matters. She called on the lawyers,
the president, remembered when bills fell due, got
them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed,
looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while
he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally
besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused
himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat
smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders.
When she had a
child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came
home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His
mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run
about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even
said he might as well go about quite naked like the
young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas,
he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which
he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be
brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a
strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any
fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum
and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable
by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his
notions. His mother always kept him near her; she
cut out cardboard for him, told him tales,
entertained him with endless monologues full of
melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. In her
life's isolation she centered on the child's head
all her shattered, broken little vanities. She
dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall,
handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the
law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old
piano, she had taught him two or three little songs.
But to all this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for
letters, said, "It was not worth while. Would they
ever have the means to send him to a public school,
to buy him a practice, or start him in business?
Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the
world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child
knocked about the village.
He went after the
labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens
that were flying about. He ate blackberries along
the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch,
went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the
woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on
rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to
let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his
weight on the long rope and feel himself borne
upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an
oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour.
When he was twelve
years old his mother had her own way; he began
lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons
were so short and irregular that they could not be
of much use. They were given at spare moments in the
sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism
and a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go
out, sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They
went up to his room and settled down; the flies and
moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the
child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to
doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring
with his mouth wide open. On other occasions, when
Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after
administering the viaticum to some sick person in
the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles playing
about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a
quarter of an hour and took advantage of the
occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot
of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an
acquaintance passed. All the same he was always
pleased with him, and even said the "young man" had
a very good memory.
*A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound
of a bell. Here, the evening prayer.
Charles could not
go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.
Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave
in without a struggle, and they waited one year
longer, so that the lad should take his first
communion.
Six months more
passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent
to school at Rouen, where his father took him
towards the end of October, at the time of the St.
Romain fair.
It would now be
impossible for any of us to remember anything about
him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played
in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive
in class, slept well in the dormitory, and ate well
in the refectory. He had in loco parentis* a
wholesale ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took
him out once a month on Sundays after his shop was
shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the
boats, and then brought him back to college at seven
o'clock before supper. Every Thursday evening he
wrote a long letter to his mother with red ink and
three wafers; then he went over his history
note-books, or read an old volume of "Anarchasis"
that was knocking about the study. When he went for
walks he talked to the servant, who, like himself,
came from the country.
*In place of a parent.
By dint of hard
work he kept always about the middle of the class;
once even he got a certificate in natural history.
But at the end of his third year his parents
withdrew him from the school to make him study
medicine, convinced that he could even take his
degree by himself.
His mother chose a
room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she
knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made
arrangements for his board, got him furniture, table
and two chairs, sent home for an old cherry-tree
bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove
with the supply of wood that was to warm the poor
child.
Then at the end of
a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to
be good now that he was going to be left to himself.
The syllabus that
he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures on
anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on
physiology, lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany
and clinical medicine, and therapeutics, without
counting hygiene and materia medica—all names of
whose etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to
him as so many doors to sanctuaries filled with
magnificent darkness.
He understood
nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen—he
did not follow. Still he worked; he had bound
note-books, he attended all the courses, never
missed a single lecture. He did his little daily
task like a mill-horse, who goes round and round
with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work he is
doing.
To spare him
expense his mother sent him every week by the
carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, with
which he lunched when he came back from the
hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the
wall. After this he had to run off to lectures, to
the operation-room, to the hospital, and return to
his home at the other end of the town. In the
evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he
went back to his room and set to work again in his
wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in front of the
hot stove.
On the fine summer
evenings, at the time when the close streets are
empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at
the doors, he opened his window and leaned out. The
river, that makes of this quarter of Rouen a
wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between
the bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or
blue. Working men, kneeling on the banks, washed
their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting
from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the
air. Opposite, beyond the roots spread the pure
heaven with the red sun setting. How pleasant it
must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And
he expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet
odours of the country which did not reach him.
He grew thin, his
figure became taller, his face took a saddened look
that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through
indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he
had made. Once he missed a lecture; the next day all
the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by
little, he gave up work altogether. He got into the
habit of going to the public-house, and had a
passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every
evening in the dirty public room, to push about on
marble tables the small sheep bones with black dots,
seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which
raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to
see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and
when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle
with a joy almost sensual. Then many things hidden
within him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and
sang them to his boon companions, became
enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to make
punch, and, finally, how to make love.
Thanks to these
preparatory labours, he failed completely in his
examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected
home the same night to celebrate his success. He
started on foot, stopped at the beginning of the
village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She
excused him, threw the blame of his failure on the
injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little,
and took upon herself to set matters straight. It
was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew
the truth; it was old then, and he accepted it.
Moreover, he could not believe that a man born of
him could be a fool.
So Charles set to
work again and crammed for his examination,
ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart.
He passed pretty well. What a happy day for his
mother! They gave a grand dinner.
Where should he go
to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old
doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on
the look-out for his death, and the old fellow had
barely been packed off when Charles was installed,
opposite his place, as his successor.
But it was not
everything to have brought up a son, to have had him
taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he
could practice it; he must have a wife. She found
him one—the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe—who was
forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred
francs. Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her
face with as many pimples as the spring has buds,
Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her
ends Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she
even succeeded in very cleverly baffling the
intrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the
priests.
Charles had seen in
marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he
would be more free to do as he liked with himself
and his money. But his wife was master; he had to
say this and not say that in company, to fast every
Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding
those patients who did not pay. She opened his
letter, watched his comings and goings, and listened
at the partition-wall when women came to consult him
in his surgery.
She must have her
chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She
constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her
liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when
people left her, solitude became odious to her; if
they came back, it was doubtless to see her die.
When Charles returned in the evening, she stretched
forth two long thin arms from beneath the sheets,
put them round his neck, and having made him sit
down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of
her troubles: he was neglecting her, he loved
another. She had been warned she would be unhappy;
and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine
and a little more love.
Chapter Two
One night towards
eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of a
horse pulling up outside their door. The servant
opened the garret-window and parleyed for some time
with a man in the street below. He came for the
doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came
downstairs shivering and undid the bars and bolts
one after the other. The man left his horse, and,
following the servant, suddenly came in behind her.
He pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots
a letter wrapped up in a rag and presented it
gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on the
pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed,
held the light. Madame in modesty had turned to the
wall and showed only her back.
This letter, sealed
with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur
Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the
Bertaux to set a broken leg. Now from Tostes to the
Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across country by
way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark
night; Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents
for her husband. So it was decided the stable-boy
should go on first; Charles would start three hours
later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to
meet him, and show him the way to the farm, and open
the gates for him.
Towards four
o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in
his cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy
from the warmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled
by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped of
its own accord in front of those holes surrounded
with thorns that are dug on the margin of furrows,
Charles awoke with a start, suddenly remembered the
broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the
fractures he knew. The rain had stopped, day was
breaking, and on the branches of the leafless trees
birds roosted motionless, their little feathers
bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country
stretched as far as eye could see, and the tufts of
trees round the farms at long intervals seemed like
dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on
the horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.
Charles from time
to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and,
sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze
wherein, his recent sensations blending with
memories, he became conscious of a double self, at
once student and married man, lying in his bed as
but now, and crossing the operation theatre as of
old. The warm smell of poultices mingled in his
brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron
rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and
saw his wife sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he
came upon a boy sitting on the grass at the edge of
a ditch.
"Are you the
doctor?" asked the child.
And on Charles's
answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran
on in front of him.
The general
practitioner, riding along, gathered from his
guide's talk that Monsieur Rouault must be one of
the well-to-do farmers.
He had broken his
leg the evening before on his way home from a
Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour's. His wife had
been dead for two years. There was with him only his
daughter, who helped him to keep house.
The ruts were
becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux.
The little lad,
slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared;
then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open
the gate. The horse slipped on the wet grass;
Charles had to stoop to pass under the branches. The
watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their
chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took
fright and stumbled.
It was a
substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the
top of the open doors, one could see great
cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. Right
along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill,
from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls
and turkeys, five or six peacocks, a luxury in
Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of it.
The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls
smooth as your hand. Under the cart-shed were two
large carts and four ploughs, with their whips,
shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue
wool were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell
from the granaries. The courtyard sloped upwards,
planted with trees set out symmetrically, and the
chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near
the pond.
A young woman in a
blue merino dress with three flounces came to the
threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary,
whom she led to the kitchen, where a large fire was
blazing. The servant's breakfast was boiling beside
it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes
were drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel,
tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of
colossal size, shone like polished steel, while
along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the
clear flame of the hearth, mingling with the first
rays of the sun coming in through the window, was
mirrored fitfully.
Charles went up the
first floor to see the patient. He found him in his
bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown
his cotton nightcap right away from him. He was a
fat little man of fifty, with white skin and blue
eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore
earrings. By his side on a chair stood a large
decanter of brandy, whence he poured himself a
little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but
as soon as he caught sight of the doctor his elation
subsided, and instead of swearing, as he had been
doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan
freely.
The fracture was a
simple one, without any kind of complication.
Charles could not
have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind
the devices of his masters at the bedsides of
patients, he comforted the sufferer with all sorts
of kindly remarks, those Caresses of the surgeon
that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In
order to make some splints a bundle of laths was
brought up from the cart-house. Charles selected
one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a
fragment of windowpane, while the servant tore up
sheets to make bandages, and Mademoiselle Emma tried
to sew some pads. As she was a long time before she
found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she
did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her
fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck
them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her
nails. They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more
polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and
almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful,
perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the
knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft
inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in
her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because
of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly,
with a candid boldness.
The bandaging over,
the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself
to "pick a bit" before he left.
Charles went down
into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks
and silver goblets were laid for two on a little
table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of
printed cotton with figures representing Turks.
There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that
escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window.
On the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck
upright in rows. These were the overflow from the
neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps
led. By way of decoration for the apartment, hanging
to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green
paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre,
was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame,
underneath which was written in Gothic letters "To
dear Papa."
First they spoke of
the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold,
of the wolves that infested the fields at night.
Mademoiselle
Rouault did not at all like the country, especially
now that she had to look after the farm almost
alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she
ate. This showed something of her full lips, that
she had a habit of biting when silent.
Her neck stood out
from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose two
black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth
were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate
line that curved slightly with the curve of the
head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was
joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy
movement at the temples that the country doctor saw
now for the first time in his life. The upper part
of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man,
thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a
tortoise-shell eyeglass.
When Charles, after
bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the
room before leaving, he found her standing, her
forehead against the window, looking into the
garden, where the bean props had been knocked down
by the wind. She turned round. "Are you looking for
anything?" she asked.
"My whip, if you
please," he answered.
He began rummaging
on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It
had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the
wall. Mademoiselle Emma saw it, and bent over the
flour sacks.
Charles out of
politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out
his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush
against the back of the young girl bending beneath
him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him
over her shoulder as she handed him his whip.
Instead of
returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had
promised, he went back the very next day, then
regularly twice a week, without counting the visits
he paid now and then as if by accident.
Everything,
moreover, went well; the patient progressed
favourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days,
old Rouault was seen trying to walk alone in his
"den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a
man of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he
could not have been cured better by the first doctor
of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.
As to Charles, he
did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure to
him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would,
no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance
of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to
make by it. Was it for this, however, that his
visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to
the meagre occupations of his life? On these days he
rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on his
horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass
and put on black gloves before entering. He liked
going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn
against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the
lads run to meet him. He liked the granary and the
stables; he liked old Rouault, who pressed his hand
and called him his saviour; he like the small wooden
shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of
the kitchen—her high heels made her a little taller;
and when she walked in front of him, the wooden
soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound
against the leather of her boots.
She always
accompanied him to the first step of the stairs.
When his horse had not yet been brought round she
stayed there. They had said "Good-bye"; there was no
more talking. The open air wrapped her round,
playing with the soft down on the back of her neck,
or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-strings,
that fluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw
the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the
snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting;
she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her
sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of the
colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun
shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin
of her face. She smiled under the tender warmth, and
drops of water could be heard falling one by one on
the stretched silk.
During the first
period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame
Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the
invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that
she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank
page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had
a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she
learnt the Mademoiselle Rouault, brought up at the
Ursuline Convent, had received what is called "a
good education"; and so knew dancing, geography,
drawing, how to embroider and play the piano. That
was the last straw.
"So it is for
this," she said to herself, "that his face beams
when he goes to see her, and that he puts on his new
waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it with the rain.
Ah! that woman! That woman!"
And she detested
her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by
allusions that Charles did not understand, then by
casual observations that he let pass for fear of a
storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew
not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the
Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that
these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah! it was because a
young lady was there, some one who know how to talk,
to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared
about; he wanted town misses." And she went on—
"The daughter of
old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather
was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was
almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a
quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss,
or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk
gown like a countess. Besides, the poor old chap, if
it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have
had much ado to pay up his arrears."
For very weariness
Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made
him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he
would go there no more after much sobbing and many
kisses, in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then,
but the strength of his desire protested against the
servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a
kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see
her gave him a sort of right to love her. And then
the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all
weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which
hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony
figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a
scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her
ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed
over grey stockings.
Charles's mother
came to see them from time to time, but after a few
days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge
on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified
him with their reflections and observations. It was
wrong of him to eat so much.
Why did he always
offer a glass of something to everyone who came?
What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring
it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the
holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one fine day
went off, taking with him all the money in his
office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed,
besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand
francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet,
with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted
abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little
furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the
household. The matter had to be gone into. The house
at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to
its foundations; what she had placed with the notary
God only knew, and her share in the boat did not
exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good
lady! In his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the
elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his
wife of having caused misfortune to the son by
harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness
wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes.
Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise in
tears, throwing her arms about her husband, implored
him to defend her from his parents.
Charles tried to
speak up for her. They grew angry and left the
house.
But "the blow had
struck home." A week after, as she was hanging up
some washing in her yard, she was seized with a
spitting of blood, and the next day, while Charles
had his back turned to her drawing the
window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and
fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When all was
over at the cemetery Charles went home. He found no
one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to
their room; say her dress still hanging at the foot
of the alcove; then, leaning against the
writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried
in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!
Chapter Three
One morning old
Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his
leg—seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a
turkey. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him
as well as he could.
"I know what it
is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've
been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I
went into the fields to be quite alone. I fell at
the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I
talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the
moles that I saw on the branches, their insides
swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And
when I thought that there were others at that very
moment with their nice little wives holding them in
their embrace, I struck great blows on the earth
with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not
eating; the very idea of going to a cafe disgusted
me—you wouldn't believe it. Well, quite softly, one
day following another, a spring on a winter, and an
autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by
piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I
should say it has sunk; for something always remains
at the bottom as one would say—a weight here, at
one's heart. But since it is the lot of all of us,
one must not give way altogether, and, because
others have died, want to die too. You must pull
yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass
away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now
and again, d'ye know, and she says you are
forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have
some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a
bit."
Charles followed
his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found
all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was
five months ago. The pear trees were already in
blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again, came
and went, making the farm more full of life.
Thinking it his
duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor
because of his sad position, he begged him not to
take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if
he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry
because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for
him than for the others, such as a little clotted
cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Charles
found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his
wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him.
Coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her.
He thought less of
her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new
delight of independence soon made his loneliness
bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in
or out without explanation, and when he was very
tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So
he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the
consolations that were offered him. On the other
hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill
in his business, since for a month people had been
saying, "The poor young man! what a loss!" His name
had been talked about, his practice had increased;
and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he
liked. He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely
happy; he thought himself better looking as he
brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.
One day he got
there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the
fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at
once catch sight of Emma; the outside shutters were
closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent
across the flooring long fine rays that were broken
at the corners of the furniture and trembled along
the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling
up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as
they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider.
The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet
of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and
touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the
window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore no
fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on
her bare shoulders.
After the fashion
of country folks she asked him to have something to
drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last
laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with
him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao from
the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled
one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the
other, and, after having clinked glasses, carried
hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent
back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips
pouting, her neck on the strain. She laughed at
getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue
passing between her small teeth she licked drop by
drop the bottom of her glass.
She sat down again
and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she
was darning. She worked with her head bent down; she
did not speak, nor did Charles. The air coming in
under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he
watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the
throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a
hen that had laid an egg in the yard. Emma from time
to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her
hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the
huge fire-dogs.
She complained of
suffering since the beginning of the season from
giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any
good; she began talking of her convent, Charles of
his school; words came to them. They went up into
her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the
little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns,
left at the bottom of a cupboard. She spoke to him,
too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed
him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday
of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her
mother's tomb. But the gardener they had never knew
anything about it; servants are so stupid! She would
have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live
in town, although the length of the fine days made
the country perhaps even more wearisome in the
summer. And, according to what she was saying, her
voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor,
drawn out in modulations that ended almost in
murmurs as she spoke to herself, now joyous, opening
big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed,
her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.
Going home at
night, Charles went over her words one by one,
trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that
he might piece out the life she had lived before he
knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts other
than he had seen her the first time, or as he had
just left her. Then he asked himself what would
become of her—if she would be married, and to whom!
Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!—so beautiful!
But Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a
monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his
ears, "If you should marry after all! If you should
marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was
parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the
water-bottle and opened the window. The night was
covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the
distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head
towards the Bertaux.
Thinking that,
after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised
himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion
offered, but each time such occasion did offer the
fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips.
Old Rouault would
not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who
was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he
excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a
calling under the ban of Heaven, since one never saw
a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune
by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he
was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the
dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
properly so called, and the internal management of
the farm, suited him less than most people. He did
not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and
did not spare expense in all that concerned himself,
liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep
well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton,
glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in the
kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table
brought to him all ready laid as on the stage.
*A mixture of coffee and spirits.
When, therefore, he
perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his
daughter, which meant that he would propose for her
one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter
beforehand. He certainly thought him a little
meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have
liked, but he was said to be well brought-up,
economical, very learned, and no doubt would not
make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as
old Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two
acres of "his property," as he owed a good deal to
the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of
the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for
her," he said to himself, "I'll give her to him."
At Michaelmas
Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux.
The last had passed
like the others in procrastinating from hour to
hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were
walking along the road full of ruts; they were about
to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself as
far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when
past it—
"Monsieur Rouault,"
he murmured, "I should like to say something to
you."
They stopped.
Charles was silent.
"Well, tell me your
story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault,
laughing softly.
"Monsieur
Rouault—Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.
"I ask nothing
better", the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt,
the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her
opinion. So you get off—I'll go back home. If it is
'yes', you needn't return because of all the people
about, and besides it would upset her too much. But
so that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open
wide the outer shutter of the window against the
wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over
the hedge."
And he went off.
Charles fastened
his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and
waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted
nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a noise was
heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown
back; the hook was still swinging.
The next day by
nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he
entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep
herself in countenance. Old Rouault embraced his
future son-in-law. The discussion of money matters
was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time
before them, as the marriage could not decently take
place till Charles was out of mourning, that is to
say, about the spring of the next year.
The winter passed
waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with
her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and
she made herself chemises and nightcaps after
fashion-plates that she borrowed. When Charles
visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding
were talked over; they wondered in what room they
should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of
dishes that would be wanted, and what should be
entrees.
Emma would, on the
contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding
with torches, but old Rouault could not understand
such an idea. So there was a wedding at which
forty-three persons were present, at which they
remained sixteen hours at table, began again the
next day, and to some extent on the days following.
Chapter Four
The guests arrived
early in carriages, in one-horse chaises,
two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with
leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer
villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows,
holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at
a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance
of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville,
and from Cany.
All the relatives
of both families had been invited, quarrels between
friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost
sight of written to.
From time to time
one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to
the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied
its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing
knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing
bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold
watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into
belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down
behind with a pin, and that left the back of the
neck bare. The lads, dressed like their papas,
seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that
day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by
their sides, speaking never a work, wearing the
white dress of their first communion lengthened for
the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or
sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt,
rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose
pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their
gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to
unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up
their sleeves and set about it themselves. According
to their different social positions they wore
tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets,
cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family
respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe
on state occasions; overcoats with long tails
flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets
like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth,
generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak;
very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in
the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and
the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may
be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore
their best blouses—that is to say, with collars
turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into
small plaits and the waist fastened very low down
with a worked belt.
And the shirts
stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone
had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the
heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who
had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able
to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their
noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along
the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed,
so that the great white beaming faces were mottled
here and there with red dabs.
The mairie was a
mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither
on foot, returning in the same way after the
ceremony in the church. The procession, first united
like one long coloured scarf that undulated across
the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the
green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into
different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler
walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at
its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations,
the friends, all following pell-mell; the children
stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the
bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst
themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a
little on the ground; from time to time she stopped
to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved
hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the
thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited
till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk
hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his
hands up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary
senior. As to Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily
despising all these folk, had come simply in a
frock-coat of military cut with one row of
buttons—he was passing compliments of the bar to a
fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not
know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of
their business or played tricks behind each other's
backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly.
Those who listened could always catch the squeaking
of the fiddler, who went on playing across the
fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he
stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so
that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set
off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck,
the better to mark time for himself. The noise of
the instrument drove away the little birds from
afar.
The table was laid
under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six
chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of
mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig,
flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At the
corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet
bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the
glasses had been filled to the brim with wine
beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that
trembled with the least shake of the table, had
designed on their smooth surface the initials of the
newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A
confectioner of Yvetot had been intrusted with the
tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up on the
place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert
he himself brought in a set dish that evoked loud
cries of wonderment. To begin with, at its base
there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a
temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco
statuettes all round, and in the niches
constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the
second stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded
by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds,
raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on
the upper platform a green field with rocks set in
lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid
balancing himself in a chocolate swing whose two
uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.
Until night they
ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting,
they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a
game with corks in the granary, and then returned to
table. Some towards the finish went to sleep and
snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then
they began songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy
weights, performed feats with their fingers, then
tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad
jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left,
the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with oats,
could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked,
reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or
swore; and all night in the light of the moon along
country roads there were runaway carts at full
gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over yard
after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with
women leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of the
reins.
Those who stayed at
the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.
The children had fallen asleep under the seats.
The bride had
begged her father to be spared the usual marriage
pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their
cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles for
his wedding present), began to squirt water from his
mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up
just in time to stop him, and explain to him that
the distinguished position of his son-in-law would
not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the same
did not give in to these reasons readily. In his
heart he accused old Rouault of being proud, and he
joined four or five other guests in a corner, who
having, through mere chance, been several times
running served with the worst helps of meat, also
were of opinion they had been badly used, and were
whispering about their host, and with covered hints
hoping he would ruin himself.
Madame Bovary,
senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had
been consulted neither as to the dress of her
daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the
feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead
of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some
cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking
kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This
added greatly to the consideration in which he was
held.
Charles, who was
not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the
wedding. He answered feebly to the puns, doubles
entendres*, compliments, and chaff that it was felt
a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup
appeared.
*Double meanings.
The next day, on
the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who
might rather have been taken for the virgin of the
evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign that
revealed anything. The shrewdest did not know what
to make of it, and they looked at her when she
passed near them with an unbounded concentration of
mind. But Charles concealed nothing. He called her
"my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of everyone,
looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her
into the yards, where he could be seen from far
between the trees, putting his arm around her waist,
and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the
chemisette of her bodice with his head.
*Used the familiar form of address.
Two days after the
wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account
of his patients, could not be away longer. Old
Rouault had them driven back in his cart, and
himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here
he embraced his daughter for the last time, got
down, and went his way. When he had gone about a
hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart
disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he
gave a deep sigh. Then he remembered his wedding,
the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he,
too, had been very happy the day when he had taken
her from her father to his home, and had carried her
off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it
was near Christmas-time, and the country was all
white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging
from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her
Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes flapped
across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw
near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face,
smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. To
warm her hands she put them from time to time in his
breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw
nothing on the road. He felt dreary as an empty
house; and tender memories mingling with the sad
thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the
feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn
towards the church. As he was afraid, however, that
this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
right away home.
Monsieur and Madame
Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock.
The neighbors came
to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.
The old servant
presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for
not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame,
in the meantime, should look over her house.
Chapter Five
The brick front was
just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a
bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor,
in a corner, were a pair of leggings, still covered
with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment,
that was both dining and sitting room. A canary
yellow paper, relieved at the top by a garland of
pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly
stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red
border hung crossways at the length of the window;
and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with a head of
Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate
candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of
the passage was Charles's consulting room, a little
room about six paces wide, with a table, three
chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the
"Dictionary of Medical Science," uncut, but the
binding rather the worse for the successive sales
through which they had gone, occupied almost along
the six shelves of a deal bookcase.
The smell of melted
butter penetrated through the walls when he saw
patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the
people coughing in the consulting room and
recounting their histories.
Then, opening on
the yard, where the stable was, came a large
dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a
wood-house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish,
of empty casks, agricultural implements past
service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was
impossible to guess.
The garden, longer
than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered
apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from
the field. In the middle was a slate sundial on a
brick pedestal; four flower beds with eglantines
surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen
garden bed. Right at the bottom, under the spruce
bushes, was a cure in plaster reading his breviary.
Emma went upstairs.
The first room was not furnished, but in the second,
which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in
an alcove with red drapery. A shell box adorned the
chest of drawers, and on the secretary near the
window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white
satin ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's
bouquet; it was the other one's. She looked at it.
Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it up to
the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they
were putting her things down around her) thought of
her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox, and
wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if
she were to die.
During the first
days she occupied herself in thinking about changes
in the house. She took the shades off the
candlesticks, had new wallpaper put up, the
staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden
round the sundial; she even inquired how she could
get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. Finally
her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new
lamps and splashboard in striped leather, looked
almost like a tilbury.
He was happy then,
and without a care in the world. A meal together, a
walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of
her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat
hanging from the window-fastener, and many another
thing in which Charles had never dreamed of
pleasure, now made up the endless round of his
happiness. In bed, in the morning, by her side, on
the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the
down on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets
of her night-cap. Seen thus closely, her eyes looked
to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up, she
opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in
the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as
it were, depths of different colours, that, darker
in the centre, grew paler towards the surface of the
eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths;
he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders,
with his handkerchief round his head and the top of
his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window to
see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between
two pots of geranium, clad in her dressing gown
hanging loosely about her. Charles, in the street
buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone,
while she talked to him from above, picking with her
mouth some scrap of flower or leaf that she blew out
at him. Then this, eddying, floating, described
semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught
before it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane
of the old white mare standing motionless at the
door. Charles from horseback threw her a kiss; she
answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set
off. And then along the highroad, spreading out its
long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the
trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where the
corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back
and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full
of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his
flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,
like those who after dinner taste again the truffles
which they are digesting.
Until now what good
had he had of his life? His time at school, when he
remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in
the midst of companions richer than he or cleverer
at their work, who laughed at his accent, who jeered
at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied
medicine, and never had his purse full enough to
treat some little work-girl who would have become
his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen
months with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold
as icicles. But now he had for life this beautiful
woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not
extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat,
and he reproached himself with not loving her. He
wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly, ran
up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her
room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her
back; she gave a cry.
He could not keep
from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her
fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses
with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little
kisses in a row all along her bare arm from the tip
of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him
away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who
hangs about you.
Before marriage she
thought herself in love; but the happiness that
should have followed this love not having come, she
must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma
tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by
the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had
seemed to her so beautiful in books.
Chapter Six
She had read "Paul
and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little
bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele,
but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear
little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees
taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the
sand, bringing you a bird's nest.
When she was
thirteen, her father himself took her to town to
place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in
the St. Gervais quarter, where, at their supper,
they used painted plates that set forth the story of
Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory
legends, chipped here and there by the scratching of
knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of
the heart, and the pomps of court.
Far from being
bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in
the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her,
took her to the chapel, which one entered from the
refectory by a long corridor. She played very little
during recreation hours, knew her catechism well,
and it was she who always answered Monsieur le
Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without
every leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms,
and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries
with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the
mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar,
the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of
the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked
at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in
her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus
sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by
way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day.
She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.
When she went to
confession, she invented little sins in order that
she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow,
her hands joined, her face against the grating
beneath the whispering of the priest. The
comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover,
and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred
within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness.
In the evening,
before prayers, there was some religious reading in
the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of
sacred history or the Lectures of the Abbe
Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the "Genie
du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened
at first to the sonorous lamentations of its
romantic melancholies reechoing through the world
and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might
perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical
invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only
through translation in books. But she knew the
country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the
milking, the ploughs.
Accustomed to calm
aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to
those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the
sake of its storms, and the green fields only when
broken up by ruins.
She wanted to get
some personal profit out of things, and she rejected
as useless all that did not contribute to the
immediate desires of her heart, being of a
temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking
for emotions, not landscapes.
At the convent
there was an old maid who came for a week each month
to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because
she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined
by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the
table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a
bit of chat with them before going back to her work.
The girls often slipped out from the study to go and
see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the
last century, and sang them in a low voice as she
stitched away.
She told stories,
gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the
sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always
carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which
the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the
intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely
pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses
ridden to death on every page, sombre forests,
heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little
skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves,
"gentlemen" brave as lions, gentle as lambs,
virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed,
and weeping like fountains. For six months, then,
Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty
with books from old lending libraries.
Through Walter
Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical
events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and
minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old
manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines
who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their
days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a
cavalier with white plume galloping on his black
horse from the distant fields. At this time she had
a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration
for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc,
Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and
Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the
dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost
in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his
oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a
little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the
Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates
painted in honour of Louis XIV.
In the music class,
in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes,
gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to
catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and
the weakness of the music of the attractive
phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her
companions brought "keepsakes" given them as new
year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the
dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin
bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at the names
of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses
for the most part as counts or viscounts.
She trembled as she
blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
saw it folded in two and fall gently against the
page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a
young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a
young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at
her belt; or there were nameless portraits of
English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you
from under their round straw hats with their large
clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their
carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound
bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a
trot by two midget postilions in white breeches.
Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed
at the moon through a slightly open window half
draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on
their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of
a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side,
were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their
taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long
pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of
Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and
you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic
lands, that often show us at once palm trees and
firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left,
Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by
a very neat virgin forest, and with a great
perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where,
standing out in relief like white excoriations on a
steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
And the shade of
the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's
head lighted up all these pictures of the world,
that passed before her one by one in the silence of
the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some
belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.
When her mother
died she cried much the first few days. She had a
funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased,
and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad
reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on
in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be
ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased
that she had reached at a first attempt the rare
ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine
meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the
songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves,
the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice
of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She
wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from
habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself
soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than
wrinkles on her brow.
The good nuns, who
had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed
to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so
lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and
sermons, they had so often preached the respect due
to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice
as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of
her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she
pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth.
This nature, positive in the midst of its
enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake
of the flowers, and music for the words of the
songs, and literature for its passional stimulus,
rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew
irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her
constitution. When her father took her from school,
no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior
even thought that she had latterly been somewhat
irreverent to the community.
Emma, at home once
more, first took pleasure in looking after the
servants, then grew disgusted with the country and
missed her convent. When Charles came to the Bertaux
for the first time, she thought herself quite
disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and
nothing more to feel.
But the uneasiness
of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to
make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous
passion which, till then, like a great bird with
rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the
skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the
calm in which she lived was the happiness she had
dreamed.
Chapter Seven
She thought,
sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest
time of her life—the honeymoon, as people called it.
To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have
been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with
sonorous names where the days after marriage are
full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind
blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road,
listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by
the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the
muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the
shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon
trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces
above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making
plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain
places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant
peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive
elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in
Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a
Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black
velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a
pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked
to confide all these things to someone. But how tell
an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds,
unstable as the winds? Words failed her—the
opportunity, the courage.
If Charles had but
wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but
once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden
plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the
fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. But
as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the
greater became the gulf that separated her from him.
Charles's
conversation was commonplace as a street pavement,
and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their
everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter,
or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said,
while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see
the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor
fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain
some term of horsemanship to her that she had come
across in a novel.
A man, on the
contrary, should he not know everything, excel in
manifold activities, initiate you into the energies
of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries?
But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished
nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this
easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness
she gave him.
Sometimes she would
draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand
there bolt upright and watch her bend over her
cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see
her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little
bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her
fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She
struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to
bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could
be heard at the other end of the village when the
window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk,
passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list
slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in
his hand.
Emma, on the other
hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the
patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had
no suggestion of a bill. When they had a neighbour
to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty
dish—piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves,
served up preserves turned out into plates—and even
spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. From all
this much consideration was extended to Bovary.
Charles finished by
rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.
He showed with pride in the sitting room two small
pencil sketched by her that he had had framed in
very large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper
by long green cords. People returning from mass saw
him at his door in his wool-work slippers.
He came home
late—at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he
asked for something to eat, and as the servant had
gone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took off his
coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one
after the other, the people he had met, the villages
where he had been, the prescriptions he had written,
and, well pleased with himself, he finished the
remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked
pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his
water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his
back and snored.
As he had been for
a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his
handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so
that his hair in the morning was all tumbled
pell-mell about his face and whitened with the
feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied
during the night. He always wore thick boots that
had two long creases over the instep running
obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the
upper continued in a straight line as if stretched
on a wooden foot. He said that "was quite good
enough for the country."
His mother approved
of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
when there had been some violent row at her place;
and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed prejudiced
against her daughter-in-law. She thought "her ways
too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar,
and the candles disappeared as "at a grand
establishment," and the amount of firing in the
kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five
courses. She put her linen in order for her in the
presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the
butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with
these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and
the words "daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all
day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the
lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice
trembling with anger.
In Madame Dubuc's
time the old woman felt that she was still the
favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma
seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an
encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her
son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man
looks through the windows at people dining in his
old house. She recalled to him as remembrances her
troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these
with Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that
it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively.
Charles knew not
what to answer: he respected his mother, and he
loved his wife infinitely; he considered the
judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought
the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam
Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same
terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne
observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma
proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and
sent him off to his patients.
And yet, in accord
with theories she believed right, she wanted to make
herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden
she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by
heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy
adagios; but she found herself as calm after as
before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no
more moved.
When she had thus
for a while struck the flint on her heart without
getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of
understanding what she did not experience as of
believing anything that did not present itself in
conventional forms, she persuaded herself without
difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very
exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he
embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one
habit among other habits, and, like a dessert,
looked forward to after the monotony of dinner.
A gamekeeper, cured
by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had
given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took
her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order
to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her
eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went
as far as the beeches of Banneville, near the
deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall
on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of
the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut
you.
She began by
looking round her to see if nothing had changed
since last she had been there. She found again in
the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the
beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and
the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose
shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their
rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first,
wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran
round and round in the fields, yelping after the
yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or
nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.
Then gradually her
ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass
that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade,
Emma repeated to herself, "Good heavens! Why did I
marry?"
She asked herself
if by some other chance combination it would have
not been possible to meet another man; and she tried
to imagine what would have been these unrealised
events, this different life, this unknown husband.
All, surely, could not be like this one. He might
have been handsome, witty, distinguished,
attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of
the convent had married. What were they doing now?
In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of
the theatres and the lights of the ballroom, they
were living lives where the heart expands, the
senses bourgeon out. But she—her life was cold as a
garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and
ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the
darkness in every corner of her heart.
She recalled the
prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive
her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In
her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a
pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the
gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the
courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were
called to her through their windows; the music
master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How
far all of this! How far away! She called Djali,
took her between her knees, and smoothed the long
delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you
have no troubles."
Then noting the
melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned
slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself,
spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom
one is consoling.
Occasionally there
came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in
one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux
country, which brought even to these fields a salt
freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling,
while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a
deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl round her shoulders
and rose.
In the avenue a
green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short
moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun
was setting; the sky showed red between the
branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and
planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade
standing out against a background of gold. A fear
took hold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly
returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself
into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening
did not speak.
But towards the end
of September something extraordinary fell upon her
life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
to Vaubyessard.
Secretary of State
under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to
re-enter political life, set about preparing for his
candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long
beforehand. In the winter he distributed a great
deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always
enthusiastically demanded new roads for his
arrondissement. During the dog-days he had suffered
from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by
miracle by giving a timely little touch with the
lancet. The steward sent to Tostes to pay for the
operation reported in the evening that he had seen
some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden.
Now cherry trees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the
Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it his
business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought
she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow
like a peasant; so that he did not think he was
going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on
the other hand, making a mistake, in inviting the
young couple.
On Wednesday at
three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in
their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a
great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in
front of the apron. Besides these Charles held a
bandbox between his knees.
They arrived at
nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being
lit to show the way for the carriages.
Chapter Eight
The chateau, a
modern building in Italian style, with two
projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at
the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some
cows were grazing among groups of large trees set
out at regular intervals, while large beds of
arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses
bulged out their irregular clusters of green along
the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a
bridge; through the mist one could distinguish
buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the
field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered
hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose
in two parallel lines the coach houses and stables,
all that was left of the ruined old chateau.
Charles's dog-cart
pulled up before the middle flight of steps;
servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and,
offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her
to the vestibule.
It was paved with
marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of
footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as
in a church.
Opposite rose a
straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
overlooking the garden led to the billiard room,
through whose door one could hear the click of the
ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing
room, Emma saw standing round the table men with
grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats.
They all wore orders, and smiled silently as they
made their strokes.
On the dark
wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at
the bottom names written in black letters. She read:
"Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count
de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at
the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1587."
And on another: "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy
d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France
and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded
at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th
of May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of
January 1693." One could hardly make out those that
followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over
the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room.
Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up
against these in delicate lines where there were
cracks in the varnish, and from all these great
black squares framed in with gold stood out here and
there some lighter portion of the painting—a pale
brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing
over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the
buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf.
The Marquis opened
the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the
Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her
sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to
her as amicably as if she had known her a long time.
She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders,
a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening
she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu
that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman
sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and
gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were
talking to ladies round the fire.
At seven dinner was
served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down
at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at
the second in the dining room with the Marquis and
Marchioness.
Emma, on entering,
felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a
blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine
linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of
the truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the
lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut
crystal covered with light steam reflected from one
to the other pale rays; bouquets were placed in a
row the whole length of the table; and in the
large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after
the fashion of a bishop's mitre, held between its
two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The red
claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit
in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were
quails in their plumage; smoke was rising; and in
silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and
frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge,
offering ready carved dishes between the shoulders
of the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave you
the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain
inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman,
draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room
full of life.
Madame Bovary
noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in
their glasses.
But at the upper
end of the table, alone amongst all these women,
bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round
his neck like a child, an old man sat eating,
letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes
were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with
black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law,
the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favourite
of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil
hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had
been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie
Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur
de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch,
full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered
his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant
behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the
dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly
Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man
with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He
had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!
Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all
over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never
seen pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The
powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer
than elsewhere.
The ladies
afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the
ball.
Emma made her
toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her
debut. She did her hair according to the directions
of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress
spread out upon the bed.
Charles's trousers
were tight across the belly.
"My trouser-straps
will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.
"Dancing?" repeated
Emma.
"Yes!"
"Why, you must be
mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.
Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she
added.
Charles was silent.
He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish
dressing.
He saw her from
behind in the glass between two lights. Her black
eyes seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating
towards the ears, shone with a blue lustre; a rose
in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with
artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She
wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three
bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green.
Charles came and
kissed her on her shoulder.
"Let me alone!" she
said; "you are tumbling me."
One could hear the
flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
went downstairs restraining herself from running.
Dancing had begun.
Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.
She sat down on a
form near the door.
The quadrille over,
the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
and talking and servants in livery bearing large
trays. Along the line of seated women painted fans
were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling faces,
and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in
partly-closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the
nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. Lace
trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on
bare arms.
The hair,
well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the
nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of
mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of
corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their
places, mothers with forbidding countenances were
wearing red turbans.
Emma's heart beat
rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line
with the dancers, and waited for the first note to
start. But her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying
to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward
with slight movements of the neck. A smile rose to
her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin,
that sometimes played alone while the other
instruments were silent; one could hear the clear
clink of the louis d'or that were being thrown down
upon the card tables in the next room; then all
struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its
sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and
rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes
falling before you met yours again.
A few men (some
fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered
here and there among the dancers or talking at the
doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by
a certain air of breeding, whatever their
differences in age, dress, or face.
Their clothes,
better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy
with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion
of wealth—that clear complexion that is heightened
by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin,
the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered
regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best.
Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their
long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars,
they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with
embroidered initials that gave forth a subtle
perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an
air of youth, while there was something mature in
the faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks
was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through
all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar
brutality, the result of a command of half-easy
things, in which force is exercised and vanity
amused—the management of thoroughbred horses and the
society of loose women.
A few steps from
Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.
They were praising
the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly,
Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of
Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other ear
Emma was listening to a conversation full of words
she did not understand. A circle gathered round a
very young man who the week before had beaten "Miss
Arabella" and "Romolus," and won two thousand louis
jumping a ditch in England. One complained that his
racehorses were growing fat; another of the
printers' errors that had disfigured the name of his
horse.
The atmosphere of
the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.
Guests were
flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a
chair and broke the window-panes. At the crash of
the glass Madame Bovary turned her head and saw in
the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the
window looking in at them. Then the memory of the
Bertaux came back to her. She saw the farm again,
the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the
apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,
skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans
in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present
hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded
away completely, and she almost doubted having lived
it. She was there; beyond the ball was only shadow
overspreading all the rest. She was just eating a
maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a
silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon
between her teeth.
A lady near her
dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.
"Would you be so
good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has
fallen behind the sofa?"
The gentleman
bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma
saw the hand of a young woman throw something white,
folded in a triangle, into his hat. The gentleman,
picking up the fan, offered it to the lady
respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of
the head, and began smelling her bouquet.
After supper, where
were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la
bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la
Trafalgar, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies
that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one after
the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of
the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their
lanterns glimmering through the darkness. The seats
began to empty, some card-players were still left;
the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers
on their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back
propped against a door.
*With almond milk
At three o'clock
the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.
Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers
herself and the Marquis; only the guests staying at
the castle were still there, about a dozen persons.
One of the
waltzers, however, who was familiarly called
Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded
to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame
Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide
her, and that she would get through it very well.
They began slowly,
then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
was turning—the lamps, the furniture, the
wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On
passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
caught against his trousers.
Their legs
commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her
eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They
started again, and with a more rapid movement; the
Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with her to
the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost
fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his
breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he
guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against
the wall and covered her eyes with her hands.
When she opened
them again, in the middle of the drawing room three
waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a
stool.
She chose the
Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.
Everyone looked at
them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid
body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same
pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin
thrown forward. That woman knew how to waltz! They
kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.
Then they talked a
few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or
rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau
retired to bed.
Charles dragged
himself up by the balusters. His "knees were going
up into his body." He had spent five consecutive
hours standing bolt upright at the card tables,
watching them play whist, without understanding
anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of
relief that he pulled off his boots.
Emma threw a shawl
over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant
out.
The night was dark;
some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the
damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of
the ball was still murmuring in her ears. And she
tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the
illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon
have to give up.
Day began to break.
She looked long at the windows of the chateau,
trying to guess which were the rooms of all those
she had noticed the evening before. She would fain
have known their lives, have penetrated, blended
with them. But she was shivering with cold. She
undressed, and cowered down between the sheets
against Charles, who was asleep.
There were a great
many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten
minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished
the doctor.
Next, Mademoiselle
d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a
small basket to take them to the swans on the
ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the
hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with
hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence,
as from over-filled nests of serpents, fell long
green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at
the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses
of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young
woman, took her to see the stables.
Above the
basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names
of the horses in black letters. Each animal in its
stall whisked its tail when anyone went near and
said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness room
shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The
carriage harness was piled up in the middle against
two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the
spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along
the wall.
Charles, meanwhile,
went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The
dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and,
all the parcels being crammed in, the Bovarys paid
their respects to the Marquis and Marchioness and
set out again for Tostes.
Emma watched the
turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme
edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms
wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the
shafts that were too big for him. The loose reins
hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the
box fastened on behind the chaise gave great regular
bumps against it.
They were on the
heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen
with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma
thought she recognized the Viscount, turned back,
and caught on the horizon only the movement of the
heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of
the trot or gallop.
A mile farther on
they had to stop to mend with some string the traces
that had broken.
But Charles, giving
a last look to the harness, saw something on the
ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a
cigar-case with a green silk border and beblazoned
in the centre like the door of a carriage.
"There are even two
cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening
after dinner."
"Why, do you
smoke?" she asked.
"Sometimes, when I
get a chance."
He put his find in
his pocket and whipped up the nag.
When they reached
home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her
temper. Nastasie answered rudely.
"Leave the room!"
said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you
warning."
For dinner there
was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.
Charles, seated
opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.
"How good it is to
be at home again!"
Nastasie could be
heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl.
She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his
widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had
been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in
the place.
"Have you given her
warning for good?" he asked at last.
"Yes. Who is to
prevent me?" she replied.
Then they warmed
themselves in the kitchen while their room was being
made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with
lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at
every puff.
"You'll make
yourself ill," she said scornfully.
He put down his
cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at
the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw
it quickly to the back of the cupboard.
The next day was a
long one. She walked about her little garden, up and
down the same walks, stopping before the beds,
before the espalier, before the plaster curate,
looking with amazement at all these things of
once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off
the ball seemed already! What was it that thus set
so far asunder the morning of the day before
yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to
Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of
those great crevices that a storm will sometimes
make in one night in mountains. Still she was
resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her
beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles
were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing
floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction
against wealth something had come over it that could
not be effaced.
The memory of this
ball, then, became an occupation for Emma.
Whenever the
Wednesday came round she said to herself as she
awoke, "Ah! I was there a week—a fortnight—three
weeks ago."
And little by
little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.
She forgot the tune
of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries
and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped
her, but the regret remained with her.
Chapter Nine
Often when Charles
was out she took from the cupboard, between the
folds of the linen where she had left it, the green
silk cigar case. She looked at it, opened it, and
even smelt the odour of the lining—a mixture of
verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's?
Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had
been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty
little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had
occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the
soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love
had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each
prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a
memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk
were but the continuity of the same silent passion.
And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away
with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon
the wide-mantelled chimneys between flower-vases and
Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at Paris
now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a
vague name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the
mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a
great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even
on the labels of her pomade-pots.
At night, when the
carriers passed under her windows in their carts
singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to
the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as they
gained the country road, was soon deadened by the
soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to
herself.
And she followed
them in thought up and down the hills, traversing
villages, gliding along the highroads by the light
of the stars. At the end of some indefinite distance
there was always a confused spot, into which her
dream died.
She bought a plan
of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map
she walked about the capital. She went up the
boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the
lines of the streets, in front of the white squares
that represented the houses. At last she would close
the lids of her weary eyes, and see in the darkness
the gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of
carriages lowered with much noise before the
peristyles of theatres.
She took in "La
Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des
Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all
the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees,
took interest in the debut of a singer, in the
opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions,
the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the
Bois and the Opera. In Eugene Sue she studied
descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and
George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction
for her own desires. Even at table she had her book
by her, and turned over the pages while Charles ate
and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always
returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary
personages she made comparisons. But the circle of
which he was the centre gradually widened round him,
and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form,
broadened out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.
Paris, more vague
than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an
atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred
amid this tumult were, however, divided into parts,
classed as distinct pictures. Emma perceived only
two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in
themselves represented all humanity. The world of
ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing
rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered
with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were
dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden
beneath smiles. Then came the society of the
duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four
o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore English point
on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated
geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode
horses to death at pleasure parties, spent the
summer season at Baden, and towards the forties
married heiresses. In the private rooms of
restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the
light of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of
men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as
kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy.
This was an existence outside that of all others,
between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms,
having something of the sublime. For the rest of the
world it was lost, with no particular place and as
if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover,
the more her thoughts turned away from them. All her
immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the
middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence,
seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that
had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as
far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and
passions. She confused in her desire the
sensualities of luxury with the delights of the
heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of
sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a
special soil, a particular temperature? Signs by
moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded
hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors
of tenderness could not be separated from the
balconies of great castles full of indolence, from
boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets,
well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias,
nor from the flashing of precious stones and the
shoulder-knots of liveries.
The lad from the
posting house who came to groom the mare every
morning passed through the passage with his heavy
wooden shoes; there were holes in his blouse; his
feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the
groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be
content! His work done, he did not come back again
all day, for Charles on his return put up his horse
himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while
the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw
it as best she could into the manger.
To replace Nastasie
(who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma
took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an
orphan with a sweet face. She forbade her wearing
cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third
person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to
knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch,
and to dress her—wanted to make a lady's-maid of
her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as
not to be sent away; and as madame usually left the
key in the sideboard, Felicite every evening took a
small supply of sugar that she ate alone in her bed
after she had said her prayers.
Sometimes in the
afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.
Madame was in her
room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that
showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a
pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt
was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her
small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of
ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought
herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder,
and envelopes, although she had no one to write to;
she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the
glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between
the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to
travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at
the same time to die and to live in Paris.
Charles in snow and
rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds,
received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his
face, listened to death-rattles, examined basins,
turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every
evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready,
easy-chairs, and a well-dressed woman, charming with
an odour of freshness, though no one could say
whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin
that made odorous her chemise.
She charmed him by
numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce
that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary
name for some very simple dish that the servant had
spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to
the last mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who
wore a bunch of charms on the watch-chains; she
bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece
two large blue glass vases, and some time after an
ivory necessaire with a silver-gilt thimble. The
less Charles understood these refinements the more
they seduced him. They added something to the
pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his
fireside. It was like a golden dust sanding all
along the narrow path of his life.
He was well, looked
well; his reputation was firmly established.
The country-folk
loved him because he was not proud. He petted the
children, never went to the public house, and,
moreover, his morals inspired confidence. He was
specially successful with catarrhs and chest
complaints. Being much afraid of killing his
patients, Charles, in fact only prescribed
sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath,
or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of
surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and
for the taking out of teeth he had the "devil's own
wrist."
Finally, to keep up
with the times, he took in "La Ruche Medicale," a
new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He
read it a little after dinner, but in about five
minutes the warmth of the room added to the effect
of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there,
his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading
like a mane to the foot of the lamp. Emma looked at
him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was
not her husband one of those men of taciturn
passions who work at their books all night, and at
last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism sets
in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting
black coat? She could have wished this name of
Bovary, which was hers, had been illustrious, to see
it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the
newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no
ambition.
An Yvetot doctor
whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat
humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient,
before the assembled relatives. When, in the
evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma
inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was
much touched. He kissed her forehead with a tear in
his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she felt a
wild desire to strike him; she went to open the
window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air
to calm herself.
"What a man! What a
man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips.
Besides, she was
becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older
his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks
of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his
teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a
gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was
getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push
the eyes, always small, up to the temples.
Sometimes Emma
tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his
waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the
dirty gloves he was going to put on; and this was
not, as he fancied, for himself; it was for herself,
by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.
Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read,
such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an
anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had seen in a
feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something,
an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She
confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would
have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the
pendulum of the clock.
At the bottom of
her heart, however, she was waiting for something to
happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned
despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life,
seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the
horizon. She did not know what this chance would be,
what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it
would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a
three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to
the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she
hoped it would come that day; she listened to every
sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did
not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she
longed for the morrow.
Spring came round.
With the first warm weather, when the pear trees
began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.
From the beginning
of July she counted how many weeks there were to
October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis
d'Andervilliers would give another ball at
Vaubyessard. But all September passed without
letters or visits.
After the ennui of
this disappointment her heart once more remained
empty, and then the same series of days recommenced.
So now they would thus follow one another, always
the same, immovable, and bringing nothing. Other
lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some
event. One adventure sometimes brought with it
infinite consequences and the scene changed. But
nothing happened to her; God had willed it so! The
future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end
shut fast.
She gave up music.
What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?
Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short
sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory
keys of an Erard at a concert, feel the murmur of
ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth
while boring herself with practicing. Her drawing
cardboard and her embroidery she left in the
cupboard. What was the good? What was the good?
Sewing irritated her. "I have read everything," she
said to herself. And she sat there making the tongs
red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.
How sad she was on
Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull
attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat
slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the
pale rays of the sun. The wind on the highroad blew
up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled;
and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous
ringing that died away over the fields.
But the people came
out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the
peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed
children skipping along in front of them, all were
going home. And till nightfall, five or six men,
always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of
the large door of the inn.
The winter was
severe. The windows every morning were covered with
rime, and the light shining through them, dim as
through ground-glass, sometimes did not change the
whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp had to be
lighted.
On fine days she
went down into the garden. The dew had left on the
cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads
spreading from one to the other. No birds were to be
heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier
covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick
serpent under the coping of the wall, along which,
on drawing hear, one saw the many-footed woodlice
crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the
curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary
had lost his right foot, and the very plaster,
scaling off with the frost, had left white scabs on
his face.
Then she went up
again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting
with the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh
more heavily than ever. She would have liked to go
down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame
restrained her.
Every day at the
same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap
opened the shutters of his house, and the rural
policeman, wearing his sabre over his blouse, passed
by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by
three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From
time to time the bell of a public house door rang,
and when it was windy one could hear the little
brass basins that served as signs for the
hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. This
shop had as decoration an old engraving of a
fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax
bust of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the
hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his
hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big
town—at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour,
near the theatre—he walked up and down all day from
the mairie to the church, sombre and waiting for
customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she always
saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his
skullcap over his ears and his vest of lasting.
Sometimes in the
afternoon outside the window of her room, the head
of a man appeared, a swarthy head with black
whiskers, smiling slowly, with a broad, gentle smile
that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately
began and on the organ, in a little drawing room,
dancers the size of a finger, women in pink turbans,
Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock coats,
gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned
between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the
bits of looking glass held together at their corners
by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle,
looking to the right and left, and up at the
windows. Now and again, while he shot out a long
squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with
his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps
tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling,
or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box,
droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a
brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in
other places at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms,
danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of
the world that reached even to Emma. Endless
sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian
dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her
thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream to
dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had
caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old
cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ on to his
back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched
him going.
But it was above
all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in
this small room on the ground floor, with its
smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that
sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life
seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the
boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs
of sickliness. Charles was a slow eater; she played
with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused
herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table
cover with the point of her knife.
She now let
everything in her household take care of itself, and
Madame Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of
Lent at Tostes, was much surprised at the change.
She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now
passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton
stockings, and burnt tallow candles. She kept saying
they must be economical since they were not rich,
adding that she was very contented, very happy, that
Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches
that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law. Besides,
Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice;
once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to
maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the
religion of their servants, she had answered with so
angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman
did not interfere again.
Emma was growing
difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for
herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank
only pure milk, the next cups of tea by the dozen.
Often she persisted in not going out, then,
stifling, threw open the windows and put on light
dresses. After she had well scolded her servant she
gave her presents or sent her out to see neighbours,
just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver
in her purse, although she was by no means
tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings
of others, like most country-bred people, who always
retain in their souls something of the horny
hardness of the paternal hands.
Towards the end of
February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself
brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed
three days at Tostes. Charles being with his
patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the
room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves,
cows, poultry, and municipal council, so that when
he left she closed the door on him with a feeling of
satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover
she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or
anybody, and at times she set herself to express
singular opinions, finding fault with that which
others approved, and approving things perverse and
immoral, all of which made her husband open his eyes
widely.
Would this misery
last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet
she was as good as all the women who were living
happily. She had seen duchesses at Vaubyessard with
clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated
the injustice of God. She leant her head against the
walls to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for
masked balls, for violent pleasures, with all the
wildness that she did not know, but that these must
surely yield.
She grew pale and
suffered from palpitations of the heart.
Charles prescribed
valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was
tried only seemed to irritate her the more.
On certain days she
chatted with feverish rapidity, and this
over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of
torpor, in which she remained without speaking,
without moving. What then revived her was pouring a
bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.
As she was
constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied
that her illness was no doubt due to some local
cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think
seriously of setting up elsewhere.
From that moment
she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough,
and completely lost her appetite.
It cost Charles
much to give up Tostes after living there four years
and "when he was beginning to get on there." Yet if
it must be! He took her to Rouen to see his old
master. It was a nervous complaint: change of air
was needed.
After looking about
him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in
the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a
considerable market town called Yonville-l'Abbaye,
whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week
before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to
ask the number of the population, the distance from
the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a
year, and so forth; and the answer being
satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards
the spring, if Emma's health did not improve.
One day when, in
view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,
something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her
wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow
with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons
frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It
flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was,
like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She
watched it burn.
The little
pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold
lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas,
fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the
stove, at least flew up the chimney.
When they left
Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was
pregnant.
