Lovely Grace C.

Castro 10 – Faithful

“Madame Bovary”
By Gustave Flaubert

To Marie-Antoine-Jules Senard
Member of the Paris Bar, Ex-President of the National Assembly,
and Former Minister of the Interior
Dear and Illustrious Friend,
Permit me to inscribe your name at the head of this book, and
above its dedication; for it is to you, before all, that I owe
its publication. Reading over your magnificent defence, my work
has acquired for myself, as it were, an unexpected authority.

Accept, then, here, the homage of my gratitude, which, how great

soever it is, will never attain the height of your eloquence and
your devotion.

Gustave Flaubert
Paris, 12 April 1857

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 Fiddle, 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 ha 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, 1857." 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 theirlives, 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 sum. 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.

Part II

Chapter One

Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which

not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles
from Rouen, between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot
of a valley watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into
the Andelle after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where
there are a few trout that the lads amuse themselves by fishing
for on Sundays.

We leave the highroad at La Boissiere\ and keep straight on to the

top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that
runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with
distinct physiognomies--all on the left is pasture land, all of
the right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills
to join at the back with the pasture land of the Bray country,
while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens
out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The
water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour
of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great
unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe
of silver.

Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the
forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills
scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are
rain tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks
against the grey colour of the mountain are due to the quantity
of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country.

Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the

Ile-de-France, a bastard land whose language is without accent
and its landscape is without character. It is there that they
make the worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and,
on the other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is
needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints.

Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville,

but about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of
Abbeville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the
Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has
remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet." Instead of
improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture lands,
however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough,
growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It
is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking
a siesta by the water-side.

At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway,

planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the
first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the
middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses,
cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with
ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched
roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a
third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots
in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster
wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree
sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small
swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of
bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow
narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a
bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a
broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a
wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that partly
block the way. Then across an open space appears a white house
beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on his
lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps;
scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and
the finest in the place.

*The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of notaries.

The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces

farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery
that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of
graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a
continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out
regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last
years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is beginning to
rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its
blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft
for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under
their wooden shoes.

The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls

obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned
here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in
large letters, "Mr. So-and-so's pew." Farther on, at a spot where
the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a
statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a
tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like
an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a copy of the
"Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,"
overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in
the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left
unpainted.

The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty

posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of
Yonville. The town hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris
architect," is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner next
to the chemist's shop. On the ground-floor are three Ionic
columns and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the
dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one
foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other the scales of
Justice.

But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or
inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening
especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars
that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their
two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is
seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His house
from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in
large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Barege
waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian
racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,
hygienic chocolate," etc. And the signboard, which takes up all
the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais,
Chemist." Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales
fixed to the counter, the word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll
above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats
"Homais" in gold letters on a black ground.
Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the
only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on
either side stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is
left on the right hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills
followed the cemetery is soon reached.

At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of

wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side
purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the
tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the
gate. The keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle
(thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has
taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes
there. From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller,
and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to
rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.

"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curie at last said to

him one day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him
for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of
his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow
naturally.

Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has

changed at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the
top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter
in the wind from the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like
lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol,
and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by
rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane.

On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow

Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she
sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was
market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn,
the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to
see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the
billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers
in a small parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing,
the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid
the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled
with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped.

From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom
the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.
A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers,
and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back
at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction,
and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended
over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.

"Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water
bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what
dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens!
Those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the
billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front
door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. Call
Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Monsieur Homais,
that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk
eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she went
on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.

"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You

would buy another."

"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.

"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell

you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides,
players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't
played now; everything is changed! One must keep pace with the
times! Just look at Tellier!"

The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on--

"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and
if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool
for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floods--"

"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the
landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur
Homais; as long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it.
We've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find the
'Cafe Francais' closed with a big placard on the shutters. Change
my billiard-table!" she went on, speaking to herself, "the table
that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in
the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But that dawdler,
Hivert, doesn't come!"

"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?"

"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock
strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under
the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the
small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so
squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like
Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past,
and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young
man! Never speaks a rough word!"

"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated

man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector."

Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.

He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his

thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the
top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a
bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He
wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and,
all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel
swellings due to the sticking out of his big-toes. Not a hair
stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which,
encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden
border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose
hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing
a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by
turning napkin rings, with which he filled up his house, with the
jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.

He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got
out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the
cloth, Binet remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he
shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way.

"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his
tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the
landlady.

"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in
the cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes
in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood
there like a dab fish and never said a word."

"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing

that makes the society-man."
"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.

"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he, parts! In his own line it

is possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--

"Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult,

a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they
should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such
cases are cited in history. But at least it is because they are
thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often has it
happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label,
and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my ear!"

Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the

"Hirondelle" were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black
suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight
one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic.

"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curie?" asked the landlady,

as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper
candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. "Will you take
something? A thimbleful of Cassis*? A glass of wine?"

*Black currant liqueur.

The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella,
that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and
after asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the
presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the
Angelus was ringing.

When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the
square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very
unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him
the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and
were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.

The landlady took up the defence of her curie.

"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee.
Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried
as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong."

"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to

confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the
Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame
Lefrancois, every month--a good phlebotomy, in the interests of
the police and morals."

"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no

religion."

The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even

have more than all these others with their mummeries and their
juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme
Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has
placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers
of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver
plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings
who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a
wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like
the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin,
of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of
the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I
can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden
with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of
whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three
days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed,
moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way,
that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which
they would fain engulf the people with them."

He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling

over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of
the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was
listening to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise
of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes
that beat against the ground, and at last the "Hirondelle"
stopped at the door.

It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the

tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their
shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their
sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there
patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even storms
of rain had altogether washed away. It was drawn by three horses,
the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted
against the ground.

Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square;

they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for
hampers. Hivert did not know whom to answer. It was he who did
the errands of the place in town. He went to the shops and
brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the
farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the
milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and all along the road
on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw,
standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of his
voice, over the enclosures of the yards.

An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run

across the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour;
Hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting every
moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to go on.

Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused Charles of this
misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper, who happened to be in
the coach with her, had tried to console her by a number of
examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of
long years. One, he said had been told of, who had come back to
Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty
miles in a straight line, and swum four rivers; and his own
father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of
absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as
he was going to dine in town.

Chapter Two

Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a

nurse, and they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he
had slept soundly since night set in.

Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and

his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able
to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air
that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.

When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney.

With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee,
and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in
its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The
flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the
woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her
eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed
over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door.
On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair
watched her silently.

As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at

the notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin, Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was
he who was the second habitue of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put
back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the
inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his
work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to
come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete
with Binet. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the
landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the
newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour where Madame
Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table
laid for four.

Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of

coryza; then, turning to his neighbour--

"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so

abominably in our 'Hirondelle.'"

"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me.
I like change of place."

"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to

the same places."

"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in

the saddle"--

"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary,

"nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he
added.

"Moreover," said the druggist, "the practice of medicine is not

very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our
roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers
are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have, medically
speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis,
bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers
at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature,
nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula,
due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat,
Monsieur Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the
efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for
people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest,
rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. The
climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a
few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I have made
some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade at the
outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or
otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And,
as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the
forest of Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St.
Jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on
account of the aqueous vapours given off by the river and the
considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know,
exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and
oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up
into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those
different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and
combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere,
when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical
countries, engender insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say,
finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or
rather whence it should come--that is to say, the southern side--
by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves
passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like
breezes from Russia."

"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?"

continued Madame Bovary, speaking to the young man.

"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La

Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest.
Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching
the sunset."

"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed;

"but especially by the side of the sea."

"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon.

"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary,

"that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the
contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the
infinite, the ideal?"

"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A

cousin of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me
that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes,
the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers.
One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages
suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below one, whole
valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must stir to
enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer marvel
at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his
imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some
imposing site."

"You play?" she asked.

"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.

"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais,

bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear
fellow, the other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange
Gardien' ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory. You gave
it like an actor."

Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room

on the second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the
compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor,
and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the
principal inhabitants of Yonville. He was telling anecdotes,
giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known
exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a good
deal of show.

Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"

"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream."

"Have you been to the opera?"

"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to

finish reading for the bar."

"As I had the honour of putting it to your husband," said the

chemist, "with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you
will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession
of one of the most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest
convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one
can go in and out unseen. Moreover, it contains everything that
is agreeable in a household--a laundry, kitchen with offices,
sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He was a gay dog, who didn't
care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the side of the
water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of drinking
beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be
able--"

"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has
been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her
room reading."

"Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit
by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind
beats against the window and the lamp is burning?"

"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open
upon him.

"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by.

Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your
thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details,
follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the
characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating
beneath their costumes."

"That is true! That is true?" she said.

"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some
vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back
to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own
slightest sentiment?"

"I have experienced it," she replied.

"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think

verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily
to tears."

"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. Now I, on

the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that
frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate
sentiments, such as there are in nature."

"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the
heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet,
amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in
thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of
happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my
one distraction; but Yonville affords so few resources."

"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always

subscribed to a lending library."

"If madame will do me the honour of making use of it", said the
chemist, who had just caught the last words, "I have at her
disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire,
Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and
in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the 'Fanal
de Rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for
the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and
vicinity."

For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant
Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the
flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and
constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that
it beat against the wall with its hooks.

Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of

the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She
wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a
gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her head the
lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out
from it. Thus side by side, while Charles and the chemist
chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where
the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed
centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of
novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes,
where she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined
all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner.

When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room
in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame
Lefrancois was asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy,
lantern in hand, was waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary
the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped
with his left leg. When he had taken in his other hand the cure's
umbrella, they started.

The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great
shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as
the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they
had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company
dispersed.

As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the
plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were
new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first
floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows.

She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields,
half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along
the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell,
were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with
mattresses on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men
who had brought the furniture had left everything about
carelessly.

This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place.

The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of
her arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was
the fourth. And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration
of a new phase in her life. She did not believe that things could
present themselves in the same way in different places, and since
the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which
remained to be lived would be better.

Chapter Three

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the
Place. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She
nodded quickly and reclosed the window.

Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but
on going to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already
at table. The dinner of the evening before had been a
considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for two
hours consecutively to a "lady." How then had he been able to
explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could
not have said so well before? He was usually shy, and maintained
that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation.

At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to the

arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about
politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some
accomplishments; he painted in water-colours, could read the key
of G, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not
play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him for his education;
Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for he often took
the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were always
dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their
mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin,
the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who
had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at
the same time as a servant.

The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary

information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own
cider merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks
were properly placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about
getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with
Lestiboudois, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and
funeral functions, looked after the principal gardens at Yonville
by the hour or the year, according to the taste of the customers.

The need of looking after others was not the only thing that
urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan
underneath it all.

He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article
I, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise
medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais
had been summoned to Rouen to see the procurer of the king in his
own private room; the magistrate receiving him standing up,
ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in the morning, before
the court opened. In the corridors one heard the heavy boots of
the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks
that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were about
to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons, his
family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he
was obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer
to recover his spirits.

Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and

he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his
back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were
jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur
Bovary by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent
his speaking out later on, should he notice anything. So every
morning Homais brought him "the paper," and often in the
afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the
Doctor.
Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for
hours without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep,
or watched his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed
himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic
with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. But
money matters worried him. He had spent so much for repairs at
Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole
dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two years.

Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their
carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster
cure, who falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had
been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavements of
Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely,
the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confinement
approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of the
flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment
of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk,
and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when
opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she took
tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds;
he got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called
her little mamma, wanted to make her dance, and half-laughing,
half-crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that
came into his head. The idea of having begotten a child delighted
him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human life from end to end,
and he sat down to it with serenity.

Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be

delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not
being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a
swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps,
in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau,
and ordered the whole of it from a village needlewoman, without
choosing or discussing anything. Thus she did not amuse herself
with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers,
and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps, to some
extent attenuated.

As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon

began to think of him more consecutively.

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call
him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an
expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at
least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries,
overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a
woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has
against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her
will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in
every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some
conventionality that restrains.

She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was
rising.

"It is a girl!" said Charles.

She turned her head away and fainted.

Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or,

almost immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist,
as man of discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations
through the half-opened door. He wished to see the child and
thought it well made.

Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking
a name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have
Italian endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked
Galsuinde pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better.

Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma

opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and
then consulted outsiders.

"Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about
it the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very
much in fashion just now."

But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of
a sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all
those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a
generous idea, and it was on this system that he had baptized his
four children. Thus Napoleon represented glory and Franklin
liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but
Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the French
stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with
his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of
sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for
imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he
found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested
the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the
characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. When
he read the fine passages he was transported, but when he thought
that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he
was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in which he
was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with both
his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour.

At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she

had heard the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that
moment this name was chosen; and as old Rouault could not come,
Monsieur Homais was requested to stand godfather. His gifts were
all products from his establishment, to wit: six boxes of
jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marshmallow
paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that he had
come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there
was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much
excitement. Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing
"Le Dieu des bonnes gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and
Madame Bovary, senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time
of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary, senior, insisted on having the
child brought down, and began baptizing it with a glass of
champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery of the first
of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old Bovary
replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux"; the cure
wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they
succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly
went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.

Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the

natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he
wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being
also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often
sent the servant to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was
put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs
he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne.

The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked
about the world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg,
of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand
luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was amiable, and
sometimes even, either on the stairs, or in the garden, would
seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look out for
yourself."

Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's

happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long-run
have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took
care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious
reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was not the man to
respect anything.

One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her
little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife,
and, without looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks
of the Virgin were yet passed, she set out for the Rollets'
house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the
highroad and the fields.

It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the
slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue
sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy
wind was blowing; Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the
pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she would not go home
again, or go in somewhere to rest.

At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighbouring door

with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and
stood in the shade in front of the Lheureux's shop under the
projecting grey awning.

Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she
was beginning to grow tired.

"If--" said Leon, not daring to go on.

"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.

And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That
same evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the
mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that
"Madame Bovary was compromising herself."

To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on

leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow
between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet
hedges. They were in bloom, and so were the speedwells,
eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the
thickets. Through openings in the hedges one could see into the
huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their
horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by side walked
slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which
he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges
fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.

They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it.

Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath
the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots
upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few
square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty
water was running here and there on the grass, and all round were
several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket,
and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the
noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling
on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny
little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen
hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left
in the country.

"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."

The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had
at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without
curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window,
one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the
corner behind the door, shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row
under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of oil with a
feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensberg lay on the dusty
mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou.

Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame" blowing

her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's
prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.

Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the

wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
herself to and fro.

Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see
this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all
this poverty. Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking
perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she
put back the little girl, who had just been sick over her collar.

The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't

show.
"She gives me other doses," she said: "I am always a-washing of
her. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer,
to let me have a little soap, it would really be more convenient
for you, as I needn't trouble you then."

"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet,"
and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.

The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking
all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.

"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm

sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee;
that'd last me a month, and I'd take it of a morning with some
milk."

After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had
gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden
shoes, she turned round. It was the nurse.

"What is it?"

Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree,
began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six
francs a year that the captain--

"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.

"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm
afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know
men--"

"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some.
You bother me!"

"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his

wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that
cider weakens him."

"Do make haste, Mere Rollet!"

"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't

asking too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and
her eyes begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd
rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's
tongue."
Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She
walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight
in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young
man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair
fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his
nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was
one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this
purpose he kept a special knife in his writing desk.

They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season

the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the
garden walls whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed
noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses
huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread
themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes
at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect
with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with a ray the
small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each
other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in the
water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the
dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion
heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the
earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's
dress rustling round her.

The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping

were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had
sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open
sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded
flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging
honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a
moment over the silk.

They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were

expected shortly at the Rouen theatre.

"Are you going?" she asked.

"If I can," he answered.

Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were
full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to
find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over
them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous,
dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder at this
strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the
sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical
shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn
softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication
without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.

In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they
had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud.

She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and
tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form
bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid
of falling into the puddles of water.

When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened

the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.

Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced
at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his
hat and went out.

He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the

beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under
the pines and watched the sky through his fingers.

"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!"

He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with

Homais for a friend and Monsieru Guillaumin for master. The
latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed
spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood
nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff
English manner, which in the beginning had impressed the clerk.

As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy,

gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother,
her cousins, weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in
her household, and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement,
such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such
restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only
twenty, although they slept in rooms next each other and he spoke
to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for
another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the
gown.

And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three
publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor,
with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed
their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot,
and quite unbearable companions.

But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's
stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him
he seemed to see a vague abyss.

In the beginning he had called on her several times along with

the druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to
see him again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear
of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed
almost impossible.

Chapter Four

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the
sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there
was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against
the looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she
could see the villagers pass along the pavement.

Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma
could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and
the young man glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same
way, and without turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her
chin resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had
begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the apparition of
this shadow suddenly gliding past. She would get up and order the
table to be laid.

Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came

in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the
same phrase, "Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken
his seat at the table between the pair, he asked the doctor about
his patients, and the latter consulted his as to the probability
of their payment. Next they talked of "what was in the paper."

Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it

from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and
all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred in
France or abroad. But the subject becoming exhausted, he was not
slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him.
Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame
the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some
advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning.

He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering

manner. Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than
his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of preserves,
vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the latest
inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of
preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.

At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop.

Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite

was there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of
the doctor's house.

"The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the
devil take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!"

But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his
constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one
could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais
had called him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in
the arm-chairs, and dragging down with their backs calico
chair-covers that were too large.

Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his

scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully
alienated various respectable persons from him. The clerk never
failed to be there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet
Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the
shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots
when there was snow.

First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur

Homais played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice.

Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the
teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement
that she made to throw her cards the right side of her dress was
drawn up. From her turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her
back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little
in the shade. Then her dress fell on both sides of her chair,
puffing out full of folds, and reached the ground. When Leon
occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew
back as if he had trodden upon some one.

When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor
played dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on
the table, turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration". She had
brought her ladies' journal with her. Leon sat down near her;
they looked at the engravings together, and waited for one
another at the bottom of the pages. She often begged him to read
her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a languid voice, to which
he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. But the
noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais was strong at
the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six. Then
the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in
front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out
in the cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading.

Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade,

on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and
tight-rope dances with their balancing-poles. Leon stopped,
pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they
talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet
to them because it was unheard.

Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant

commerce of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given
to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it.

On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all

marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an
attention of the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to
doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having
made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Leon bought some for
Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his knees in the
"Hirondelle," pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.

She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to

hold the pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they
saw each other tending their flowers at their windows.

Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often
occupied; for on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning
when the weather was bright, one could see at the dormer-window
of the garret the profile of Monsieur Binet bending over his
lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard at the Lion d'Or.
One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet
and wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais,
Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it
to his chief; every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the
doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked queer. They
decided that she must be his lover.

He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her

charms and of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly
answered him--

"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"

He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration

to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her
and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement
and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters
that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred.

Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this
resolution soon deserted him in Emma's presence, and when
Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go
with him to see some patient in the neighbourhood, he at once
accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not
something belonging to her? As to Emma, she did not ask herself
whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with
great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies, which
falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a
leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know
that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are
choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she
suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.

Chapter Five

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was

falling.

They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur
Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley
a mile and a half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon
and Athalie to give them some exercise, and Justin accompanied
them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder.
Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A
great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of
sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty,
surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of
little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be
seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the
stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears
fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.

Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future

importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the
floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely
not having a yard-stick such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his
own special use.

Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder,
and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist
his pale splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was
drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were
trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very
back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw
written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer.

While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a

sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold
that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his
face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar
of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from
beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the
clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those
mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.

"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.

And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a
heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with
which he was being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while
Justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was
wanted; Charles offered his.

"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like
a peasant."

The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.

In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and

when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison
re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and
with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to
things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was burning,
she still saw, as she had down there, Leon standing up with one
hand behind his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who was
quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she
could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other
attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of
his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
lips as if for a kiss--

"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself;

"but with whom? With me?"

All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The
flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she
turned on her back, stretching out her arms.

Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had out willed
it! And why not? What prevented it?"

When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just

awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a
headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening.

"Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early."

She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled
with a new delight.

The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur

Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this
shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his
southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby,
beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his
white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small
black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar said
some, a banker at Routot according to others. What was certain
was that he made complex calculations in his head that would have
frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always
held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows
or who invites.

After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put
down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to
madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till
that day without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was
not made to attract a "fashionable lady"; he emphasized the
words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to
provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery
or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly
four times a month. He was connected with the best houses. You
could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe d'Or," or
at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as well as
the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show
madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks
to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen
embroidered collars from the box.

Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she

said.

Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian

scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw
slippers, and finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in
open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his
neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he
watched Emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid
these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he
filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full
length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green
twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like
little stars.

"How much are they?"

"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no

hurry; whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews."

She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining

Monsieur Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly--

"Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have

always got on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!"

Emma smiled.

"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his

joke, "that it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I
could give you some, if need be."
She made a gesture of surprise.

"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go

far to find you some, rely on that."

And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the

"Cafe Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.

"What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes

his whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering
rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man!
Those sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's
burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the same, to see an
acquaintance go off."

And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's

patients.

"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the

floor, "that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the
thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor
for a pain I have in my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At
your service; your very humble servant." And he closed the door
gently.

Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the

fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with
her.

"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.

She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and
took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be
hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy.

The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few

minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a
low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory
thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth
with her nail. She did not speak; he was
silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her
speech.

"Poor fellow!" she thought.

"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.

At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these
days, to go to Rouen on some office business.

"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?"

"No," she replied.

"Why?"

"Because--"

And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey
thread.

This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her

fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk
it.

"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.

"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house
to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in
fact, many duties that must be considered first?"

She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected
anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!"

The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his
behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on
his praises, which he said everyone was singing, especially the
chemist.

"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.

"Certainly," replied the clerk.

And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy

appearance generally made them laugh.

"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does

not trouble about her appearance."

Then she relapsed into silence.

It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners,
everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to
church regularly, and looked after her servant with more
severity.

She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite

brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her
limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her
consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her
caresses with lyrical outburst which would have reminded anyone
but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de Paris."

When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the
fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt
buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the
night-caps arranged in piles of the same height. She no longer
grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he
proposed was always done, although she did not understand the
wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when Leon saw
him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his
eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet,
and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his
arm-chair to kiss his forehead: "What madness!" he said to
himself. "And how to reach her!"

And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he

lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he
placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside
those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and
in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him
after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking
wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere
with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose
loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices.

Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her
black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk,
and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through
life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague
impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at
once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself
seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume
of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. The others
even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist said--

"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a

sub-prefecture."

The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness,

the poor her charity.

But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That
dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose
torment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love with
Leon, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease
delight in his image. The sight of his form troubled the
voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at the sound of
his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and
afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment
that ended in sorrow.

Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after
he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about
his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite
a history to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's
wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her
thoughts constantly centered upon this house, like the "Lion
d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white
wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised her love, the
more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she
might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and
she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.

What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense
of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that
the time was past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of
being able to say to herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at
herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little
for the sacrifice she believed she was making.

Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the
melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering,
and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the
more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for
it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open
door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had
missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home.

What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her
anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to
her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point
ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not
for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery,
and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that
bucked her in on all sides.

On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that
resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only
augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other
reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation
between them. Her own gentleness to herself made her rebel
against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies,
marriage tenderness to adulterous desires. She would have liked
Charles to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate
him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at
the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she
had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that
she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.

Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at
once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.

"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become

of me? What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what
solace?"

She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice,

with flowing tears.

"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came
in during these crises.

"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it
would worry him."

"Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere
Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know
at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see
her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to
you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness,
it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the
doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. When she
was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so
that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying
flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her
marriage, it went off, they say."
"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it
began."

Chapter Six

One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had
been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she
suddenly heard the Angelus ringing.

It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom,

and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the
gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer
fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond, the river
seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering
curves. The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars,
touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more
transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In
the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their
lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the
air, kept up its peaceful lamentation.

With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost
themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She
remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full
of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small
columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long
line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stuff black
hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass
on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the
Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was
moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of
a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she
went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so
that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.

On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order
not to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his
work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to
suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little
earlier warned the lads of catechism hour.

Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones
of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs,
kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the
little enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only green
spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine
powder, despite the vestry-broom.

The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an

enclosure made for them. The shouts of their voices could be
heard through the humming of the bell. This grew less and less
with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of
the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows flitted to
and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their
wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles
of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was burning, the
wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a
distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long
ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the
lower sides and the corners.

"Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who
was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for
it.

"He is just coming," he answered.

And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien

appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.

"These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!"

Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with

is foot, "They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight
of Madame Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognise
you."

He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short,

balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.

The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled
the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at
the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest
the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they
were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red
chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared
beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. He had just dined
and was breathing noisily.

"How are you?" he added.

"Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill."

"Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days
weaken one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are
born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary
think of it?"

"He!" she said with a gesture of contempt.

"What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, doesn't he

prescribe something for you?"

"Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need."

But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the
kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over
like packs of cards.

"I should like to know--" she went on.

"You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice;

"I'll warm your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma, "He's
Boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let him
do just as he pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he would,
for he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call him
Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I even
say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The other day I
repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he
condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"

She seemed not to hear him. And he went on--

"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the

busiest people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he
added with a thick laugh, "and I of the soul."

She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said,
"you solace all sorrows."

"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to

go to Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was
under a spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon
me! Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?"

And with a bound he ran into the church.

The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing
over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on
tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional. But the
priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing
them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the
ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the
choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there.

"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large

cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his
teeth, "farmers are much to be pitied."

"Others, too," she replied.

"Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example."

"It is not they--"

"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous

women, I assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread."

"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched
as she spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have
no--"

"Fire in the winter," said the priest.

"Oh, what does that matter?"

"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has

firing and food--for, after all--"

"My God! my God!" she sighed.

"It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary;

drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of
fresh water with a little moist sugar."

"Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream.

"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I
thought you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were
asking me something? What was it? I really don't remember."

"I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma.

And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in
the cassock. They looked at one another face to face without
speaking.

"Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty

first, you know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The
first communion will soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be
behind after all. So after Ascension Day I keep them recta* an
extra hour every Wednesday. Poor children! One cannot lead them
too soon into the path of the Lord, as, moreover, he has himself
recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine Son. Good health
to you, madame; my respects to your husband."

*On the straight and narrow path.

And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he

reached the door.

Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking
with a heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and
with his two hands half-open behind him.

Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a
pivot, and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the
clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on
behind her.

"Are you a Christian?"

"Yes, I am a Christian."

"What is a Christian?"

"He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--"

She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the

banisters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an
arm-chair.

The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations.

The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile,

and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The
fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely
marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was
such tumult. But little Berthe was there, between the window and
the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and trying to
come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her
apron-strings.

"Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her
hand.

The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and
leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue
eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips
on to the silk apron.

"Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably.

Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.

"Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow.

Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle,
cutting her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame
Bovary sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the
servant with all her might, and she was just going to curse
herself when Charles appeared. It was the dinner-hour; he had
come home.

"Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell
down while she was playing, and has hurt herself."

Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he
went for some sticking plaster.

Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she

wished to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her
sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she
seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been so
worried just now at so little. Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed.

Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big

tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose
lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on
her cheek drew the skin obliquely.

"It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!"

When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop,
whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the
sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle.

"I assure you it's nothing." he said, kissing her on the

forehead. "Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself
ill."

He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not

seemed much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to
buoy him up, to "keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of
the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness
of servants. Madame Homais knew something of it, having still
upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of soup that a cook
had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her good parents took
no end of trouble for her. The knives were not sharpened, nor the
floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows and strong
bars across the fireplace; the little Homais, in spite of their
spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the
slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and
until they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear
wadded head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame
Homais'; her husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the
possible consequences of such compression to the intellectual
organs. He even went so far as to say to her, "Do you want to
make Caribs or Botocudos of them?"

Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the

conversation. "I should like to speak to you," he had whispered
in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him.

"Can he suspect anything?" Leon asked himself. His heart beat,

and he racked his brain with surmises.

At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself
what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes. It was
a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate
attention--his portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to
know "how much it would be." The inquiries would not put Monsieur
Leon out, since he went to town almost every week.

Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the

bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was after no
love-making. He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw
from the amount of food he left on his plate. To find out more
about it she questioned the tax-collector. Binet answered roughly
that he "wasn't paid by the police."
All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon
often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his
arms. Complained vaguely of life.

"It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the

collector.

"What recreation?"

"If I were you I'd have a lathe."

"But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk.

"Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air
of mingled contempt and satisfaction.

Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was

beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the
same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains
it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the
sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond
endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was
becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new
condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him.

This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris

from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of
grisettes. As he was to finish reading there, why not set out at
once? What prevented him? And he began making home-preparations;
he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head
an apartment. He would lead an artist's life there! He would take
lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque
cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring two
crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's head on the
guitar above them.

The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however,

seemed more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to
some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a
middle course, then, Leon looked for some place as second clerk
at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter
full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to
live at Paris immediately. She consented.

He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes,
valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to
Yonville; and when Leon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three
arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had
made more preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put
it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from
his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his
examination before the vacation.

When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept,
Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion;
he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the
gate of the notary, who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage.

The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary.

When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out

of breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary arose hurriedly.

"It is I again!" said Leon.

"I was sure of it!"

She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made
her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She
remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the
wainscot.

"The doctor is not here?" he went on.

"He is out." She repeated, "He is out."

Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their
thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like
two throbbing breasts.

"I should like to kiss Berthe," said Leon.

Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite.

He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the
decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry
away everything. But she returned, and the servant brought
Berthe, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of
a string. Leon kissed her several times on the neck.

"Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!" And

he gave her back to her mother.

"Take her away," she said.

They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face

pressed against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand,
knocking it softly against his thigh.

"It is going to rain," said Emma.

"I have a cloak," he answered.

"Ah!"

She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward.

The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the

eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what Emma was seeing
on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself.

"Well, good-bye," he sighed.

She raised her head with a quick movement.

"Yes, good-bye--go!"

They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she
hesitated.

"In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand
wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.

Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his
being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened
his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared.

When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a

pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the
four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window
in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no
one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that
spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and
motionless as a plaster wall. Leon set off running.

From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man
in a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur
Guillaumin were talking. They were waiting for him.

"Embrace me," said the druggist with tears in his eyes. "Here is
your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself;
look after yourself."

"Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary.

Homais bend over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs

uttered these three sad words--

"A pleasant journey!"

"Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head." They

set out, and Homais went back.

Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and
watched the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side
of Rouen and then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind
which the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows
of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was
white as porcelain. But a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and
suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves.

Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their
wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel
as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia.

"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.

Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.

"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!"

"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair;

"Any news at home?"

"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon.

You know women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we
should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous
organization is much more malleable than ours."

"Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he

get used to it?"

Madame Bovary sighed.

"Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at
restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be
jolly enough, I assure you."

"I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary.

"Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to

do like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't
know what a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with
actresses. Besides, students are thought a great deal of in
Paris. Provided they have a few accomplishments, they are
received in the best society; there are even ladies of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which
subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good
matches."

"But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--"

"You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of

the medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in
one's pocket there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public
garden. An individual presents himself, well dressed, even
wearing an order, and whom one would take for a diplomatist. He
approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of
snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more intimate; he
takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house, introduces
you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and
three-fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead
you into some pernicious step.

"That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of

illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students
from the provinces."

Emma shuddered.

"Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and

of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system.
And then the water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at
restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and
are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good soup. For
my own part, I have always preferred plain living; it is more
healthy. So when I was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a
boarding house; I dined with the professors."
And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his
personal likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg
that was wanted.

"Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out

for a minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling
and toiling. What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By
the way, do you know the news?"

"What news?"

"That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows

and assuming one of his most serious expression, "that the
agricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this
year at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going
the round. This morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of
the utmost importance for our district. But we'll talk it over
later on. I can see, thank you; Justin has the lantern."

Chapter Seven

The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Everything seemed to her
enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the
exterior of things, and sorrow was engulfed within her soul with
soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It
was that reverie which we give to things that will not return,
the lassitude that seizes you after everything was done; that
pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement,
the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on.

As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were

running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a
numb despair. Leon reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming,
more vague. Though separated from her, he had not left her; he
was there, and the walls of the house seemed to hold his shadow.

She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had
walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. The river still
flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery banks.

They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves over the
moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been! What happy
afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the
garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry
sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of
the book and the nasturtiums of the arbour. Ah! he was gone, the
only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy. Why had
she not seized this happiness when it came to her? Why not have
kept hold of it with both hands, with both knees, when it was
about to flee from her? And she cursed herself for not having
loved Leon. She thirsted for his lips. The wish took possession
of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his arms
and say to him, "It is I; I am yours." But Emma recoiled
beforehand at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her
desires, increased by regret, became only the more acute.

Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her boredom; it

burnt there more brightly than the fire travellers have left on
the snow of a Russian steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed
against him, she stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all
around her anything that could revive it; and the most distant
reminiscences, like the most immediate occasions, what she
experienced as well as what she imagined, her voluptuous desires
that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness that crackled in
the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost hopes,
the domestic tete-a-tete--she gathered it all up, took
everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy.

The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had

exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up too much. Love,
little by little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath
habit; and this incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky
was overspread and faded by degrees. In the supineness of her
conscience she even took her repugnance towards her husband for
aspirations towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth
of tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion
burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help came, no sun
rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the
terrible cold that pierced her.

Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now
far more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the
certainty that it would not end.

A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow
herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-dieu, and in a
month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails;
she wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of
Lheureux's finest scarves, and wore it knotted around her waist
over her dressing-gown; and, with closed blinds and a book in her
hand, she lay stretched out on a couch in this garb.

She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la Chinoise,
in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in on one side and
rolled it under like a man's.

She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar,

and a supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history,
and philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke up with a
start, thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming,"
he stammered; and it was the noise of a match Emma had struck to
relight the lamp. But her reading fared like her piece of
embroidery, all of which, only just begun, filled her cupboard;
she took it up, left it, passed on to other books.

She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to
commit any folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her
husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy, and,
as Charles was stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed the
brandy to the last drop.

In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville

called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually
she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction
that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose
ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the
skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at
you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples,
she talked much of her old age.

She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Charles
fussed around her showing his anxiety--

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

Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the
table, sitting in an arm-chair at his bureau under the
phrenological head.

Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they had
many long consultations together on the subject of Emma.

What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected
all medical treatment? "Do you know what your wife wants?"
replied Madame Bovary senior.
"She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work.
If she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she
wouldn't have these vapours, that come to her from a lot of ideas
she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in which she
lives."

"Yet she is always busy," said Charles.

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

against religion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches
taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor
child. Anyone who has no religion always ends by turning out
badly."

So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. The enterprise did

not seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she
passed through Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and
represent that Emma had discontinued her subscription. Would they
not have a right to apply to the police if the librarian
persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? The farewells of
mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three weeks that
they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words
apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and
in the evening before going to bed.

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

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

which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the
line of houses from the church to the inn. On the other side
there were canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and
woollen stockings were sold, together with harness for horses,
and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind. The
coarse hardware was spread out on the ground between pyramids of
eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw stuck out.

Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks through

the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place
and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the
shop front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never
empty, and the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for
consultations. So great was Homais' reputation in the
neighbouring villages. His robust aplomb had fascinated the
rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than all the
doctors.
Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The
window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade,
she was amusing herself with watching the crowd of boors when she
saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves,
although he wore heavy gaiters; he was coming towards the
doctor's house, followed by a peasant walking with a bent head
and quite a thoughtful air.

"Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on the
doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a servant of the
house--"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette
is here."

It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of
La Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known.

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

just bought the chateau and two farms that he cultivated himself,
without, however, troubling very much about them. He lived as a
bachelor, and was supposed to have "at least fifteen thousand
francs a year."

Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his

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

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

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

it. Then addressing the peasant, who was already pale--

"Don't be afraid, my lad."

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

And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the
prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the
looking-glass.

"Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles.

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

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

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

and then syncope sets in, and more especially with people of
strong constitution like this man."

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

between his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the
chair-back creak. His hat fell off.

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

vein.

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

shook, he turned pale.

"Emma! Emma!" called Charles.

With one bound she came down the staircase.

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

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

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

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

Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of his
shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving
her light fingers about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured
some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his
temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly. The
ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope still lasted, and his
eyeballs disappeared in the pale sclerotics like blue flowers in
milk.

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

Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the
movement she made in bending down, her dress (it was a summer
dress with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in
the skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the room; and as
Emma stooping, staggered a little as she stretched out her arms.

The stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust.

Then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting
some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. The servant had
been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing his pupil's eyes staring
he drew a long breath; then going around him he looked at him
from head to foot.

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

phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't
afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs
to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk
to me, boast about yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising
pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may be
called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds of
the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then, to
reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile."

Justin did not answer. The chemist went on--

"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doctor and
madame. On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to
me. There are now twenty people in the shop. I left everything
because of the interest I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp!
Wait for me, and keep an eye on the jars."

When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked
for a little while about fainting-fits. Madame Bovary had never
fainted.

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

some people are very susceptible. Thus in a duel, I have seen a
second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of
pistols."

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

blood doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own
flowing would make me faint if I reflected upon it too much."

Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him

to calm himself, since his fancy was over.

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

added, and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then he put three
francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went
out.

He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back
to La Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under
the poplars, slackening his pace now and then as one who
reflects.
"She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty,
this doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a
figure like a Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from?
Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?"

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

temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had
much to do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed
pretty to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband.

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

dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is
trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks. And
she gets bored! She would like to live in town and dance polkas
every evening. Poor little woman! She is gaping after love like a
carp after water on a kitchen-table. With three words of
gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be tender,
charming. Yes; but how to get rid of her afterwards?"

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

him by contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at
Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this image,
with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated--

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

fresher. Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so
finiky about her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for
prawns."

The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe only heard the
regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with a
cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He
again saw Emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he
undressed her.

"Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick
at a clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the
political part of the enterprise. He asked himself--

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

the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbours, and
husband, all sorts of worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much
time over it."

Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's heart
like a gimlet. And that pale complexion! I adore pale women!"

When he reached the top of the Arguiel hills he had made up his
mind. "It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in
now and then. I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself
bled, if need be. We shall become friends; I'll invite them to my
place. By Jove!" added he, "there's the agricultural show coming
on. She'll be there. I shall see her. We'll begin boldly, for
that's the surest way."

Chapter Eight

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

the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting
over the preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been
hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow
for the banquet; and in the middle of the Place, in front of the
church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the
prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained
prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville)
had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet was captain.
On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and, tightly
buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless
that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have
descended into his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps
with a single movement. As there was some rivalry between the
tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show off their talents,
drilled their men separately. One saw the red epaulettes and the
black breastplates pass and re-pass alternately; there was no end
to it, and it constantly began again. There had never been such a
display of pomp. Several citizens had scoured their houses the
evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from half-open windows;
all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather the
starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured neckerchiefs
seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with the
motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue
smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their
horses, pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their
dresses, turned up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their
part, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs
around them, holding one corner between their teeth.

The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the
village. People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses;
and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors
closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see
the fete. What was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered
with lanterns, that flanked a platform on which the authorities
were to sit. Besides this there were against the four columns of
the town hall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard
of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters.

On one was written, "To Commerce"; on the other, "To

Agriculture"; on the third, "To Industry"; and on the fourth, "To
the Fine Arts."

But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken

that of Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her
kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what
rubbish! With their canvas booth! Do they think the prefect will
be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? They call
all this fussing doing good to the place! Then it wasn't worth
while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a cookshop! And for
whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"

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

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

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

asked where he was going--

"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up
in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese."

"What cheese?" asked the landlady.

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

convey to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home
like a recluse. To-day, however, considering the circumstances,
it is necessary--"

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

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

member of the consulting commission?"

Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by

saying with a smile--
"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter
to you? Do you understand anything about it?"

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

say, a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois,
being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all
natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within
its domain. And, in fact, the composition of the manure, the
fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence
of miasmata, what, I ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry,
pure and simple?"

The landlady did not answer. Homais went on--

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

tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary
rather to know the composition of the substances in question--the
geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the
soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different
bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And one must be master
of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticize
the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet
of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know
botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand,
which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are
unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up
here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in
brief, one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and
public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements."

The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francois" and the
chemist went on--

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

they would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus
lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over
seventy-two pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its
Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Subject,' that
I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and which even
procured me the honour of being received among its
members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological.
Well, if my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist
stopped, Madame Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.

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

cookshop as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that
stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice,
she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs were
heard issuing. "Well, it won't last long," she added. "It'll be
over before a week."

Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and
whispered in his ear--

"What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next

week. It's Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him
with bills."

"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the druggist, who always

found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.

Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard
from Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she
detested Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a
sneak."

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

bowing to Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's
taking Monsieur Boulanger's arm."

"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her
my respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the
enclosure under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame
Lefrancois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it,
the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with
straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left, and taking up
much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered
behind him in the wind.

Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but
Madame Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and,
smiling at her, said in a rough tone--

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

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

her out of the corner of his eyes.

Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It
stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale
ribbons on it like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long
curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open,
they seemed slightly puckered by the cheek-bones, because of the
blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. A pink line ran
along the partition between her nostrils. Her head was bent upon
her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white teeth were seen
between her lips.

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

Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for
Monsieur Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again
as if to enter into the conversation.

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

And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at

the slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg
your pardon!" and raised his hat.

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

road up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path,
drawing with him Madame Bovary. He called out--

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

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

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

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

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

the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A
few daisies had sprung up again.

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

them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place."

He added, "Shall I pick some? What do you think?"

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

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

The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with
their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had
often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk,
servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and
who smelt of milk, when one passed close to them. They walked
along holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over
the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent.

But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the
other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported
on sticks.

The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a
confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were
burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating,
lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their
bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their
heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. Plough-men
with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that
neighed with dilated nostrils looking towards the mares. These
stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing manes,
while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then came
and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded
animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave,
or some sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running
about. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a
large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and
who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags
was holding him by a rope.

Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy
steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a
low voice. One who seemed of more importance now and then took
notes in a book as he walked along. This was the president of the
jury, Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville. As soon as he
recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably,
said--

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

Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the

president had disappeared--

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

*Upon my word!

And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,
showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in
front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire.
He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their
dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that
incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think
they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the
perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a
certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or
exasperates them. Thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was
blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of grey
ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle
nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.

These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled

on horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket
and his straw hat on one side.

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

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

"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these
people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"

Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it

crushed, the illusions lost there.

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

"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very

light-hearted."

"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how
to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a
time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked
myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!"

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

"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he
accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.

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

great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was
so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his
wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was
Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs
about amongst the people. Alive to all that concerned his
interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to
account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which
way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for
these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against
the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain
veneration.

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

speaking to himself--

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

some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone!
Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable,
surmounted everything, overcome everything!"

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

"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.

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

"Do not mock me," he replied.

And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report
of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another
pell-mell towards the village.

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

the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if
they ought to begin the meeting or still wait.

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

drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was
whipping lustily. Binet had only just time to shout, "Present
arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. All ran towards the
enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A few even forgot their
collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the
crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came
up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at
the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,
beating drums and marking time.

"Present!" shouted Binet.

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

And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band,
letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs,
all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the
carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with
bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of
a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes,
very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at
the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and
forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the mayor by
his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to
come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he
added a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with
compliments; the other confessed himself nervous; and they
remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching,
with the members of the jury all round, the municipal council,
the notable personages, the National Guard and the crowd. The
councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast repeated
his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered,
tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy
and the honour that was being done to Yonville.

Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses
from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led
them to the door of the "Lion d'Or", where a number of peasants
collected to look at the carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer
thundered, and the gentlemen one by one mounted the platform,
where they sat down in red utrecht velvet arm-chairs that had
been lent by Madame Tuvache.

All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat
tanned by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their
puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white
cravats with broad bows. All the waist-coats were of velvet,
double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a long
ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone rested his two hands on
his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their trousers,
whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the
leather of their heavy boots.

The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule
between the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing
up or sitting on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had
brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and
he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the
church. He caused such confusion with this piece of business that
one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the
platform.

"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing
to his place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts
with something rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would
have been a very pretty effect."

"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor
took everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor
Tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of what is called
the genius of art."

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

floor of the town hall, to the "council-room," and, as it was
empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more
comfortably. He fetched three stools from the round table under
the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the
windows, they sat down by each other.

There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much

parleying. At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his
name was Lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was passed from one
to the other. After he had collated a few pages, and bent over
them to see better, he began--

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

you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will,
I am sure, be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to
pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government to
the monarch, gentle men, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to
whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of
indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and
wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a
stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as
well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?"

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

"Why?" said Emma.

But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an

extraordinary pitch. He declaimed--
"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord
ensanguined our public places, when the landlord, the
business-man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night,
lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened
suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most
subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."

"Well, someone down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then
I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad
reputation--"

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

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

"But, gentlemen," continued the councillor, "if, banishing from

my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes
back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see
there? Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing;
everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries
in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. Our
great industrial centres have recovered all their activity;
religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts; our ports are
full, confidence is born again, and France breathes once more!"

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

view they are right."

"How so?" she asked.

"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly
tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest
passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling
themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies."

Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has

voyaged over strange lands, and went on--

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

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

"But is it ever found?" she asked.

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

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

"You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a

work that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress
and morality, you have understood, I say, that political storms
are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!"

"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and
when one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as
if a voice cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding
the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing
everything to this being. There is no need for explanations; they
understand one another. They have seen each other in dreams!"

(And he looked at her.) "In fine, here it is, this treasure so

sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one
still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if
one went out iron darkness into light."

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

his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he
let it fall on Emma's. She took hers away.

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

blind, so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the
prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of
agricultural populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more
patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public
welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And, gentlemen, I do not
mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds,
but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies
itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the
good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the
state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty--"

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

word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of
old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone
into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel
what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the
conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon
us."

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

"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one
beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of
enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a
word?"

"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of
the world and accept its moral code."

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

conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that
brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of
the earth earthly, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there.
But the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the
landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us
light."

Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a

pocket-handkerchief. He continued--

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

uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our
means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The
agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the
fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which,
being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious
machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from
there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the
baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again,
is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his
abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe
ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? And,
gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples? Who
has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we
get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards,
that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with
succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should never end
if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different
products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous
mother, lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine,
elsewhere the apple tree for cider, there colza, farther on
cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has
made such great strides of late years, and to which I will more
particularly call your attention."

He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude
were wide open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side
listened to him with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time
to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist,
with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand behind his
ear in order not to lose a syllable. The chins of the other
members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats
in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the platform
rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with
out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he
could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the
visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant,
the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his
was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his
cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled beneath it with a perfectly
infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were
running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness.

The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw
folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing
at doors, and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed
quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. In spite
of the silence Monsieur Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It
reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and
there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly
heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the
lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In fact, the
cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and
these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore
down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.

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

voice, speaking rapidly--

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

single sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the
purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two
poor souls do meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend
together. Yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their
wings; they will call upon each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or
later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will
love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the
other."

His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face
towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed
in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she
even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.
Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had
waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this
air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she
half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making
this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the
distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence,
the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of Leux,
dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow
carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this
route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw
him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds
gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the
waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount,
and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all
the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her
side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old
desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind,
eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which
suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to
drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took
off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with
her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she
heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor
intoning his phrases. He said--"Continue, persevere; listen
neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty
councils of a rash empiricism.

"Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to

good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine,
and porcine races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas,
where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the
vanquished, and will fraternise with him in the hope of better
success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard
labour no Government up to this day has taken into consideration,
come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be
assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it
encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just
demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your
painful sacrifices."

Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up,

beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that
of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct
style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more
elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took
up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. He showed in
it the relations of these two, and how they had always
contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was
talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the
cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men
lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the
skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the
vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery was there not more
of injury than of gain? Monsieur Derozerays set himself this
problem. From magnetism little by little Rodolphe had come to
affinities, and while the president was citing Cincinnatus and
his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the Emperors
of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young
man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible
attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.

"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What
chance willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two
streams that flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had
driven us towards each other."

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

"For good farming generally!" cried the president.

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

"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."

"Did I know I should accompany you?"

"Seventy francs."

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

"Manures!"

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

life!"

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

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

complete a charm."

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

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

"For a merino ram!"

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

"To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."

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

shall I not?"

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

Cullembourg, sixty francs!"

Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and
quivering like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but,
whether she was trying to take it away or whether she was
answering his pressure; she made a movement with her fingers. He
exclaimed--

"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You
understand that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me
contemplate you!"

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

the table, and in the square below all the great caps of the
peasant women were uplifted by it like the wings of white
butterflies fluttering.

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

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

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

supreme desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without
an effort, their fingers intertwined.

"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere,

for fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver
medal--value, twenty-five francs!"

"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councillor.

She did not present herself, and one could hear voices
whispering--
"Go up!"

"Don't be afraid!"

"Oh, how stupid she is!"

"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.

"Yes; here she is."

"Then let her come up!"

Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with
timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On
her feet she wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a
large blue apron. Her pale face framed in a borderless cap was
more wrinkled than a withered russet apple. And from the sleeves
of her red jacket looked out two large hands with knotty joints,
the dust of barns, the potash of washing the grease of wools had
so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that they seemed dirty,
although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by dint of long
service they remained half open, as if to bear humble witness for
themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of monastic
rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion
weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she
had caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time
that she found herself in the midst of so large a company, and
inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in
frock-coats, and the order of the councillor, she stood
motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run away, nor why
the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at her.

Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of

servitude.

"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said

the councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the
president; and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman
by turns, he repeated in a fatherly tone--"Approach! approach!"

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

began shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver
medal! Twenty-five francs! For you!"

Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of
beatitude spread over her face; and as she walked away they could
hear her muttering "I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some
masses for me!"

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

notary.

The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the
speeches had been read, each one fell back into his place again,
and everything into the old grooves; the masters bullied the
servants, and these struck the animals, indolent victors, going
back to the stalls, a green-crown on their horns.

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

the town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the
drummer of the battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame
Bovary took Rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at
her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow while he
waited for the time of the banquet.

The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded
that they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks
used for forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate
hugely. Each one stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood
on every brow, and a whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream
on an autumn morning, floated above the table between the hanging
lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the calico of the tent was
thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him
on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty plates, his
neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled his
glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the
growing noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line
of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates
of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along the walls, and
days of love unrolled to all infinity before him in the vistas of
the future.

He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was
with her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was
worrying about the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he
left the company to go and give some advice to Binet.

The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an

excess of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp
powder would not light, and the principal set piece, that was to
represent a dragon biting his tail, failed completely. Now and
then a meagre Roman-candle went off; then the gaping crowd sent
up a shout that mingled with the cry of the women, whose waists
were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma silently nestled
against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched
the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe
gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.

They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of
rain began to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.

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

His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could
see from the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns,
the mass of his body, that swayed from right to left with the
giving of the traces. "Truly," said the druggist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously
against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at
the door of the town hall on a board ad hoc* the names of all
those who during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides,
with regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were,
public records that one could refer to in case of need. But
excuse me!"

*Specifically for that.

And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going
back to see his lathe again.

"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one
of your men, or to go yourself--"

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

"Do not be uneasy," said the druggist, when he returned to his

friends. "Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have
been taken. No sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go
to rest."

"Ma foi! I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But
never mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete."

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

yes! very beautiful!"

And having bowed to one another, they separated.

Two days later, in the "Final de Rouen," there was a long article
on the show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next
morning.

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

hurries this crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the
torrents of a tropical sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"

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

Government was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to
it; "a thousand reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish
them!" Then touching on the entry of the councillor, he did not
forget "the martial air of our militia;" nor "our most merry
village maidens;" nor the "bald-headed old men like patriarchs
who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of our phalanxes,
still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums." He
cited himself among the first of the members of the jury, and he
even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais,
chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society.

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

joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father
embraced the son, the brother the brother, the husband his
consort. More than one showed his humble medal with pride; and no
doubt when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it up
weeping on the modest walls of his cot.

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

Leigeard brought together the principal personages of the fete.
The greatest cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were
proposed: Monsieur Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the
Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays, Agriculture; Monsieur Homais,
Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters; Monsieur
Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant fireworks on a
sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a veritable
kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our little
locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.' Let us state that no
untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And he added "Only
the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests
understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please,
messieurs the followers of Loyola!"

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

The day after the show he had said to himself--"We mustn't go

back too soon; that would be a mistake."

And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the
hunting he had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned
thus--

"If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to
see me again love me more. Let's go on with it!"

And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering
the room, he saw Emma turn pale.

She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain
along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the
barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the
looking-glass between the meshes of the coral.

Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first

conventional phrases.

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

"Seriously?" she cried.

"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool,

"no; it was because I did not want to come back."

"Why?"

"Can you not guess?"

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

"Emma!"

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

"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was

right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my
whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame
Bovary! why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your
name; it is the name of another!"

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

"Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to

despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go
far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet--
to-day--I know not what force impelled me towards you. For one
does not struggle against Heaven; one cannot resist the smile of
angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming,
adorable."

It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to
herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth,
expanded softly and fully at this glowing language.

"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you,
at least I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At
night-every night-I arose; I came hither; I watched your house,
its glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying
before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through
the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never knew that there,
so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"

She turned towards him with a sob.

"Oh, you are good!" she said.

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

And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the

ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and
he noticed the door of the room was not closed.

"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would
humour a whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to
know it; and Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both
rose, when Charles came in.

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

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

obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull
himself together a little.
"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."

Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his

wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then
Rodolphe asked if riding would not be good.

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

to follow it up."

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

offered one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to
explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the
blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness.

"I'll call around," said Bovary.

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

"Ah! very good! I thank you."

And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur
Boulanger's kind offer?"

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

declared that perhaps it would look odd.

"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a
pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."

"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"

"You must order one," he answered.

The riding-habit decided her.

When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger

that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his
good-nature.

The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two
saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
side-saddle.

Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no

doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was
charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his
great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready; she
was waiting for him.

Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the
chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little
good advice.

"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps

are mettlesome."

She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the

windowpanes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss;
her mother answered with a wave of her whip.

"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,

prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them
disappear.

As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop.

Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a

word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right
arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the
movement that rocked her in her saddle. At the bottom of the hill
Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they started together at a
bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large
blue veil fell about her.

It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds
hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others,
rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a
rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar
the roots of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the
yards, the walls and the church steeple. Emma half closed her
eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where
she lived appeared so small. From the height on which they were
the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its
vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood out
like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.

By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light

shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the
powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with
the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the
fallen fir cones in front of them.

Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She
turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw
only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made
her a little giddy. The horses were panting; the leather of the
saddles creaked.

Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.

"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.

"Do you think so?" she said.

"Forward! forward!" he continued.

He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot.

Long ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup.

Rodolphe leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At

other times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her,
and Emma felt his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now
blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were spaces full of
heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the
confused patches of the trees that were grey, fawn, or golden
coloured, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the
thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse,
soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.

They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on

in front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in
her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe,
walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black
shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that seemed to him as if
it were a part of her nakedness.

She stopped. "I am tired," she said.

"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"

Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through
her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips,
her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were
floating under azure waves.
"But where are we going?"

He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked

round him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where
the coppice had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen
tree, and Rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. He did not
begin by frightening her with compliments. He was calm, serious,
melancholy.

Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of
wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words,
"Are not our destinies now one?"

"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!"

She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then,
having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid
look, she said hurriedly--

"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go

back."

He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:

"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"

Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he
advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She
stammered:

"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!"

"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again
became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They
went back. He said--

"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were
mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a
pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to
live! I must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my
friend, my sister, my angel!"

And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to
disengage herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.

But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.

"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"

He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a

greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between
the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped
away to hide themselves.

"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"

"Why? Emma! Emma!"

"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his

shoulder.

The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She
threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering,
in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave
herself up to him--

The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing

between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her,
in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it
hummingbirds flying about had scattered their feathers. Silence
was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the
trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the
blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. Then far
away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague
prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard
it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing
nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his
penknife one of the two broken bridles.

They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw
again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets,
the same stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed;
and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if
the mountains had moved in their places. Rodolphe now and again
bent forward and took her hand to kiss it.

She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist,

her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed
by the fresh air in the red of the evening.

On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road.

People looked at her from the windows.
At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended
not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained
sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the
two lighted candles.

"Emma!" he said.

"What?"

"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an

old cob, still very fine, only a little brokenkneed, and that
could be bought; I am sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And
thinking it might please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have
I done right? Do tell me?"

She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--

"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.

"Yes. Why?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"

And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut
herself up in her room.

At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the
ditches, Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm,
while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled.

But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face.
Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a
depth. Something subtle about her being transfigured her. She
repeated, "I have a lover! a lover!" delighting at the idea as if
a second puberty had come to her. So at last she was to know
those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had
despairedl She was entering upon marvels where all would be
passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her,
the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade,
through the interspaces of these heights.

Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read,
and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in
her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became
herself, as it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and
realised the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself in this
type of amorous women whom she had so envied. Besides, Emma felt
a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now
she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full
joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse, without anxiety,
without trouble.

The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to
one another She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her
with kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes,
asked him to call her again by her name--to say that he loved her
They were in the forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some
woodenshoe maker. The walls were of straw, and the roof so low
they had to stoop. They were seated side by side on a bed of dry
leaves.

From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every
evening. Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the
river, in a fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and
put another there, that she always found fault with as too
short.

One morning, when Charles had gone out before day break, she was
seized with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go
quickly to La Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at
Yonville while everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant
with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the
field, walking with rapid steps, without looking behind her.

Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognised her lover's
house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against
the pale dawn.

Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she

thought must be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at
her approach had opened wide of their own accord. A large
straight staircase led up to the corridor. Emma raised the latch
of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man
sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.

"You here? You here?" he repeated. "How did you manage to come?
Ah! your dress is damp."

"I love you," she answered, throwing her arms about his neck.

This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles

went out early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down
the steps that led to the waterside.

But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by
the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order
not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers.
Then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank,
stumbling; and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf, knotted round
her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She was afraid of
the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy
cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume
of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe still
slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.

The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light
enter softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes,
while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were,
a topaz aureole around her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to
him, and pressed her to his breast.

Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the

tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in
his shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big
pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces
of sugar near a bottle of water.

It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Emma

cried. She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something
stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one
day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.

"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!"

At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were

becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself.

Chapter Ten

Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love

had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But
now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose
anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she
came back from his house she looked all about her, anxiously
watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village
window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps,
cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white,
and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.

One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she
saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her.
It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in
the grass on the edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with
terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub
like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters buckled up to the knees,
his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red
nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks.

"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed; "When one
sees a gun, one should always give warning."

The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had,
for a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in
boats, Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was
infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural
guard turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all
alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his
cuteness. At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great
weight, and at once entered upon a conversation.

"It isn't warm; it's nipping."

Emma answered nothing. He went on--

"And you're out so early?"

"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse
where my child is."

"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you
see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that
unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun--"

"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on

her heel.

"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into

his tub.

Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No

doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the
nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing
that the little Bovary had been at home with her parents for a
year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led
only to La Huchette. Binet, then, would guess whence she came,
and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain.
She remained until evening racking her brain with every
conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes
that imbecile with the game-bag.

Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of

distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person
she caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He
was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the
red bottle, and was saying--

"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."

"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then

to Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here;
it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm
yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day,
doctor," (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word
"doctor," as if addressing another by it reflected on himself
some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now, take care not to
upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from the little
room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be taken
out of the drawing-room."

And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away
from the counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar
acid.

"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it;

I'm ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is
oxalic acid, isn't it?"

Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some

copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things.

Emma shuddered. The chemist began saying--

"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp."

"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look,

"there are people who like it."
She was stifling.

"And give me--"

"Will he never go?" thought she.

"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow

wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to
clean the varnished leather of my togs."

The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais
appeared, Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie
following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the
lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered
round the jujube box near her papa. The latter was filling
funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up
parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to time, were
heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words
from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.

"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais.

"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some

figures in his waste-book.

"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.

"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the

druggist.

But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably
heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered
a deep sigh.

"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.

"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.

So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous.
Emma wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be
better to find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to
look for one.

All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead
of night he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away
the key of the gate, which Charles thought lost.
To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters.
She jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for
Charles had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would
not stop. She was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have
done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At last she
would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading
very quietly as if the book amused her. But Charles, who was in
bed, called to her to come too.

"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."

"Yes, I am coming," she answered.

Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell
asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Rodolphe
had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm
round her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the
garden.

It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where

formerly Leon had looked at her so amorously on the summer
evenings. She never thought of him now.

The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind

them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank
the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there
loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one
movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves
pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the nights made them
clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper;
their eyes that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst
of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls
sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied
vibrations.

When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room
between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the
kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe
settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of
the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his
merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about
Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to
see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as,
for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching
steps in the alley.
"Someone is coming!" she said.

He blew out the light.

"Have you your pistols?"

"Why?"

"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.

"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his
sentence with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a
flip of my finger."

She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a

sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her.

Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If

she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought,
even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not
being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject
Emma had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best of
taste.

Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on

exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now
she was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an
eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of
the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother--hers!
and of his mother--his! Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago.
Emma none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would
have done a lost child, and she sometimes even said to him,
gazing at the moon--

"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love."

But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such

ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience
for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at
once his pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his
bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of
hearts charming, since it was lavished on him. Then, sure of
being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his
ways changed.
He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her
cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their
great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath
her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she
could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled
in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and
less.

She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or

whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more.
The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour,
tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it
was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost
feared him.

Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having

succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and
at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to
one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a
domestic flame.

It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in
remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived
with a letter. Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket,
and read the following lines:--

"My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this
one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little
more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next
time, for a change, I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a
preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you
please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my
cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the
trees. The harvest has not been overgood either. Finally, I don't
know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to
leave the house since I am alone, my poor Emma."

Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had
dropped his pen to dream a little while.

"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other
day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd,
having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to
be pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude.
I heard from a pedlar, who, travelling through your part of the
country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual
working hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his
tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen
you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the
stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So
much the better, my dear children, and may God send you every
imaginable happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear
little grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans
plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and I won't have
it touched unless it is to have jam made for her by and bye, that
I will keep in the cupboard for her when she comes.

"Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my

son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best
compliments, your loving father.

"Theodore Rouault."

She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The
spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Emma
followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it like a
hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been
dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder
slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought
she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs.
How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in
the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of
wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the
summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when
anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there
was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light
struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. What
happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope!
What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She
had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive
conditions of lifemaidenhood, her marriage, and her love--thus
constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who
leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road.

But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary
catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head,
looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her
suffer.

An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire
burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet;
the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child
shouting with laughter.

In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the
midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on
her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by
her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he
came near she lent forward, beating the air with both her arms.

"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How
I love you, my poor child! How I love you!"

Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she
rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen,
her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her
health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally,
kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the
servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this excess of
tenderness.

That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.

"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim:"

And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she

showed herself cold and almost contemptuous.

"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"

And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the

handkerchief she took out.

Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested
Charles; if it had not been better to have been able to love him?
But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment,
so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice,
when the druggist came just in time to provide her with an
opportunity.

Chapter Eleven

He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing

club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the
patriotic idea that Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought
to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot.
"For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See--" (and he
enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt),
"success, almost certain relief and beautifying of the patient,
celebrity acquired by the operator. Why, for example, should not
your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the 'Lion d'Or'? Note that
he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers,
and then" (Homais lowered his voice and looked round him) "who is
to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to
the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked
of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?"

In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was

not clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to
a step by which his reputation and fortune would be increased!
She only wished to lean on something more solid than love.

Charles, urged by the druggist and by her, allowed himself to be

persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every
evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into the
reading of it.

While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say,

katastrephopody, endostrephopody, and exostrephopody (or better,
the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and
outwards, with the hypostrephopody and anastrephopody), otherwise
torsion downwards and upwards, Monsier Homais, with all sorts of
arguments, was exhorting the lad at the inn to submit to the
operation.

"You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple

prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of
certain corns."

Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.

"However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. It's

for your sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my
friend, rid of your hideous caudication, together with that
waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must
considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling."

Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he

would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he
would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy
began to smile heavily. Then he attacked him through his vanity:
"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had
had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard?
Ah! Hippolyte!"

And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this

obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of
science.

The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet,
who never interfered with other people's business, Madame
Lefrancois, Artemise, the neighbours, even the mayor, Monsieur
Tuvache--everyone persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but
what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing.
Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for the operation.
This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles consented to
it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel.

So by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he

had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the
locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds, and in which iron,
wood, sheer-iron, leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared.

But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary

first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.

He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which,
however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was
an equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight
varus with a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus,
wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons,
and large toes, on which the black nails looked as if made of
iron, the clubfoot ran about like a deer from morn till night. He
was constantly to be seen on the Place, jumping round the carts,
thrusting his limping foot forwards. He seemed even stronger on
that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had acquired,
as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy; and when he
was given some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its
fellow.

Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon of

Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be
seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor
did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even
trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that
he did not know.
Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus,
after an interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery,
nor Dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul
when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that
trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as Monsieur Bovary
when he approached Hippolyte, his tenotome between his fingers.
And as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with
waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of bandages--every bandage
to be found at the druggist's. It was Monsieur Homais who since
morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to
dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles pierced
the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the
operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but
bent over Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses.

"Come, be calm," said the druggist; "later on you will show your
gratitude to your benefactor."

And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who
were waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would
reappear walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his
patient into the machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety,
awaited him at the door. She threw herself on his neck; they sat
down to table; he ate much, and at dessert he even wanted to take
a cup of coffee, a luxury he only permitted himself on Sundays
when there was company.

The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together.

They talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be
made in their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing,
his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was
happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better,
to feel at last some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored
her. The thought of Rodolphe for one moment passed through her
mind, but her eyes turned again to Charles; she even noticed with
surprise that he had not bad teeth.

They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant,

suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper
just written. It was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de
Rouen." He brought it for them to read.

"Read it yourself," said Bovary.

He read--
"'Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of
Europe like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our
country places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found
itself the scene of a surgical operation which is at the same
time an, act of loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of
our, most distinguished practitioners--'"

"Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with
emotion.

"No, no! not at all! What next!"

"'--Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not

used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper
everyone would not perhaps understand. The masses must--'"

"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"

"I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most
distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a
club-footed man called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last
twenty-five years at the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow
Lefrancois, at the Place d'Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and
the interest incident to the subject, had attracted such a
concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on
the threshold of the establishment. The operation, moreover, was
performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood
appeared on the skin, as though to say that the rebellious tendon
had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient,
strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of
no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to
be desired. Everything tends to show that his convelescence will
be brief; and who knows even if at our next village festivity we
shall not see our good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in
the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving
to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure?
Honour, then, to the generous savants! Honour to those
indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the
amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice
honour! Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf
hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised
to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep
our readers informed as to the successive phases of this
remarkable cure.'"
This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days
after, scared, and crying out--

"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"

Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who caught
sight of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop.
He appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone
who was going up the stairs--

"Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?"

The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the

machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the
wall enough to break it.

With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of

the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented
itself. The outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling
that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered
with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. Hippolyte had
already complained of suffering from it. No attention had been
paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not been
altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly
had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants
thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it
tighter to hasten matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte
being unable to endure it any longer, they once more removed
the machine, and were much surprised at the result they saw. The
livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters here and
there, whence there oozed a black liquid. Matters were taking a
serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mere
Lefrancois, had him installed in the little room near the
kitchen, so that he might at least have some distraction.

But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained

bitterly of such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the
billiard-room. He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings,
pale with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning
his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the flies
alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him. She brought him linen
for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged him. Besides, he
did not want for company, especially on market-days, when the
peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him, fenced
with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled.
"How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah!
you're not up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You
should do this! do that!" And then they told him stories of
people who had all been cured by other remedies than his. Then by
way of consolation they added--

"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king!
All the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!"

Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself

turned sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte
looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing--

"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! How
unfortunate I am!"

And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself.

"Don't listen to him, my lad," said Mere Lefrancois, "Haven't

they tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker. Here!
swallow this."

And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece
of bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not
the strength to put to his lips.

Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see

him. He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same
time that he ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of
the Lord, and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself
to Heaven.

"For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather

neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship.
How many years is it since you approached the holy table? I
understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may have
kept you from care for your salvation. But now is the time to
reflect. Yet don't despair. I have known great sinners, who,
about to appear before God (you are not yet at this point I
know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in the best
frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a
good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from
saying morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our
Father which art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige
me. That won't cost you anything. Will you promise me?"
The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He
chatted with the landlady; and even told anecdotes interspersed
with jokes and puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as
soon as he could, he fell back upon matters of religion, putting
on an appropriate expression of face.

His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a

desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to
which Monsieur Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two
precautions were better than one; it was no risk anyhow.

The druggist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of

the priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte's
convalescence, and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave
him alone! leave him alone! You perturb his morals with your
mysticism." But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he
was the cause of it all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung
up near the bedside of the patient a basin filled with holy-water
and a branch of box.

Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than

surgery, and the invincible gangrene still spread from the
extremities towards the stomach. It was all very well to vary the
potions and change the poultices; the muscles each day rotted
more and more; and at last Charles replied by an affirmative nod
of the head when Mere Lefrancois, asked him if she could not, as
a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet of Neufchatel, who was
a celebrity.

A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good

position and self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain
from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg,
mortified to the knee. Then having flatly declared that it must
be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses
who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. Shaking
Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted out in the
shop--

"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those
gentry of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform,
lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the Government ought to
prohibit. But they want to do the clever, and they cram you with
remedies without, troubling about the consequences. We are not so
clever, not we! We are not savants, coxcombs, fops! We are
practitioners; we cure people, and we should not dream of
operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten
club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if
one wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!"

Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he

concealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he
needed to humour Monsier Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes
came as far as Yonville. So he did not take up the defence of
Bovary; he did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing his
principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more serious
interests of his business.

This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event

in the village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier,
and the Grande Rue, although full of people, had something
lugubrious about it, as if an execution had been expected. At the
grocer's they discussed Hippolyte's illness; the shops did no
business, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, did not stir from
her window, such was her impatience to see the operator arrive.

He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of

the right side having at length given way beneath the weight of
his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled along
leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him could be
seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three brass
clasps shone grandly.

After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion

d'Or," the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness
his horse. Then he went into the stable to see that he was eating
his oats all right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of
all looked after his mare and his gig. People even said about
this--

"Ah! Monsieur Canivet's a character!"

And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The
universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have
missed the smallest of his habits.

Homais presented himself.

"I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come along!"

But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too

sensitive to assist at such an operation.
"When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you
know, is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!"

"Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me

inclined to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you
chemist fellows are always poking about your kitchens, which must
end by spoiling your constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up
every day at four o'clock; I shave with cold water (and am never
cold). I don't wear flannels, and I never catch cold; my carcass
is good enough! I live now in one way, now in another, like a
philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am not squeamish like
you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a Christian as the
first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say, habit!
habit!"

Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating

with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a
conversation, in which the druggist compared the coolness of a
surgeon to that of a general; and this comparison was pleasing to
Canivet, who launched out on the exigencies of his art. He looked
upon, it as a sacred office, although the ordinary practitioners
dishonoured it. At last, coming back to the patient, he examined
the bandages brought by Homais, the same that had appeared for
the club-foot, and asked for someone to hold the limb for him.
Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having turned up
his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the druggist
stayed with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their
aprons, and with ears strained towards the door.

Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house.

He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the

fireless chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his
eyes staring. "What a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!"
Perhaps, after all, he had made some slip. He thought it over,
but could hit upon nothing. But the most famous surgeons also
made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe!
People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as
far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say
if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would
ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might
even prosecute him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and
his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed
amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea and floating
upon the waves.
Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation;
she felt another--that of having supposed such a man was worth
anything. As if twenty times already she had not sufficiently
perceived his mediocrity.

Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on
the floor.

"Sit down," she said; "you fidget me."

He sat down again.

How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have

allowed herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable
madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She
recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the privations of her
soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household, her dream
sinking into the mire like wounded swallows; all that she had
longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that she might
have had! And for what? for what?

In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a

heart-rending cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to
fainting. She knit her brows with a nervous gesture, then went
on. And it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who
understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he was there quite
quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would
henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to
love him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to
another!

"But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was

meditating.

At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought

like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised
her head in order to find out what he meant to say; and they
looked at the other in silence, almost amazed to see each other,
so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed
at her with the dull look of a drunken man, while he listened
motionless to the last cries of the sufferer, that followed each
other in long-drawn modulations, broken by sharp spasms like the
far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered. Emma bit her wan
lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral that she
had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes like
two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him
irritated her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his
whole person, his existence, in fine. She repented of her past
virtue as of a crime, and what still remained of it rumbled away
beneath the furious blows of her pride. She revelled in all the
evil ironies of triumphant adultery. The memory of her lover came
back to her with dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul
into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh enthusiasm;
and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as
absent forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been
about to die and were passing under her eyes.

There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up,

and through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market
in the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with
his handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red
box in his hand, and both were going towards the chemist's.

Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement

Charles turned to his wife saying to her--

"Oh, kiss me, my own!"

"Leave me!" she said, red with anger.

"What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; compose

yourself. You know well enough that I love you. Come!"

"Enough!" she cried with a terrible look.

And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently
that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.

Charles sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to

discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous
illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and
incomprehensible whirling round him.

When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his

mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest
stair. They threw their arms round one another, and all their
rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss.

Chapter Twelve
They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle
of the day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made
a sign to Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La
Huchette. Rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell him
that she was bored, that her husband was odious, her life
frightful.

"But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently.

"Ah! if you would--"

She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose,
her look lost.

"Why, what?" said Rodolphe.

She sighed.

"We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!"

"You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be

possible?"

She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and

turned the conversation.

What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an
affair as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a
pendant to her affection.

Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her
husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she
loathed the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so
disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to
be so dull as when they found themselves together after her
meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing the spouse and virtue,
she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell
in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong
and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in
his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that
she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was
never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her
handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and
necklaces. When he was coming she filled the two large blue glass
vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a
courtesan expecting a prince. The servant had to be constantly
washing linen, and all day Felicite did not stir from the
kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her company, watched
her at work.

With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he
greedily watched all these women's clothes spread about him, the
dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with
running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.

"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over
the crinoline or the hooks and eyes.

"Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" Felicite answered

laughing. "As if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the
same."

"Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a meditative

air, "As if she were a lady like madame!"

But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She
was six years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's
servant, was beginning to pay court to her.

"Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You'd better
be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women.
Before you meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got
a beard to your chin."

"Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots."

And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's boots, all coated
with mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder
beneath his fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a
ray of sunlight.

"How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who
wasn't so particular when she cleaned them herself, because as
soon as the stuff of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed
them over to her.

Emma had a number in her cupboard that she squandered one after
the other, without Charles allowing himself the slightest
observation. So also he disbursed three hundred francs for a
wooden leg that she thought proper to make a present of to
Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork, and it had spring
joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black trousers
ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring to use
such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him
another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to
defray the expense of this purchase.

So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One

saw him running about the village as before, and when Charles
heard from afar the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once
went in another direction.

It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the

order; this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He
chatted with her about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand
feminine trifles, made himself very obliging, and never asked for
his money. Emma yielded to this lazy mode of satisfying all her
caprices. Thus she wanted to have a very handsome ridding-whip
that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen to give to Rodolphe. The
week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her table.

But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and
seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much
embarrassed; all the drawers of the writing-table were empty;
they owed over a fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters
to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and Bovary was
impatiently expecting Monsieur Derozeray's account, which he was
in the habit of paying every year about Midsummer.

She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost

patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he
got some in he should be forced to take back all the goods she
had received.

"Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma.

"I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the
whip. My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me."

"No, no!" she said.

"Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux.

And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself

in an undertone, and with his usual low whistle--

"Good! we shall see! we shall see!"

She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming
in put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from
Monsieur Derozeray's." Emma pounced upon and opened it. It
contained fifteen napoleons; it was the account. She heard
Charles on the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer,
and took out the key.

Three days after Lheureux reappeared.

"I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "If, instead

of the sum agreed on, you would take--"

"Here it is," she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.

The tradesman was dumfounded. Then, to conceal his

disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of
service, all of which Emma declined; then she remained a few
moments fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc
pieces that he had given her in change. She promised herself she
would economise in order to pay back later on. "Pshaw!" she
thought, "he won't think about it again."

Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had

received a seal with the motto Amor nel cor* furthermore, a scarf
for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the
Viscount's, that Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and
that Emma had kept. These presents, however, humiliated him; he
refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking
her tyrannical and overexacting.

*A loving heart.

Then she had strange ideas.

"When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me."

And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were

floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal question--

"Do you love me?"

"Why, of course I love you," he answered.

"A great deal?"

"Certainly!"
"You haven't loved any others?"

"Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing.

Emma cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his

protestations with puns.

"Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not
live without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see
you again, when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself,
Where is he? Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile
upon him; he approaches. Oh no; no one else pleases you. There
are some more beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love
best. I am your servant, your concubine! You are my king, my
idol! You are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are
strong!"

He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike
him as original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm
of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the
eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and
the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much
experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of
expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such
words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers;
exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be
discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes
overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give
the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of
his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle,
on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to
move the stars.

But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him who,
in no matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other
delights to be got out of this love. He thought all modesty in
the way. He treated her quite sans facon.* He made of her
something supple and corrupt. Hers was an idiotic sort of
attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for
her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this
drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his
butt of Malmsey.

*Off-handedly.
By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's manners changed.
Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed
the impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a
cigarette in her mouth, "as if to defy the people." At last,
those who still doubted doubted no longer when one day they saw
her getting out of the "Hirondelle," her waist squeezed into a
waistcoat like a man; and Madame Bovary senior, who, after a
fearful scene with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's,
was not the least scandalised of the women-folk. Many other
things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to her
advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the
house" annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and
there were quarrels, especially one on account of Felicite.

Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the

passage, had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a
brown collar, about forty years old, who, at the sound of her
step, had quickly escaped through the kitchen. Then Emma began to
laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that unless morals
were to be laughed at one ought to look after those of one's
servants.

"Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so

impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not
perhaps defending her own case.

"Leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a

bound.

"Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile them.

But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping her
feet as she repeated--

"Oh! what manners! What a peasant!"

He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered

"She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!"

And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologise.
So Charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give
way; he knelt to her; she ended by saying--

"Very well! I'll go to her."

And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the
dignity of a marchioness as she said--

"Excuse me, madame."

Then, having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on
her bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the
pillow.

She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything

extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white
paper to the blind, so that if by chance he happened to be in
Yonville, he could hurry to the lane behind the house. Emma made
the signal; she had been waiting three-quarters of an hour when
she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at the corner of the
market. She felt tempted to open the window and call him, but he
had already disappeared. She fell back in despair.

Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking on the

pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the
yard. He was there outside. She threw herself into his arms.

"Do take care!" he said.

"Ah! if you knew!" she replied.

And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly,

exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of
parentheses that he understood nothing of it.

"Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!"

"But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love
like ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They
torture me! I can bear it no longer! Save me!"

She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like

flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her
so much, so that he lost his head and said "What is, it? What do
you wish?"

"Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh, I pray you!"

And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the
unexpected consent if breathed forth in a kiss.
"But--" Rodolphe resumed.

"What?"

"Your little girl!"

She reflected a few moments, then replied--

"We will take her! It can't be helped!"

"What a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. For

she had run into the garden. Someone was calling her.

On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much surprised at

the change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact, was showing
herself more docile, and even carried her deference so far as to
ask for a recipe for pickling gherkins.

Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort
of voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness
of the things she was about to leave?

But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as lost
in the anticipated delight of her coming happiness.

It was an eternal subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She

leant on his shoulder murmuring--

"Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it
be? It seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it
will be as if we were rising in a balloon, as if we were setting
out for the clouds. Do you know that I count the hours? And you?"

Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she

had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from
enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of
temperament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the
experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had,
as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow,
gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all
the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled
expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil
disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate
nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the
light by a little black down. One would have thought that an
artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her
neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the
changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day.
Her voice now took more mellow infections, her figure also;
something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of
her gown and from the line of her foot. Charles, as when they
were first married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible.

When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to
wake her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam
upon the ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed
as it were a white hut standing out in the shade, and by the
bedside Charles looked at them. He seemed to hear the light
breathing of his child. She would grow big now; every season
would bring rapid progress. He already saw her coming from school
as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on her jacket, and
carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to be sent to
the boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be done?
Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the
neighbourhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way
to his patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would
put it in the savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere,
no matter where; besides, his practice would increase; he counted
upon that, for he wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be
accomplished, to learn to play the piano. Ah! how pretty she
would be later on when she was fifteen, when, resembling her
mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats in the
summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters.
He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side
beneath the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers;
she would look after the house; she would fill all the home with
her charm and her gaiety. At last, they would think of her
marriage; they would find her some good young fellow with a
steady business; he would make her happy; this would last for
ever.

Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off
by her side she awakened to other dreams.

To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week
towards a new land, whence they would return no more. They went
on and on, their arms entwined, without a word. Often from the
top of a mountain there suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with
domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of citron trees, and
cathedrals of white marble, on whose pointed steeples were
storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace because of the great
flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of flowers,
offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the
chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur
of guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray
refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of
pale statues that smiled beneath playing waters. And then, one
night they came to a fishing village, where brown nets were
drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of the huts. It
was there that they would stay; they would live in a low,
flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf,
by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and
their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm
and star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However,
in the immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing
special stood forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled
each other like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite,
harmonised, azure, and bathed in sunshine. But the child began to
cough in her cot or Bovary snored more loudly, and Emma did not
fall asleep till morning, when the dawn whitened the windows, and
when little Justin was already in the square taking down the
shutters of the chemist's shop.

She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him--

"I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar."

"You are going on a journey?" he asked.

"No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and

quickly?"

He bowed.

"Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--
handy."

"Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half,

as they are being made just now."

"And a travelling bag."

"Decidedly," thought Lheureux. "there's a row on here."

"And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take
this; you can pay yourself out of it."
But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one
another; did he doubt her? What childishness!

She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and

Lheureux had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she
called him back.

"You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak"--she

seemed to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me
the maker's address, and tell him to have it ready for me."

It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to
leave Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen.
Rodolphe would have booked the seats, procured the passports, and
even have written to Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach
reserved for them as far as Marseilles, where they would buy a
carriage, and go on thence without stopping to Genoa. She would
take care to send her luggage to Lheureux whence it would be
taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one would have any
suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion to the
child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer
thought about it.

He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some

affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he
said he was ill; next he went on a journey. The month of August
passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to
be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September--a Monday.

At length the Saturday before arrived.

Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.

"Everything is ready?" she asked him.

"Yes."

Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near
the terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall.

"You are sad," said Emma.

"No; why?"

And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.

"It is because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are
leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have
nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall I be to you. I
will be your people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!"

"How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms.

"Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me?
Swear it then!"

"Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love."

The moon, full and purple-coloured, was rising right out of the
earth at the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the
branches of the poplars, that hid her here and there like a black
curtain pierced with holes. Then she appeared dazzling with
whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing
more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that
broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed
to writhe through the very depths like a heedless serpent covered
with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra
all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together. The
soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches.
Emma, her eyes half closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh
wind that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in
the rush of their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came
back to their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with
the softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across
their memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those of
the still willows that lengthened out over the grass. Often some
night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on the hunt,
disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach
falling all alone from the espalier.

"Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe.

"We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if speaking to

herself: "Yet, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my
heart be so heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of
habits left? Or rather--? No; it is the excess of happiness. How
weak I am, am I not? Forgive me!"

"There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps you may

repent!"

"Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: "What

ill could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean
I would not traverse with you. The longer we live together the
more it will be like an embrace, every day closer, more heart to
heart. There will be nothing to trouble us, no cares, no
obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally. Oh,
speak! Answer me!"

At regular intervals he answered, "Yes--Yes--" She had passed her

hands through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice,
despite the big tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe!
Ah! Rodolphe! dear little Rodolphe!"

Midnight struck.

"Midnight!" said she. "Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!"

He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal
for their flight, Emma said, suddenly assuming a gay air--

"You have the passports?"

"Yes."

"You are forgetting nothing?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Certainly."

"It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait

for me at midday?"

He nodded.

Till to-morrow then!" said Emma in a last caress; and she

watched him go.

He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the
water's edge between the bulrushes--

"To-morrow!" she cried.

He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast
across the meadow.
After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with
her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he
was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against
a tree lest he should fall.

"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter!

She was a pretty mistress!"

And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their

love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he
rebelled against her.

"For, after all," he exclaimed, gesticulating, "I can't exile

myself--have a child on my hands."

He was saying these things to give himself firmness.

"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a
thousand times no! That would be too stupid."

Chapter Thirteen

No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his

bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall.
But when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of
nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect.
Emma seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the
resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between
them.

To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the

bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his
letters from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and
withered roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little
spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking
her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all
the corners, was a miniature given him by Emma: her toilette
seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst
possible taste. Then, from looking at this image and recalling
the memory of its original, Emma's features little by little grew
confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted
face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other.
Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of
explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and
urgent, like business notes. He wanted to see the long ones
again, those of old times. In order to find them at the bottom of
the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others, and mechanically
began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding
pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair!
dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box,
broke when it was opened.

Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the
style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were
tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that
asked for love, others that asked for money. A word recalled
faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes,
however, he remembered nothing at all.

In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped

each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love
that equalised them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up
letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them
fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. At last,
bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to the cupboard,
saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed up his
opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard,
had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there,
and that which passed through it, more heedless than children,
did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall.

"Come," said he, "let's begin."

He wrote--

"Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your

life."

"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her

interest; I am honest."

"Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what

an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you?
You were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in
the future. Ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!"

Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.

"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would
stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on.
As if one could make women like that listen to reason!" He
reflected, then went on--

"I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a
profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this
ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less,
no doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I
should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your
remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should have been its
cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures
me, Emma. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were you so
beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate."

"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.

"Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees,
certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in
that case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation,
at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from
understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our
future position. Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I
rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of
the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences."

"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so

much the worse; it must be stopped!"

"The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would

have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet
questions, calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh!
And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear with me your
memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish myself by exile
for all the ill I have done you. I am going away. Whither I know
not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of the
unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name to your child; let
her repeat it in her prayers."

The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to, shut the
window, and when he had sat down again--

"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come
and hunt me up."

"I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have
wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of
seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later
on we shall talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!"

And there was a last "adieu" divided into two words! "A Dieu!"
which he thought in very excellent taste.

"Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "'Yours devotedly?'

No! 'Your friend?' Yes, that's it."

"Your friend."

He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.

"Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me

harder than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this;
but I can't cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some
water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a
big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the ink.
Then looking for a seal, he came upon the one "Amor nel cor."

"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never

mind!"

After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.

The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept
late), Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his
letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered
Girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He
made use of this means for corresponding with her, sending
according to the season fruits or game.

"If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have
gone on a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into
her own hands. Get along and take care!"

Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the
apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick
iron-bound galoshes, made his way to Yonville.

Madame Bovary, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle

of linen on the kitchen-table with Felicite.

"Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you--from the

master."
She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket
for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes,
while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding
how such a present could so move anyone. At last he went out.
Felicite remained. She could bear it no longer; she ran into the
sitting room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the
basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and,
as if some fearful fire were behind her, Emma flew to her room
terrified.

Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard
nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless,
distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper,
that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On
the second floor she stopped before the attic door, which was
closed.

Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must
finish it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be
seen! "Ah, no! here," she thought, "I shall be all right."

Emma pushed open the door and went in.

The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her
temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed
garret-window. She drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light
burst in with a leap.

Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it

was lost to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square
was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks
on the houses were motionless. At the corner of the street, from
a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations.
It was Binet turning.

She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the
letter with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention
upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him again,
heard him, encircled him with her arms, and throbs of her heart,
that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew
faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She looked about her
with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not
end it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced,
looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself, "Come! come!"

The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight
of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground
of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor
dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge,
almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens
suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had
but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the
lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her.

"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.

She stopped.

"Wherever are you? Come!"

The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her
faint with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the
touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite.

"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table."

And she had to go down to sit at table.

She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her
napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of
applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen.
Suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How had
she lost it? Where could she find it? But she felt such weariness
of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving
the table. Then she became a coward; she was afraid of Charles;
he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced these words
in a strange manner:

"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it

seems."

"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.

"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone.

"Why, Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe
Francais. He has gone on a journey, or is to go."

She gave a sob.

"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from

time to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right, when
one has a fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times,
has our friend. He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--"

He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She
put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard.
Charles, without noticing his wife's colour, had them brought to
him, took one, and bit into it.

"Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!"

And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.

"Do just smell! What an odour!" he remarked, passing it under her

nose several times.

"I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will

the spasm passed; then--

"It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit

down and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin
questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left
alone.

Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of
the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his
plate.

Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot.

Emma uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.

In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out

for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other
way than by Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma
had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns, which like
lightning flashed through the twilight.

The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran
thither. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat,
knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room;
Charles was calling for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and
Felicite, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose
whole body shivered convulsively.

"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the

druggist.

Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle--

"I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person
for you!"

"Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is your

Charles, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little
girl! Oh, kiss her!"

The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her
neck. But turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice
"No, no! no one!"

She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there
stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her
hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams
of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.

Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the
chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is
becoming on the serious occasions of life.

"Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the
paroxysm is past."

"Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching

her sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!"

Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles
answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was
eating some apricots.

"Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the

apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so
sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine
question to study both in its pathological and physiological
relation. The priests know the importance of it, they who have
introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to stupefy
the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a thing, moreover, very
easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the
other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn,
of new bread--"

"Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice.

"And not only," the druggist went on, "are human beings subject
to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of
the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria,
vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other
hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can answer for.
Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the
Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon
as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even makes the
experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume
Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could
produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely
curious, is it not?"

"Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him.

"This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign

self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous
system. With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I
confess, very susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend
to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that,
under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the
constitution. No; no useless physicking! Diet, that is all;
sedatives, emollients, dulcification. Then, don't you think that
perhaps her imagination should be worked upon?"

"In what way? How?" said Bovary.

"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the

question,' as I lately read in a newspaper."

But Emma, awaking, cried out--

"The letter! the letter!"

They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight.

Brain-fever had set in.

For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all
his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling
her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He
sent Justin as far as Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the
way; he sent him back again. He called Monsieur Canivet into
consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere, his old master, from
Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was Emma's
prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even
seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting
together after all their troubles.
About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by
pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first
bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned to her; she got up for a
few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he
tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the
garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the dead
leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers, and
leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the time.

They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She
drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look.
She looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were
only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.

"You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And, pushing

her gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this
seat; you'll be comfortable."

"Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice.

She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness
recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and
more complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the
chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles
thought he saw the first signs of cancer.

And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money
matters.

Chapter Fourteen

To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais
for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man,
he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a
little at such an obligation. Then the expenses of the household,
now that the servant was mistress, became terrible. Bills rained
in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux
especially harassed him. In fact, at the height of Emma's
illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to
make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the
travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other
things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them.
The tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been
ordered, and that he would not take them back; besides, it would
vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had better think it
over; in short, he was resolved to sue him rather than give up
his rights and take back his goods. Charles subsequently ordered
them to be sent back to the shop. Felicite forgot; he had other
things to attend to; then thought no more about them. Monsieur
Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns threatening and
whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a bill at six
months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea
occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from
Lheureux. So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were
possible to get them, adding that it would be for a year, at any
interest he wished. Lheureux ran off to his shop, brought back
the money, and dictated another bill, by which Bovary undertook
to pay to his order on the 1st of September next the sum of one
thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty
already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus
lending at six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission:
and the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this
ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and
thirty francs. He hoped that the business would not stop there;
that the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and
that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at
a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more
plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.

Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for

a supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Monsieur
Guillaumin promised him some shares in the turf-pits of
Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence service
between Arcueil and Rouen, which no doubt would not be long in
ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion d'Or," and that,
travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage,
would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.

Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next

year be able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined
expedients, such as applying to his father or selling something.
But his father would be deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell.
Then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed so
disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind. He reproached
himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his thoughts belonging
to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to be
constantly thinking of her.

The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When

it was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that
overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy to the
garden, and the blinds on that side were always down. She wished
the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now displeased her.
All her ideas seemed to be limited to the care of herself. She
stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the servant to
inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on the
market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the
rain began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of
eagerness for the inevitable return of some trifling events which
nevertheless had no relation to her. The most important was the
arrival of the "Hirondelle" in the evening. Then the landlady
shouted out, and other voices answered, while Hippolyte's
lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a star
in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he went out
again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as
the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging
their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the
shutters with their rulers one after the other.

It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He

inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to
religion, in a coaxing little prattle that was not without its
charm. The mere thought of his cassock comforted her.

One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought
herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they
were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while
they were turning the night table covered with syrups into an
altar, and while Felicite was strewing dahlia flowers on the
floor, Emma felt some power passing over her that freed her from
her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. Her body,
relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it
seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would be
annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into
vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the
priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was
fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept
the body of the Saviour presented to her. The curtains of the
alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the
two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like
dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she
heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an
azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding
green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a
sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in
their arms.
This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful
thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to
recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less
exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured
by pride, at length found rest in Christian humility, and,
tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the
destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for
the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in the place
of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all loves,
without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She
saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating
above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She
wanted to become a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets;
she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a
reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening.

The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he

thought, might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy,
extravagance. But not being much versed in these matters, as soon
as they went beyond a certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard,
bookseller to Monsignor, to send him "something good for a lady
who was very clever." The bookseller, with as much indifference
as if he had been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up,
pellmell, everything that was then the fashion in the pious book
trade. There were little manuals in questions and answers,
pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur de
Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a
honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent
blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World
at Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de ***, decorated with many Orders";
"The Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," etc.

Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply

herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading
in too much hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of
religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by
their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the
secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in
such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her
from the truths for whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless,
she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she
fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that
an ethereal soul could conceive.

As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the

bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more
motionless than a king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation
escaped from this embalmed love, that, penetrating through
everything, perfumed with tenderness the immaculate atmosphere in
which she longed to live. When she knelt on her Gothic prie-Dieu,
she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that she had
murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. It
was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the
heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling
of a gigantic dupery.

This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the
more, and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to
those grand ladies of long ago whose glory she, had dreamed of
over a portrait of La Valliere, and who, trailing with so much
majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long gowns, retired into
solitudes to shed at the feet of Christ all the tears of hearts
that life had wounded.

Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes

for the poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one
day, on coming home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen
seated at the table eating soup. She had her little girl, whom
during her illness her husband had sent back to the nurse,
brought home. She wanted to teach her to read; even when Berthe
cried, she was not vexed. She had made up her mind to
resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about
everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child,
"Is your stomach-ache better, my angel?"

Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this

mania of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own
house-linen; but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman
took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even stayed there till
after Easter, to escape the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never
failed on Good Friday to order chitterlings.

Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened

her a little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways,
Emma almost every day had other visitors. These were Madame
Langlois, Madame Caron, Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and
regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent Madame Homais,
who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle
about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to see her;
Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom, and
remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even
Madame Bovary; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She
began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick
movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of
hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was
to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and
strange, whose splendour terrified him.

Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his

timidity. She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her
life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse
holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of
her beauty. Besides, she now enveloped all things with such
indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so
haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer
distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. One
evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had
asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.
Then suddenly--

"So you love him?" she said.

And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was
blushing, she added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!"

In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end
to end, despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to
see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger
she displayed more wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel
Mere Rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had
contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her
two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a
cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family, successively
dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented church less
assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said to
her in a friendly way--

"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"

As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he

came out after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors
to taking the air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This
was the time when Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet
cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's
complete restoration.

Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the
terrace wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited him to have a
drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone
bottles.

"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him,

even to the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle
perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut,
press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed
they do seltzer-water at restaurants."

But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into
their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never
missed this joke--

"Its goodness strikes the eye!"

He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even
scandalised at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame
some distraction by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear
the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this
silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that
he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature.

But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he

contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask
of pleasure, taught virtue.

"'Castigat ridendo mores,'* Monsieur Bournisien! Thus consider

the greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly
strewn with philosophical reflections, that made them a vast
school of morals and diplomacy for the people."

*It corrects customs through laughter.

"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,'
in which there was the character of an old general that is really
hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a
working girl, who at the ending--"

"Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there

is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of
the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of
the abominable times that imprisoned Galileo."

"I know very well," objected the cure, "that there are good
works, good authors. However, if it were only those persons of
different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated
rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in
the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to
immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is
the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he added, suddenly
assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff
between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned the theatre,
she must be right; we must submit to her decrees."

"Why," asked the druggist, "should she excommunicate actors? For

formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in
the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of
farce called 'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws
of decency."

The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the

chemist went on--

"It's like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more
than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!"

And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien--

"Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of

a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie--"

"But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the other

impatiently, "who recommend the Bible."

"No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that in our days, in

this century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in
proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive,
moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?"

"No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because,

sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else
because he had not any ideas.

The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to

shoot a Parthian arrow.

"I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see

dancers kicking about."

"Come, come!" said the cure.

"Ah! I've known some!" And separating the words of his sentence,
Homais repeated, "I--have--known--some!"

"Well, they were wrong," said Bournisien, resigned to anything.

"By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the druggist.

"Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the
druggist was intimidated by them.

"I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that

toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion."

"That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting

down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.

Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor--

"That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a

way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were
only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang
it! If anyone could take my place, I would accompany you myself.
Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance;
he's engaged to go to England at a high salary. From what I hear,
he's a regular dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three
mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists
burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that
suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at the
hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay by.
Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow."

The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's head, for

he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused,
alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder,
Charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation
would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother
had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer
expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling
in of Lheureux's bills was still so far off that there was no
need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was
refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of
worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at
eight o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle."

The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who

thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them
go.

"Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that

you are!"

Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown
with four flounces--

"You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen."

The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in the Place

Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg,
with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the
middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy
gigs of the commercial travellers--a good old house, with
worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights,
always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are
sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by
the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that
always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in
Sundayclothes, has a cafe on the street, and towards the
countryside a kitchen-garden. Charles at once set out. He muddled
up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes;
asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from
the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn,
returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the
whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.

Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor

was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had
time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the
doors of the theatre, which were still closed.

Chapter Fifteen

The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed

between the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring
streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters "Lucie de
Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The weather was fine, the people
were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs
taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a
warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of
the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A
little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy
air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an
exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black
warehouses where they made casks.

For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to

have a little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept
his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he
pressed against his stomach.

Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She
involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to
the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase
to the reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with
her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all
her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated
in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess.

The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from

their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another,
were bowing. They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after
the anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten; they
still talked cottons, spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of
old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their
hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by
steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting about in the pit,
showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or
applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them
leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of
their yellow gloves.

Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down
from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a
sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one
after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the
basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes
and flageolets fifing. But three knocks were heard on the stage,
a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some
chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene.

It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an

oak to the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their
shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain
suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both
his arms to heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the
hunters started afresh. She felt herself transported to the
reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed
to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes
re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel
helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story
phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her
dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. She gave
herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being
vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had
not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors,
the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet
caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated
amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a
young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in
green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the
murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her
cavatina in G major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for
wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away
in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared.

He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty

of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was
tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled
poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast round laughing
looks showing his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess
having heard him sing one night on the beach at Biarritz, where
he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. She had ruined
herself for him. He had deserted her for other women, and this
sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic
reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his
person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ,
imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more
power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this
admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the
hairdresser and the toreador.

From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his

arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had
outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness,
and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses.
Emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box
with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious
lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the
double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a
tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that
had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna seemed to her
to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that
charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on
earth had loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar
that last moonlit night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!"
The theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire
movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows,
exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, Emma
gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last
chords.

"But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?"

"No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!"

"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who
came on before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he
went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her
father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in
his hat?"

Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began

in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his
master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to
deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He
confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because
of the music, which interfered very much with the words.

"What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!"

"Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I
like to understand things."

"Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently.

Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange

blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown.
Emma dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again
amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church.
Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on
the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into
which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her
beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of
adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great,
strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty
blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness.
But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair
of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that
art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma
determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a
plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even
smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the
stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak.

His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately

the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing
with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice;
Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie
uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated
tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed
forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his
words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row
gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and
stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened
mouths. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his
guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and
he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against
the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out
at the ankles. He, she thought must have an inexhaustible love
to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. All her small
fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed
her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the
character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life
resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers
if fate had willed it. They would have known one another, loved
one another. With him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she
would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his
fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him,
herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening, at the back
of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would have drunk in
eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her
alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked at
her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it
was certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his
strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to
him, to cry out, "Take me away! carry me with you! let us go!
Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!"

The curtain fell.

The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving
of the fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go
out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her
arm-chair with palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing
that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass
of barley-water.

He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his

elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in
his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a
Rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running
down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were
being assassinated. Her husband, who was a millowner, railed at
the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping
up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he
angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. At last
Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath--

"Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such
a crowd--SUCH a crowd!"

He added--

"Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!"

"Leon?"

"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he

finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.

He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame
Bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a
stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when
the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye
standing at the window. But soon recalling herself to the
necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the
torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words.

"Ah, good-day! What! you here?"

"Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was
beginning.

"So you are at Rouen?"

"Yes."

"And since when?"

"Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They
were silent.

But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the
guests, the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet
in D major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had
grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. She
remembered the games at cards at the druggist's, and the walk to
the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, the tete-a-tete by the
fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so
discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless forgotten. And
why had he come back? What combination of circumstances had
brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her,
leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and
again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his
nostrils falling upon her hair.

"Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that
the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied
carelessly--

"Oh, dear me, no, not much."

Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and
take an ice somewhere.

"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this
is going to be tragic."

But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of
the singer seemed to her exaggerated.

"She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was
listening.

"Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of

his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.

Then with a sigh Leon said--

"The heat is--"

"Unbearable! Yes!"

"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.

"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."

Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her
shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in
the open air, outside the windows of a cafe.

First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted

Charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur
Leon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two
years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his
profession, which was different in Normandy and Paris. Then he
inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere Lefrancois, and as they
had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one
another, the conversation soon came to an end.

People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement,

humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma
Lucie!*" Then Leon, playing the dilettante, began to talk music.
He had seen Tambourini, Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared
with them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere.

*Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie.

"Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his

rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite admirable in the last
act. I regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to
amuse me."

"Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance."

But Charles replied that they were going back next day. "Unless,"
he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone,
kitten?"

And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that

presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of
Lagardy in the last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then
Charles insisted--

"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are
wrong if you feel that this is doing you the least good."

The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and
stood discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his
purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave
two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble.

"I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you
are--"

The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking

his hat said--

"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?"

Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself

longer, but that nothing prevented Emma--

"But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure--"

"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel."
Then to Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are
in our part of the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some
dinner now and then."

The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged,

moreover, to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And
they parted before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock
in the cathedral struck half-past eleven.

Part III

Chapter One

Monsieur Leon, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the
dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the
grisettes, who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the
best-mannered of the students; he wore his hair neither too long
nor too short, didn't spend all his quarter's money on the first
day of the month, and kept on good terms with his professors. As
for excesses, he had always abstained from them, as much from
cowardice as from refinement.

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

an evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his
Code fall to the ground, and the memory of Emma came back to him.
But gradually this feeling grew weaker, and other desires
gathered over it, although it still persisted through them all.
For Leon did not lose all hope; there was for him, as it were, a
vague promise floating in the future, like a golden fruit
suspended from some fantastic tree.

Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion
reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to
possess her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with
his gay companions, and he returned to the provinces despising
everyone who had not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of
the boulevards. By the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the
drawing-room of some illustrious physician, a person driving his
carriage and wearing many orders, the poor clerk would no doubt
have trembled like a child; but here, at Rouen, on the harbour,
with the wife of this small doctor he felt at his ease, sure
beforehand he would shine. Self-possession depends on its
environment. We don't speak on the first floor as on the fourth;
and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her
virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her
corset.

On leaving the Bovarys the night before, Leon had followed them
through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at
the "Croix-Rouge," he turned on his heel, and spent the night
meditating a plan.

So the next day about five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of
the inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and
that resolution of cowards that stops at nothing.

"The gentleman isn't in," answered a servant.

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

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

apologised for having neglected to tell him where they were
staying.

"Oh, I divined it!" said Leon.

He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by,

instinct. She began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly,
Leon told her that he had spent his morning in looking for her in
all the hotels in the town one after the other.

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

"Yes," she said, "and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom
oneself to impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands
upon one."

"Oh, I can imagine!"

"Ah! no; for you, you are a man!"

But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off
into certain philosophical reflections. Emma expatiated much on
the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in
which the heart remains entombed.

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

called forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully
bored during the whole course of his studies. The law irritated
him, other vocations attracted him, and his mother never ceased
worrying him in every one of her letters. As they talked they
explained more and more fully the motives of their sadness,
working themselves up in their progressive confidence. But they
sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition of their
thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express it
all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did
not say that he had forgotten her.

Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after

masked balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous
of old when she ran across the fields in the morning to her
lover's house. The noises of the town hardly reached them, and
the room seemed small, as if on purpose to hem in their solitude
more closely. Emma, in a dimity dressing-gown, leant her head
against the back of the old arm-chair; the yellow wall-paper
formed, as it were, a golden background behind her, and her bare
head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in the
middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her
hair.

"But pardon me!" she said. "It is wrong of me. I weary you with
my eternal complaints."

"No, never, never!"

"If you knew," she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful
eyes, in which a tear was trembling, "all that I had dreamed!"

"And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I
dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din
of the crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that
weighed upon me. In an engraver's shop on the boulevard there is
an Italian print of one of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic,
and she is looking at the moon, with forget-me-nots in her
flowing hair. Something drove me there continually; I stayed
there hours together." Then in a trembling voice, "She resembled
you a little."

Madame Bovary turned away her head that he might not see the
irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips.

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

She did not answer. He continued--

"I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought
I recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the
carriages through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil
like yours."

She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without

interruption. Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she
looked at the rosettes on her slippers, and at intervals made
little movements inside the satin of them with her toes.

At last she sighed.

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

a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to
someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the
sacrifice."

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

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

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

"Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere
any calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor."

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

speak of her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity!
She should not be suffering now! Leon at once envied the calm of
the tomb, and one evening he had even made his will, asking to be
buried in that beautiful rug with velvet stripes he had received
from her. For this was how they would have wished to be, each
setting up an ideal to which they were now adapting their past
life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the
sentiment.

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

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

himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Leon watched her
face out of the corner of his eyes.

It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across.
The mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted
from her blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she
replied--

"I always suspected it."

Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off
existence, whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one
word. They recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had
worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of her house.

"And our poor cactuses, where are they?"

"The cold killed them this winter."

"Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them
again as of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down
upon your blinds, and I saw your two bare arms passing out
amongst the flowers."

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

Leon swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a
deep breath--

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

force that took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to
see you; but you, no doubt, do not remember it."

"I do," she said; "go on."

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

on the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue
flowers; and without any invitation from you, in spite of myself,
I went with you. Every moment, however, I grew more and more
conscious of my folly, and I went on walking by you, not daring
to follow you completely, and unwilling to leave you. When you
went into a shop, I waited in the street, and I watched you
through the window taking off your gloves and counting the change
on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's; you were let
in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy door
that had closed after you."

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

old. All these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out
her life; it was like some sentimental immensity to which she
returned; and from time to time she said in a low voice, her eyes
half closed--

"Yes, it is true--true--true!"

They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the

Beauvoisine quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and
large empty hotels. They no longer spoke, but they felt as they
looked upon each other a buzzing in their heads, as if something
sonorous had escaped from the fixed eyes of each of them. They
were hand in hand now, and the past, the future, reminiscences
and dreams, all were confounded in the sweetness of this ecstasy.
Night was darkening over the walls, on which still shone, half
hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills
representing four scenes from the "Tour de Nesle," with a motto
in Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a
patch of dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs.

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

"Well!" said Leon.

"Well!" she replied.

He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when

she said to him--

"How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such

sentiments to me?"

The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand.

He from the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he
thought of the happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks
to fortune, meeting her earlier, they had been indissolubly bound
to one another.

"I have sometimes thought of it," she went on.

"What a dream!" murmured Leon. And fingering gently the blue

binding of her long white sash, he added, "And who prevents us
from beginning now?"

"No, my friend," she replied; "I am too old; you are too young.
Forget me! Others will love you; you will love them."

"Not as you!" he cried.

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

She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they
must remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal
friendship.

Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Emma did not herself
know, quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction,
and the necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating
the young man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid
caresses that his trembling hands attempted.

"Ah! forgive me!" he cried, drawing back.

Emma was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous
to her than the boldness of Rodolphe when he advanced to her
open-armed. No man had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An
exquisite candour emanated from his being. He lowered his long
fine eyelashes, that curled upwards. His cheek, with the soft
skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her person, and Emma
felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it. Then, leaning
towards the clock as if to see the time--

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

He understood the hint and took up his hat.

"It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Bovary has left
me here especially for that. Monsieur Lormeaux, of the Rue
Grand-Pont, was to take me and his wife."
And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day.

"Really!" said Leon.

"Yes."

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

"What?"

"Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go;

it is impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not
understood me; you have not guessed--"

"Yet you speak plainly," said Emma.

"Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity's sake, let me
see you once--only once!"

"Well--" She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, "Oh, not

here!"

"Where you will."

"Will you--" She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, "To-morrow at

eleven o'clock in the cathedral."

"I shall be there," he cried, seizing her hands, which she

disengaged.

And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Emma with
her head bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her
neck.

"You are mad! Ah! you are mad!" she said, with sounding little
laughs, while the kisses multiplied.

Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the
consent of her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity.

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

whispered with a trembling voice, "Tomorrow!"

She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the
next room.
In the evening Emma wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in
which she cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not,
for the sake of their happiness, meet again. But when the letter
was finished, as she did not know Leon's address, she was
puzzled.

"I'll give it to him myself," she said; "he will come."

The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony,
Leon himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on
white trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent
he had into his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he
uncurled it again, in order to give it a more natural elegance.

"It is still too early," he thought, looking at the hairdresser's

cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old
fashion journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three
streets, thought it was time, and went slowly towards the porch
of Notre Dame.

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

jeweller's windows, and the light falling obliquely on the
cathedral made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock
of birds fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil
bell-turrets; the square, resounding with cries, was fragrant
with the flowers that bordered its pavement, roses, jasmines,
pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly spaced out between
moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds; the
fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas,
amidst melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were
twisting paper round bunches of violets.

The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought
flowers for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled
with pride, as if this homage that he meant for another had
recoiled upon himself.

But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the

church. The beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold
in the middle of the left doorway, under the "Dancing Marianne,"
with feather cap, and rapier dangling against his calves, came
in, more majestic than a cardinal, and as shining as a saint on a
holy pyx.

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

assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children--
"The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The
gentleman would like to see the curiosities of the church?"

"No!" said the other.

And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to
look at the Place. Emma was not coming yet. He went up again to
the choir.

The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of
the arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the
reflections of the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were
continued farther on upon the flag-stones, like a many-coloured
carpet. The broad daylight from without streamed into the church
in three enormous rays from the three opened portals. From time
to time at the upper end a sacristan passed, making the oblique
genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal lustres
hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and from
the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose
sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo
reverberating under the lofty vault.

Leon with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never
seemed so good to him. She would come directly, charming,
agitated, looking back at the glances that followed her, and with
her flounced dress, her gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all
sorts of elegant trifles that he had never enjoyed, and with the
ineffable seduction of yielding virtue. The church like a huge
boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down to gather in the
shade the confession of her love; the windows shone resplendent
to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she might
appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours.

But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell
upon a blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets.
He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of
the fishes and the button-holes of the doublets, while his
thoughts wandered off towards Emma.

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

who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He
seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to
be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege.

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

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

Emma was pale. She walked fast.

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

And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the
Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.

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

nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the
middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an
Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never
coming to an end.

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

resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down
divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the
tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown
flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the
church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart.

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

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

like to see the curiosities of the church?"

"Oh, no!" cried the clerk.

"Why not?" said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to
the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything.

Then, in order to proceed "by rule," the beadle conducted them

right to the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with
his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscription or
carving--

"This," he said majestically, "is the circumference of the

beautiful bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds.
There was not its equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it
died of the joy--"

"Let us go on," said Leon.

The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the
chapel of the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an
all-embracing gesture of demonstration, and, prouder than a
country squire showing you his espaliers, went on--

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

Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who
died at the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465."

Leon bit his lips, fuming.

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

prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval
and of Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny,
chamberlain to the king, Knight of the Order, and also governor
of Normandy; died on the 23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the
inscription specifies; and below, this figure, about to descend
into the tomb, portrays the same person. It is not possible, is
it, to see a more perfect representation of annihilation?"

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

her, no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a
gesture, so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of
gossip and indifference.

The everlasting guide went on--

"Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de
Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in
1499, died in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is
the Holy Virgin. Now turn to this side; here are the tombs of the
Ambroise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That
one was minister under Louis XII. He did a great deal for the
cathedral. In his will he left thirty thousand gold crowns for
the poor."

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

full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block
that certainly might once have been an ill-made statue.

"Truly," he said with a groan, "it adorned the tomb of Richard

Coeur de Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the
Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this condition. They had
buried it for spite in the earth, under the episcopal seat of
Monsignor. See! this is the door by which Monsignor passes to his
house. Let us pass on quickly to see the gargoyle windows."
But Leon hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized
Emma's arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand
this untimely munificence when there were still so many things
for the stranger to see. So calling him back, he cried--

"Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!"

"No, thank you!" said Leon.

"You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine
less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--"

Leon was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for
nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the
stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated
funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely
from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic
brazier.

"But where are we going?" she said.

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

Bovary was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when
behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the
regular sound of a cane. Leon turned back.

"Sir!"

"What is it?"

And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and

balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes.
They were works "which treated of the cathedral."

"Idiot!" growled Leon, rushing out of the church.

A lad was playing about the close.

"Go and get me a cab!"

The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then
they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little
embarrassed.

"Ah! Leon! Really--I don't know--if I ought," she whispered. Then

with a more serious air, "Do you know, it is very improper--"
"How so?" replied the clerk. "It is done at Paris."

And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.

Still the cab did not come. Leon was afraid she might go back
into the church. At last the cab appeared.

"At all events, go out by the north porch," cried the beadle, who
was left alone on the threshold, "so as to see the Resurrection,
the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in
Hell-flames."

"Where to, sir?" asked the coachman.

"Where you like," said Leon, forcing Emma into the cab.

And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue
Grand-Pont, crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the
Pont Neuf, and stopped short before the statue of Pierre
Corneille.

"Go on," cried a voice that came from within.

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

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

"No, straight on!" cried the same voice.

The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours,
trotted quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his
brow, put his leather hat between his knees, and drove his
carriage beyond the side alley by the meadow to the margin of the
waters.

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

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

But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares,

Sotteville, La Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its
third halt in front of the Jardin des Plantes.

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

And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the
Quai'des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the
bridge, by the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital
gardens, where old men in black coats were walking in the sun
along the terrace all green with ivy. It went up the Boulevard
Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard Cauchoise, then the whole of
Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills.

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

wandered about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at
Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du
Gaillardbois; in the Rue Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before
Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front
of the Customs, at the "Vieille Tour," the "Trois Pipes," and the
Monumental Cemetery. From time to time the coachman, on his box
cast despairing eyes at the public-houses. He could not
understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these
individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and
at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he
lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their
jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if
he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and
depression.

And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in
the streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large
wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the
provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus
constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like
a vessel.

Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the
sun beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared
hand passed beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw
out some scraps of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther
off lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover all
in bloom.

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

Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her
veil down, and without turning her head.

Chapter Two
On reaching the inn, Madame Bovary was surprised not to see the
diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes,
had at last started.

Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she
would return that same evening. Moreover, Charles expected her,
and in her heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is
for some women at once the chastisement and atonement of
adultery.

She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the
yard, hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment
inquiring about the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in
catching up the "Hirondelle" as it neared the first houses of
Quincampoix.

Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and
opened them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she
recognised Felicite, who was on the lookout in front of the
farrier's shop. Hivert pulled in his horses and, the servant,
climbing up to the window, said mysteriously--

"Madame, you must go at once to Monsieur Homais. It's for

something important."

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

were small pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the
time for jam-making, and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply
on the same day. But in front of the chemist's shop one might
admire a far larger heap, and that surpassed the others with the
superiority that a laboratory must have over ordinary stores, a
general need over individual fancy.

She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the "Fanal
de Rouen" lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She
pushed open the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen,
amid brown jars full of picked currants, of powdered sugar and
lump sugar, of the scales on the table, and of the pans on the
fire, she saw all the Homais, small and large, with aprons
reaching to their chins, and with forks in their hands. Justin
was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was screaming--

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

"What is it? What is the matter?"

"What is it?" replied the druggist. "We are making preserves;
they are simmering; but they were about to boil over, because
there is too much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from
indolence, from laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in
my laboratory, the key of the Capharnaum."

It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads,
full of the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent
long hours there alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again;
and he looked upon it not as a simple store, but as a veritable
sanctuary, whence there afterwards issued, elaborated by his
hands, all sorts of pills, boluses, infusions, lotions, and
potions, that would bear far and wide his celebrity. No one in
the world set foot there, and he respected it so, that he swept
it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the
spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge
where, egoistically concentrating himself, Homais delighted in
the exercise of his predilections, so that Justin's
thoughtlessness seemed to him a monstrous piece of irreverence,
and, redder than the currants, he repeated--

"Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and
caustic alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid!
and that I shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance
in the delicate operations of our art! But, devil take it! one
must make distinctions, and not employ for almost domestic
purposes that which is meant for pharmaceutical! It is as if one
were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as if a magistrate--"

"Now be calm," said Madame Homais.

And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried "Papa! papa!"

"No, let me alone," went on the druggist "let me alone, hang it!
My word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That's it! go it!
respect nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the
mallow-paste, pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the
bandages!"

"I thought you had--" said Emma.

"Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn't you

see anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf?
Speak, answer, articulate something."

"I--don't--know," stammered the young fellow.

"Ah! you don't know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of
blue glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder,
on which I have even written 'Dangerous!' And do you know what is
in it? Arsenic! And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was
next to it!"

"Next to it!" cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. "Arsenic!

You might have poisoned us all."

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

"Or poison a patient!" continued the druggist. "Do you want to

see me in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of
justice? To see me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what
care I take in managing things, although I am so thoroughly used
to it? Often I am horrified myself when I think of my
responsibility; for the Government persecutes us, and the absurd
legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles' sword over our
heads."

Emma no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and
the druggist went on in breathless phrases--

"That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That
is how you recompense me for the really paternal care that I
lavish on you! For without me where would you be? What would you
be doing? Who provides you with food, education, clothes, and all
the means of figuring one day with honour in the ranks of
society? But you must pull hard at the oar if you're to do that,
and get, as, people say, callosities upon your hands. Fabricando
fit faber, age quod agis.*"

* The worker lives by working, do what he will.

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

Chinese or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he
was in one of those crises in which the whole soul shows
indistinctly what it contains, like the ocean, which, in the
storm, opens itself from the seaweeds on its shores down to the
sands of its abysses.

And he went on--

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

should certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your
poverty and the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you'll never be
fit for anything but to herd animals with horns! You have no
aptitude for science! You hardly know how to stick on a label!
And there you are, dwelling with me snug as a parson, living in
clover, taking your ease!"

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

"Oh, dear me!" interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, "how
am I to tell you? It is a misfortune!"

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

Clean it! Take it back! Be quick!"

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

out of his pocket. The lad stooped, but Homais was the quicker,
and, having picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring
eyes and open mouth.

"CONJUGAL--LOVE!" he said, slowly separating the two words. "Ah!

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

Madame Homais came forward.

"No, do not touch it!"

The children wanted to look at the pictures.

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

First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand,
rolling his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came
straight to his pupil, and, planting himself in front of him with
crossed arms--

"Have you every vice, then, little wretch? Take care! you are on
a downward path. Did not you reflect that this infamous book
might fall in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their
minds, tarnish the purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoleon. He is
already formed like a man. Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they
have not read it? Can you certify to me--"

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

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

In fact, Monsieur Bovary senior had expired the evening before

suddenly from an attack of apoplexy as he got up from table, and
by way of greater precaution, on account of Emma's sensibility,
Charles had begged Homais to break the horrible news to her
gradually. Homais had thought over his speech; he had rounded,
polished it, made it rhythmical; it was a masterpiece of prudence
and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy; but anger had got
the better of rhetoric.

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

pharmacy; for Monsieur Homais had taken up the thread of his
vituperations. However, he was growing calmer, and was now
grumbling in a paternal tone whilst he fanned himself with his
skull-cap.

"It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was
a doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is
not ill a man should know, and I would even venture to say that a
man must know. But later--later! At any rate, not till you are
man yourself and your temperament is formed."

When Emma knocked at the door. Charles, who was waiting for her,
came forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his
voice--

"Ah! my dear!"

And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of
his lips the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her
hand over her face shuddering.

But she made answer, "Yes, I know, I know!"

He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event
without any sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband
had not received the consolations of religion, as he had died at
Daudeville, in the street, at the door of a cafe after a
patriotic dinner with some ex-officers.

Emma gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance's
sake, she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to
try, she resolutely began eating, while Charles opposite her sat
motionless in a dejected attitude.
Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of
distress. Once he sighed, "I should have liked to see him again!"

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

something, "How old was your father?" she asked.

"Fifty-eight."

"Ah!"

And that was all.

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

become of her now?"

She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so
taciturn, Charles imagined her much affected, and forced himself
to say nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And,
shaking off his own--

"Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?" he asked.

"Yes."

When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor did Emma;
and as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove
little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her
paltry, weak, a cipher--in a word, a poor thing in every way. How
to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something
stupefying like the fumes of opium seized her.

They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the
boards. It was Hippolyte bringing back Emma's luggage. In order
to put it down he described painfully a quarter of a circle with
his stump.

"He doesn't even remember any more about it," she thought,
looking at the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with
perspiration.

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

and without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation
for him in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a
personified reproach to his incurable incapacity.

"Hallo! you've a pretty bouquet," he said, noticing Leon's

violets on the chimney.

"Yes," she replied indifferently; "it's a bouquet I bought just

now from a beggar."

Charles picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with
tears, against them, smelt them delicately.

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

The next day Madame Bovary senior arrived. She and her son wept
much. Emma, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The
following day they had a talk over the mourning. They went and
sat down with their workboxes by the waterside under the arbour.

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

much affection for this man, whom till then he had thought he
cared little about. Madame Bovary senior was thinking of her
husband. The worst days of the past seemed enviable to her. All
was forgotten beneath the instinctive regret of such a long
habit, and from time to time whilst she sewed, a big tear rolled
along her nose and hung suspended there a moment. Emma was
thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since they had
been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and
not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to
recall the slightest details of that past day. But the presence
of her husband and mother-in-law worried her. She would have
liked to hear nothing, to see nothing, so as not to disturb the
meditation on her love, that, do what she would, became lost in
external sensations.

She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were
scattered around her. Madame Bovary senior was plying her scissor
without looking up, and Charles, in his list slippers and his old
brown surtout that he used as a dressing-gown, sat with both
hands in his pockets, and did not speak either; near them Berthe,
in a little white pinafore, was raking sand in the walks with her
spade. Suddenly she saw Monsieur Lheureux, the linendraper, come
in through the gate.

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

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

"I beg your pardon," he said, "but I should like to have a

private talk with you." Then in a low voice, "It's about that
affair--you know."

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

confusion, turning to his wife, "Couldn't you, my darling?"

She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Charles said to
his mother, "It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household
trifle." He did not want her to know the story of the bill,
fearing her reproaches.

As soon as they were alone, Monsieur Lheureux in sufficiently

clear terms began to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then
to talk of indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest,
and of his own health, which was always so-so, always having ups
and downs. In fact, he had to work devilish hard, although he
didn't make enough, in spite of all people said, to find butter
for his bread.

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

"And so you're quite well again?" he went on. "Ma foi! I saw your
husband in a sad state. He's a good fellow, though we did have a
little misunderstanding."

She asked what misunderstanding, for Charles had said nothing of

the dispute about the goods supplied to her.

"Why, you know well enough," cried Lheureux. "It was about your
little fancies--the travelling trunks."

He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind
his back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an
unbearable manner. Did he suspect anything?

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

went on--

"We made it up, all the same, and I've come again to propose
another arrangement."

This was to renew the bill Bovary had signed. The doctor, of
course, would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself,
especially just now, when he would have a lot of worry. "And he
would do better to give it over to someone else--to you, for
example. With a power of attorney it could be easily managed, and
then we (you and I) would have our little business transactions
together."

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

trade, Lheureux declared that madame must require something. He
would send her a black barege, twelve yards, just enough to make
a gown.

"The one you've on is good enough for the house, but you want
another for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in.
I've the eye of an American!"

He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to
measure it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to
make himself agreeable, useful, "enfeoffing himself," as Homais
would have said, and always dropping some hint to Emma about the
power of attorney. He never mentioned the bill; she did not think
of it. Charles, at the beginning of her convalescence, had
certainly said something about it to her, but so many emotions
had passed through her head that she no longer remembered it.
Besides, she took care not to talk of any money questions. Madame
Bovary seemed surprised at this, and attributed the change in her
ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during her
illness.

But as soon as she was gone, Emma greatly astounded Bovary by her
practical good sense. It would be necessary to make inquiries, to
look into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a
sale by auction or a liquidation. She quoted technical terms
casually, pronounced the grand words of order, the future,
foresight, and constantly exaggerated the difficulties of
settling his father's affairs so much, that at last one day she
showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage and
administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all
bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Lheureux's lessons.
Charles naively asked her where this paper came from.

"Monsieur Guillaumin"; and with the utmost coolness she added, "I
don't trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation.
Perhaps we ought to consult--we only know--no one."

"Unless Leon--" replied Charles, who was reflecting. But it was

difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make
the journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a
contest of mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected
waywardness--

"No, I will go!"

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

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

to consult Monsieur Leon, and she stayed there three days.

Chapter Three

They were three full, exquisite days--a true honeymoon. They were
at the Hotel-de-Boulogne, on the harbour; and they lived there,
with drawn blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor,
and iced syrups were brought them early in the morning.

Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one
of the islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the
dockyard the caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of
vessels. The smoke of the tar rose up between the trees; there
were large fatty drops on the water, undulating in the purple
colour of the sun, like floating plaques of Florentine bronze.

They rowed down in the midst of moored boats, whose long oblique
cables grazed lightly against the bottom of the boat. The din of
the town gradually grew distant; the rolling of carriages, the
tumult of voices, the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels.
She took off her bonnet, and they landed on their island.

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

door hung black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries.
They lay down upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and
they would fain, like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this
little place, which seemed to them in their beatitude the most
magnificent on earth. It was not the first time that they had
seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that they had heard the water
flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves; but, no doubt, they
had never admired all this, as if Nature had not existed before,
or had only begun to be beautiful since the gratification of
their desires.

At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the
islands. They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in
silence. The square oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the
stillness, seemed to mark time, like the beating of a metronome,
while at the stern the rudder that trailed behind never ceased
its gentle splash against the water.

Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases,
finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to
sing--

"One night, do you remember, we were sailing," etc.

Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the
winds carried off the trills that Leon heard pass like the
flapping of wings about him.

She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the

shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in.
Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her
seem more slender, taller. Her head was raised, her hands
clasped, her eyes turned towards heaven. At times the shadow of
the willows hid her completely; then she reappeared suddenly,
like a vision in the moonlight.

Leon, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of
scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said--

"Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot
of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne,
cornets--everything in style! There was one especially, a tall
handsome man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they
all kept saying, 'Now tell us something, Adolphe--Dolpe,' I
think."

She shivered.

"You are in pain?" asked Leon, coming closer to her.

"Oh, it's nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air."

"And who doesn't want for women, either," softly added the
sailor, thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment.

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

Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his
letters to Mere Rollet, and she gave him such precise
instructions about a double envelope that he admired greatly her
amorous astuteness.

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

"Yes, certainly."

"But why," he thought afterwards as he came back through the

streets alone, "is she so very anxious to get this power of
attorney?"

Chapter Four

Leon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades,

avoided their company, and completely neglected his work.

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

called her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of
his memories. Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to
see her again grew, so that at last on Saturday morning he
escaped from his office.

When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the
church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that
delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness
that millionaires must experience when they come back to their
native village.

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

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

Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She
thought he "had grown and was thinner," while Artemise, on the
contrary, thought him stouter and darker.

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

tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the "Hirondelle,"
had definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined
punctually at five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old
concern "was late."

Leon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor's

door. Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter
of an hour. The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never
stirred out that evening, nor all the next day.

He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in
the lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy
night, and they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes.

Their separation was becoming intolerable. "I would rather die!"

said Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. "Adieu! adieu!
When shall I see you again?"

They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that
she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular
opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a
week. Emma never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides,
she was full of hope. Some money was coming to her.

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

large stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had
commended; she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux,
declaring that it wasn't "drinking the sea," politely undertook
to supply her with one. She could no longer do without his
services. Twenty times a day she sent for him, and he at once put
by his business without a murmur. People could not understand
either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and even
paid her private visits.

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

that she seemed seized with great musical fervour.

One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same
piece four times over, each time with much vexation, while he,
not noticing any difference, cried--

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

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

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

"Very well; to please you!"

And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong
notes and blundered; then, stopping short--

"Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--" She bit

her lips and added, "Twenty francs a lesson, that's too dear!"

"Yes, so it is--rather," said Charles, giggling stupidly. "But it

seems to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there
are artists of no reputation, and who are often better than the
celebrities."

"Find them!" said Emma.

The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at
last could no longer keep back the words.

"How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day.

Well, Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who
are at La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that
from an excellent mistress!"

She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But
when she passed by it (if Bovary were there), she sighed--

"Ah! my poor piano!"

And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them
she had given up music, and could not begin again now for
important reasons. Then people commiserated her--

"What a pity! she had so much talent!"

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

"You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of
nature lie fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by
inducing madame to study; you are economising on the subsequent
musical education of your child. For my own part, I think that
mothers ought themselves to instruct their children. That is an
idea of Rousseau's, still rather new perhaps, but that will end
by triumphing, I am certain of it, like mothers nursing their own
children and vaccination."

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

replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor
piano, that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it
go was to Bovary like the indefinable suicide of a part of
herself.
"If you liked," he said, "a lesson from time to time, that
wouldn't after all be very ruinous."

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

And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband's permission
to go to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month
she was even considered to have made considerable progress.

Chapter Five

She went on Thursdays. She got up and dressed silently, in order

not to awaken Charles, who would have made remarks about her
getting ready too early. Next she walked up and down, went to the
windows, and looked out at the Place. The early dawn was
broadening between the pillars of the market, and the chemist's
shop, with the shutters still up, showed in the pale light of the
dawn the large letters of his signboard.

When the clock pointed to a quarter past seven, she went off to
the "Lion d'Or," whose door Artemise opened yawning. The girl
then made up the coals covered by the cinders, and Emma remained
alone in the kitchen. Now and again she went out. Hivert was
leisurely harnessing his horses, listening, moreover, to Mere
Lefrancois, who, passing her head and nightcap through a grating,
was charging him with commissions and giving him explanations
that would have confused anyone else. Emma kept beating the soles
of her boots against the pavement of the yard.

At last, when he had eaten his soup, put on his cloak, lighted
his pipe, and grasped his whip, he calmly installed himself on
his seat.

The "Hirondelle" started at a slow trot, and for about a mile

stopped here and there to pick up passengers who waited for it,
standing at the border of the road, in front of their yard gates.

Those who had secured seats the evening before kept it waiting;
some even were still in bed in their houses. Hivert called,
shouted, swore; then he got down from his seat and went and
knocked loudly at the doors. The wind blew through the cracked
windows.

The four seats, however, filled up. The carriage rolled off; rows
of apple-trees followed one upon another, and the road between
its two long ditches, full of yellow water, rose, constantly
narrowing towards the horizon.

Emma knew it from end to end; she knew that after a meadow there
was a sign-post, next an elm, a barn, or the hut of a lime-kiln
tender. Sometimes even, in the hope of getting some surprise, she
shut her eyes, but she never lost the clear perception of the
distance to be traversed.

At last the brick houses began to follow one another more

closely, the earth resounded beneath the wheels, the "Hirondelle"
glided between the gardens, where through an opening one saw
statues, a periwinkle plant, clipped yews, and a swing. Then on a
sudden the town appeared. Sloping down like an amphitheatre, and
drowned in the fog, it widened out beyond the bridges confusedly.
Then the open country spread away with a monotonous movement till
it touched in the distance the vague line of the pale sky. Seen
thus from above, the whole landscape looked immovable as a
picture; the anchored ships were massed in one corner, the river
curved round the foot of the green hills, and the isles, oblique
in shape, lay on the water, like large, motionless, black fishes.
The factory chimneys belched forth immense brown fumes that were
blown away at the top. One heard the rumbling of the foundries,
together with the clear chimes of the churches that stood out in
the mist. The leafless trees on the boulevards made violet
thickets in the midst of the houses, and the roofs, all shining
with the rain, threw back unequal reflections, according to the
height of the quarters in which they were. Sometimes a gust of
wind drove the clouds towards the Saint Catherine hills, like
aerial waves that broke silently against a cliff.

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

existence, and her heart swelled as if the hundred and twenty
thousand souls that palpitated there had all at once sent into it
the vapour of the passions she fancied theirs. Her love grew in
the presence of this vastness, and expanded with tumult to the
vague murmurings that rose towards her. She poured it out upon
the square, on the walks, on the streets, and the old Norman city
outspread before her eyes as an enormous capital, as a Babylon
into which she was entering. She leant with both hands against
the window, drinking in the breeze; the three horses galloped,
the stones grated in the mud, the diligence rocked, and Hivert,
from afar, hailed the carts on the road, while the bourgeois who
had spent the night at the Guillaume woods came quietly down the
hill in their little family carriages.
They stopped at the barrier; Emma undid her overshoes, put on
other gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty paces farther
she got down from the "Hirondelle."

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

the shop-fronts, and women with baskets against their hips, at
intervals uttered sonorous cries at the corners of streets. She
walked with downcast eyes, close to the walls, and smiling with
pleasure under her lowered black veil.

For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the most direct
road. She plunged into dark alleys, and, all perspiring, reached
the bottom of the Rue Nationale, near the fountain that stands
there. It, is the quarter for theatres, public-houses, and
whores. Often a cart would pass near her, bearing some shaking
scenery. Waiters in aprons were sprinkling sand on the flagstones
between green shrubs. It all smelt of absinthe, cigars, and
oysters.

She turned down a street; she recognised him by his curling hair
that escaped from beneath his hat.

Leon walked along the pavement. She followed him to the hotel. He
went up, opened the door, entered--What an embrace!

Then, after the kisses, the words gushed forth. They told each
other the sorrows of the week, the presentiments, the anxiety for
the letters; but now everything was forgotten; they gazed into
each other's faces with voluptuous laughs, and tender names.

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

curtains were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and
bulged out too much towards the bell-shaped bedside; and nothing
in the world was so lovely as her brown head and white skin
standing out against this purple colour, when, with a movement of
shame, she crossed her bare arms, hiding her face in her hands.

The warm room, with its discreet carpet, its gay ornaments, and
its calm light, seemed made for the intimacies of passion. The
curtain-rods, ending in arrows, their brass pegs, and the great
balls of the fire-dogs shone suddenly when the sun came in. On
the chimney between the candelabra there were two of those pink
shells in which one hears the murmur of the sea if one holds them
to the ear.
How they loved that dear room, so full of gaiety, despite its
rather faded splendour! They always found the furniture in the
same place, and sometimes hairpins, that she had forgotten the
Thursday before, under the pedestal of the clock. They lunched by
the fireside on a little round table, inlaid with rosewood. Emma
carved, put bits on his plate with all sorts of coquettish ways,
and she laughed with a sonorous and libertine laugh when the
froth of the champagne ran over from the glass to the rings on
her fingers. They were so completely lost in the possession of
each other that they thought themselves in their own house, and
that they would live there till death, like two spouses eternally
young. They said "our room," "our carpet," she even said "my
slippers," a gift of Leon's, a whim she had had. They were pink
satin, bordered with swansdown. When she sat on his knees, her
leg, then too short, hung in the air, and the dainty shoe, that
had no back to it, was held only by the toes to her bare foot.

He for the first time enjoyed the inexpressible delicacy of

feminine refinements. He had never met this grace of language,
this reserve of clothing, these poses of the weary dove. He
admired the exaltation of her soul and the lace on her petticoat.
Besides, was she not "a lady" and a married woman--a real
mistress, in fine?

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

talkative, taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened in him a
thousand desires, called up instincts or memories. She was the
mistress of all the novels, the heroine of all the dramas, the
vague "she" of all the volumes of verse. He found again on her
shoulder the amber colouring of the "Odalisque Bathing"; she had
the long waist of feudal chatelaines, and she resembled the "Pale
Woman of Barcelona." But above all she was the Angel!

Often looking at her, it seemed to him that his soul, escaping

towards her, spread like a wave about the outline of her head,
and descended drawn down into the whiteness of her breast. He
knelt on the ground before her, and with both elbows on her knees
looked at her with a smile, his face upturned.

She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with intoxication--

"Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something so sweet

comes from your eyes that helps me so much!"

She called him "child." "Child, do you love me?"

And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her lips
that fastened to his mouth.

On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as he bent his
arm beneath a golden garland. They had laughed at it many a time,
but when they had to part everything seemed serious to them.

Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating, "Till

Thursday, till Thursday."

Suddenly she seized his head between her hands, kissed him
hurriedly on the forehead, crying, "Adieu!" and rushed down the
stairs.

She went to a hairdresser's in the Rue de la Comedie to have her

hair arranged. Night fell; the gas was lighted in the shop. She
heard the bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the
performance, and she saw, passing opposite, men with white faces
and women in faded gowns going in at the stage-door.

It was hot in the room, small, and too low where the stove was
hissing in the midst of wigs and pomades. The smell of the tongs,
together with the greasy hands that handled her head, soon
stunned her, and she dozed a little in her wrapper. Often, as he
did her hair, the man offered her tickets for a masked ball.

Then she went away. She went up the streets; reached the
Croix-Rouge, put on her overshoes, that she had hidden in the
morning under the seat, and sank into her place among the
impatient passengers. Some got out at the foot of the hill. She
remained alone in the carriage. At every turning all the lights
of the town were seen more and more completely, making a great
luminous vapour about the dim houses. Emma knelt on the cushions
and her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed; called
on Leon, sent him tender words and kisses lost in the wind.

On the hillside a poor devil wandered about with his stick in the
midst of the diligences. A mass of rags covered his shoulders,
and an old staved-in beaver, turned out like a basin, hid his
face; but when he took it off he discovered in the place of
eyelids empty and bloody orbits. The flesh hung in red shreds,
and there flowed from it liquids that congealed into green scale
down to the nose, whose black nostrils sniffed convulsively. To
speak to you he threw back his head with an idiotic laugh; then
his bluish eyeballs, rolling constantly, at the temples beat
against the edge of the open wound. He sang a little song as he
followed the carriages--

"Maids an the warmth of a summer day

Dream of love, and of love always"

And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green leaves.

Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma, bareheaded, and she

drew back with a cry. Hivert made fun of him. He would advise him
to get a booth at the Saint Romain fair, or else ask him,
laughing, how his young woman was.

Often they had started when, with a sudden movement, his hat
entered the diligence through the small window, while he clung
with his other arm to the footboard, between the wheels splashing
mud. His voice, feeble at first and quavering, grew sharp; it
resounded in the night like the indistinct moan of a vague
distress; and through the ringing of the bells, the murmur of the
trees, and the rumbling of the empty vehicle, it had a far-off
sound that disturbed Emma. It went to the bottom of her soul,
like a whirlwind in an abyss, and carried her away into the
distances of a boundless melancholy. But Hivert, noticing a
weight behind, gave the blind man sharp cuts with his whip. The
thong lashed his wounds, and he fell back into the mud with a
yell. Then the passengers in the "Hirondelle" ended by falling
asleep, some with open mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning
against their neighbour's shoulder, or with their arm passed
through the strap, oscillating regularly with the jolting of the
carriage; and the reflection of the lantern swinging without, on
the crupper of the wheeler; penetrating into the interior through
the chocolate calico curtains, threw sanguineous shadows over all
these motionless people. Emma, drunk with grief, shivered in her
clothes, feeling her feet grow colder and colder, and death in
her soul.

Charles at home was waiting for her; the "Hirondelle" was always
late on Thursdays. Madame arrived at last, and scarcely kissed
the child. The dinner was not ready. No matter! She excused the
servant. This girl now seemed allowed to do just as she liked.

Often her husband, noting her pallor, asked if she were unwell.

"No," said Emma.

"But," he replied, "you seem so strange this evening."

"Oh, it's nothing! nothing!"

There were even days when she had no sooner come in than she went
up to her room; and Justin, happening to be there, moved about
noiselessly, quicker at helping her than the best of maids. He
put the matches ready, the candlestick, a book, arranged her
nightgown, turned back the bedclothes.

"Come!" said she, "that will do. Now you can go."

For he stood there, his hands hanging down and his eyes wide
open, as if enmeshed in the innumerable threads of a sudden
reverie.

The following day was frightful, and those that came after still
more unbearable, because of her impatience to once again seize
her happiness; an ardent lust, inflamed by the images of past
experience, and that burst forth freely on the seventh day
beneath Leon's caresses. His ardours were hidden beneath
outbursts of wonder and gratitude. Emma tasted this love in a
discreet, absorbed fashion, maintained it by all the artifices of
her tenderness, and trembled a little lest it should be lost
later on.

She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy voice--

"Ah! you too, you will leave me! You will marry! You will be like
all the others."

He asked, "What others?"

"Why, like all men," she replied. Then added, repulsing him with
a languid movement--

"You are all evil!"

One day, as they were talking philosophically of earthly

disillusions, to experiment on his jealousy, or yielding,
perhaps, to an over-strong need to pour out her heart, she told
him that formerly, before him, she had loved someone.

"Not like you," she went on quickly, protesting by the head of

her child that "nothing had passed between them."

The young man believed her, but none the less questioned her to
find out what he was.
"He was a ship's captain, my dear."

Was this not preventing any inquiry, and, at the same time,
assuming a higher ground through this pretended fascination
exercised over a man who must have been of warlike nature and
accustomed to receive homage?

The clerk then felt the lowliness of his position; he longed for
epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that would please her--he
gathered that from her spendthrift habits.

Emma nevertheless concealed many of these extravagant fancies,

such as her wish to have a blue tilbury to drive into Rouen,
drawn by an English horse and driven by a groom in top-boots. It
was Justin who had inspired her with this whim, by begging her to
take him into her service as valet-de-chambre*, and if the
privation of it did not lessen the pleasure of her arrival at
each rendezvous, it certainly augmented the bitterness of the
return.

* Manservant.

Often, when they talked together of Paris, she ended by

murmuring, "Ah! how happy we should be there!"

"Are we not happy?" gently answered the young man passing his
hands over her hair.

"Yes, that is true," she said. "I am mad. Kiss me!"

To her husband she was more charming than ever. She made him
pistachio-creams, and played him waltzes after dinner. So he
thought himself the most fortunate of men and Emma was without
uneasiness, when, one evening suddenly he said--

"It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, isn't it, who gives you lessons?"

"Yes."

"Well, I saw her just now," Charles went on, "at Madame
Liegeard's. I spoke to her about you, and she doesn't know you."

This was like a thunderclap. However, she replied quite

naturally--
"Ah! no doubt she forgot my name."

"But perhaps," said the doctor, "there are several Demoiselles

Lempereur at Rouen who are music-mistresses."

"Possibly!" Then quickly--"But I have my receipts here. See!"

And she went to the writing-table, ransacked all the drawers,

rummaged the papers, and at last lost her head so completely that
Charles earnestly begged her not to take so much trouble about
those wretched receipts.

"Oh, I will find them," she said.

And, in fact, on the following Friday, as Charles was putting on

one of his boots in the dark cabinet where his clothes were kept,
he felt a piece of paper between the leather and his sock. He
took it out and read--

"Received, for three months' lessons and several pieces of music,

the sum of sixty-three francs.--Felicie Lempereur, professor of
music."

"How the devil did it get into my boots?"

"It must," she replied, "have fallen from the old box of bills
that is on the edge of the shelf."

From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies,
in which she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a
want, a mania, a pleasure carried to such an extent that if she
said she had the day before walked on the right side of a road,
one might know she had taken the left.

One morning, when she had gone, as usual, rather lightly clothed,
it suddenly began to snow, and as Charles was watching the
weather from the window, he caught sight of Monsieur Bournisien
in the chaise of Monsieur Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen.
Then he went down to give the priest a thick shawl that he was to
hand over to Emma as soon as he reached the "Croix-Rouge." When
he got to the inn, Monsieur Bournisien asked for the wife of the
Yonville doctor. The landlady replied that she very rarely came
to her establishment. So that evening, when he recognised Madame
Bovary in the "Hirondelle," the cure told her his dilemma,
without, however, appearing to attach much importance to it, for
he began praising a preacher who was doing wonders at the
Cathedral, and whom all the ladies were rushing to hear.

Still, if he did not ask for any explanation, others, later on,
might prove less discreet. So she thought well to get down each
time at the "Croix-Rouge," so that the good folk of her village
who saw her on the stairs should suspect nothing.

One day, however, Monsieur Lheureux met her coming out of the
Hotel de Boulogne on Leon's arm; and she was frightened, thinking
he would gossip. He was not such a fool. But three days after he
came to her room, shut the door, and said, "I must have some
money."

She declared she could not give him any. Lheureux burst into
lamentations and reminded her of all the kindnesses he had shown
her.

In fact, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma up to the

present had paid only one. As to the second, the shopkeeper, at
her request, had consented to replace it by another, which again
had been renewed for a long date. Then he drew from his pocket a
list of goods not paid for; to wit, the curtains, the carpet, the
material for the armchairs, several dresses, and divers articles
of dress, the bills for which amounted to about two thousand
francs.

She bowed her head. He went on--

"But if you haven't any ready money, you have an estate." And he
reminded her of a miserable little hovel situated at Barneville,
near Aumale, that brought in almost nothing. It had formerly been
part of a small farm sold by Monsieur Bovary senior; for Lheureux
knew everything, even to the number of acres and the names of the
neighbours.

"If I were in your place," he said, "I should clear myself of my

debts, and have money left over."

She pointed out the difficulty of getting a purchaser. He held

out the hope of finding one; but she asked him how she should
manage to sell it.

"Haven't you your power of attorney?" he replied.

The phrase came to her like a breath of fresh air. "Leave me the
bill," said Emma.

"Oh, it isn't worth while," answered Lheureux.

He came back the following week and boasted of having, after much
trouble, at last discovered a certain Langlois, who, for a long
time, had had an eye on the property, but without mentioning his
price.

"Never mind the price!" she cried.

But they would, on the contrary, have to wait, to sound the

fellow. The thing was worth a journey, and, as she could not
undertake it, he offered to go to the place to have an interview
with Langlois. On his return he announced that the purchaser
proposed four thousand francs.

Emma was radiant at this news.

"Frankly," he added, "that's a good price."

She drew half the sum at once, and when she was about to pay her
account the shopkeeper said--

"It really grieves me, on my word! to see you depriving yourself

all at once of such a big sum as that."

Then she looked at the bank-notes, and dreaming of the unlimited

number of rendezvous represented by those two thousand francs,
she stammered--

"What! what!"

"Oh!" he went on, laughing good-naturedly, "one puts anything one

likes on receipts. Don't you think I know what household affairs
are?" And he looked at her fixedly, while in his hand he held two
long papers that he slid between his nails. At last, opening his
pocket-book, he spread out on the table four bills to order, each
for a thousand francs.

"Sign these," he said, "and keep it all!"

She cried out, scandalised.

"But if I give you the surplus," replied Monsieur Lheureux

impudently, "is that not helping you?"
And taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the account, "Received
of Madame Bovary four thousand francs."

"Now who can trouble you, since in six months you'll draw the
arrears for your cottage, and I don't make the last bill due till
after you've been paid?"

Emma grew rather confused in her calculations, and her ears

tingled as if gold pieces, bursting from their bags, rang all
round her on the floor. At last Lheureux explained that he had a
very good friend, Vincart, a broker at Rouen, who would discount
these four bills. Then he himself would hand over to madame the
remainder after the actual debt was paid.

But instead of two thousand francs he brought only eighteen

hundred, for the friend Vincart (which was only fair) had
deducted two hundred francs for commission and discount. Then he
carelessly asked for a receipt.

"You understand--in business--sometimes. And with the date, if

you please, with the date."

A horizon of realisable whims opened out before Emma. She was

prudent enough to lay by a thousand crowns, with which the first
three bills were paid when they fell due; but the fourth, by
chance, came to the house on a Thursday, and Charles, quite
upset, patiently awaited his wife's return for an explanation.

If she had not told him about this bill, it was only to spare him
such domestic worries; she sat on his knees, caressed him, cooed
to him, gave him a long enumeration of all the indispensable
things that had been got on credit.

"Really, you must confess, considering the quantity, it isn't too

dear."

Charles, at his wit's end, soon had recourse to the eternal

Lheureux, who swore he would arrange matters if the doctor would
sign him two bills, one of which was for seven hundred francs,
payable in three months. In order to arrange for this he wrote
his mother a pathetic letter. Instead of sending a reply she came
herself; and when Emma wanted to know whether he had got anything
out of her, "Yes," he replied; "but she wants to see the
account." The next morning at daybreak Emma ran to Lheureux to
beg him to make out another account for not more than a thousand
francs, for to show the one for four thousand it would be
necessary to say that she had paid two-thirds, and confess,
consequently, the sale of the estate--a negotiation admirably
carried out by the shopkeeper, and which, in fact, was only
actually known later on.

Despite the low price of each article, Madame Bovary senior, of

course, thought the expenditure extravagant.

"Couldn't you do without a carpet? Why have recovered the

arm-chairs? In my time there was a single arm-chair in a house,
for elderly persons--at any rate it was so at my mother's, who
was a good woman, I can tell you. Everybody can't be rich! No
fortune can hold out against waste! I should be ashamed to coddle
myself as you do! And yet I am old. I need looking after. And
there! there! fitting up gowns! fallals! What! silk for lining at
two francs, when you can get jaconet for ten sous, or even for
eight, that would do well enough!"

Emma, lying on a lounge, replied as quietly as possible--"Ah!

Madame, enough! enough!"

The other went on lecturing her, predicting they would end in the
workhouse. But it was Bovary's fault. Luckily he had promised to
destroy that power of attorney.

"What?"

"Ah! he swore he would," went on the good woman.

Emma opened the window, called Charles, and the poor fellow was
obliged to confess the promise torn from him by his mother.

Emma disappeared, then came back quickly, and majestically handed

her a thick piece of paper.

"Thank you," said the old woman. And she threw the power of
attorney into the fire.

Emma began to laugh, a strident, piercing, continuous laugh; she

had an attack of hysterics.

"Oh, my God!" cried Charles. "Ah! you really are wrong! You come
here and make scenes with her!"

His mother, shrugging her shoulders, declared it was "all put

on."

But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took his wife's part,
so that Madame Bovary, senior, said she would leave. She went the
very next day, and on the threshold, as he was trying to detain
her, she replied--

"No, no! You love her better than me, and you are right. It is
natural. For the rest, so much the worse! You will see. Good
day--for I am not likely to come soon again, as you say, to make
scenes."

Charles nevertheless was very crestfallen before Emma, who did

not hide the resentment she still felt at his want of confidence,
and it needed many prayers before she would consent to have
another power of attorney. He even accompanied her to Monsieur
Guillaumin to have a second one, just like the other, drawn up.

"I understand," said the notary; "a man of science can't be

worried with the practical details of life."

And Charles felt relieved by this comfortable reflection, which

gave his weakness the flattering appearance of higher
pre-occupation.

And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in their room
with Leon! She laughed, cried, sang, sent for sherbets, wanted to
smoke cigarettes, seemed to him wild and extravagant, but
adorable, superb.

He did not know what recreation of her whole being drove her more
and more to plunge into the pleasures of life. She was becoming
irritable, greedy, voluptuous; and she walked about the streets
with him carrying her head high, without fear, so she said, of
compromising herself. At times, however, Emma shuddered at the
sudden thought of meeting Rodolphe, for it seemed to her that,
although they were separated forever, she was not completely free
from her subjugation to him.

One night she did not return to Yonville at all. Charles lost his
head with anxiety, and little Berthe would not go to bed without
her mamma, and sobbed enough to break her heart. Justin had gone
out searching the road at random. Monsieur Homais even had left
his pharmacy.

At last, at eleven o'clock, able to bear it no longer, Charles

harnessed his chaise, jumped in, whipped up his horse, and
reached the "Croix-Rouge" about two o'clock in the morning. No
one there! He thought that the clerk had perhaps seen her; but
where did he live? Happily, Charles remembered his employer's
address, and rushed off there.

Day was breaking, and he could distinguish the escutcheons over

the door, and knocked. Someone, without opening the door, shouted
out the required information, adding a few insults to those who
disturb people in the middle of the night.

The house inhabited by the clerk had neither bell, knocker, nor
porter. Charles knocked loudly at the shutters with his hands. A
policeman happened to pass by. Then he was frightened, and went
away.

"I am mad," he said; "no doubt they kept her to dinner at

Monsieur Lormeaux'." But the Lormeaux no longer lived at Rouen.

"She probably stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Why, Madame

Dubreuil has been dead these ten months! Where can she be?"

An idea occurred to him. At a cafe he asked for a Directory, and

hurriedly looked for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who
lived at No. 74 Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.

As he was turning into the street, Emma herself appeared at the

other end of it. He threw himself upon her rather than embraced
her, crying--

"What kept you yesterday?"

"I was not well."

"What was it? Where? How?"

She passed her hand over her forehead and answered, "At
Mademoiselle Lempereur's."

"I was sure of it! I was going there."

"Oh, it isn't worth while," said Emma. "She went out just now;
but for the future don't worry. I do not feel free, you see, if I
know that the least delay upsets you like this."

This was a sort of permission that she gave herself, so as to get

perfect freedom in her escapades. And she profited by it freely,
fully. When she was seized with the desire to see Leon, she set
out upon any pretext; and as he was not expecting her on that
day, she went to fetch him at his office.

It was a great delight at first, but soon he no longer concealed

the truth, which was, that his master complained very much about
these interruptions.

"Pshaw! come along," she said.

And he slipped out.

She wanted him to dress all in black, and grow a pointed beard,
to look like the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his
lodgings; thought them poor. He blushed at them, but she did not
notice this, then advised him to buy some curtains like hers, and
as he objected to the expense--

"Ah! ah! you care for your money," she said laughing.

Each time Leon had to tell her everything that he had done since
their last meeting. She asked him for some verses--some verses
"for herself," a "love poem" in honour of her. But he never
succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last
ended by copying a sonnet in a "Keepsake." This was less from
vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not
question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather
becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and
kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this
corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity
and dissimulation?

Chapter Six

During the journeys he made to see her, Leon had often dined at
the chemist's, and he felt obliged from politeness to invite him
in turn.

"With pleasure!" Monsieur Homais replied; "besides, I must

invigorate my mind, for I am getting rusty here. We'll go to the
theatre, to the restaurant; we'll make a night of it."

"Oh, my dear!" tenderly murmured Madame Homais, alarmed at the

vague perils he was preparing to brave.

"Well, what? Do you think I'm not sufficiently ruining my health

living here amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy? But
there! that is the way with women! They are jealous of science,
and then are opposed to our taking the most legitimate
distractions. No matter! Count upon me. One of these days I shall
turn up at Rouen, and we'll go the pace together."

The druggist would formerly have taken good care not to use such
an expression, but he was cultivating a gay Parisian style, which
he thought in the best taste; and, like his neighbour, Madame
Bovary, he questioned the clerk curiously about the customs of
the capital; he even talked slang to dazzle the bourgeois, saying
bender, crummy, dandy, macaroni, the cheese, cut my stick and
"I'll hook it," for "I am going."

So one Thursday Emma was surprised to meet Monsieur Homais in the

kitchen of the "Lion d'Or," wearing a traveller's costume, that
is to say, wrapped in an old cloak which no one knew he had,
while he carried a valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his
establishment in the other. He had confided his intentions to no
one, for fear of causing the public anxiety by his absence.

The idea of seeing again the place where his youth had been spent
no doubt excited him, for during the whole journey he never
ceased talking, and as soon as he had arrived, he jumped quickly
out of the diligence to go in search of Leon. In vain the clerk
tried to get rid of him. Monsieur Homais dragged him off to the
large Cafe de la Normandie, which he entered majestically, not
raising his hat, thinking it very provincial to uncover in any
public place.

Emma waited for Leon three quarters of an hour. At last she ran
to his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing
him of indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness,
she spent the afternoon, her face pressed against the
window-panes.

At two o'clock they were still at a table opposite each other.

The large room was emptying; the stove-pipe, in the shape of a
palm-tree, spread its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and
near them, outside the window, in the bright sunshine, a little
fountain gurgled in a white basin, where; in the midst of
watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters stretched across
to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on their sides.
Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even more
intoxicated with the luxury than the rich fare, the Pommard wine
all the same rather excited his faculties; and when the omelette
au rhum* appeared, he began propounding immoral theories about
women. What seduced him above all else was chic. He admired an
elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and as to bodily
qualities, he didn't dislike a young girl.

* In rum.

Leon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking,

eating, and talking.

"You must be very lonely," he said suddenly, "here at Rouen. To

be sure your lady-love doesn't live far away."

And the other blushed--

"Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville--"

The young man stammered something.

"At Madame Bovary's, you're not making love to--"

"To whom?"

"The servant!"

He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all prudence,
Leon, in spite of himself protested. Besides, he only liked dark
women.

"I approve of that," said the chemist; "they have more passion."

And whispering into his friend's ear, he pointed out the symptoms
by which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even
launched into an ethnographic digression: the German was
vapourish, the French woman licentious, the Italian passionate.

"And negresses?" asked the clerk.

"They are an artistic taste!" said Homais. "Waiter! two cups of

coffee!"
"Are we going?" at last asked Leon impatiently.

"Ja!"

But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the

establishment and made him a few compliments. Then the young man,
to be alone, alleged he had some business engagement.

"Ah! I will escort you," said Homais.

And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he
talked of his wife, his children; of their future, and of his
business; told him in what a decayed condition it had formerly
been, and to what a degree of perfection he had raised it.

Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Leon left him

abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in great
excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into a passion.
He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn't his fault; didn't
she know Homais--did she believe that he would prefer his
company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on
his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose,
full of concupiscence and supplication.

She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him
seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red
eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and Leon was
pressing them to his lips when a servant appeared to tell the
gentleman that he was wanted.

"You will come back?" she said.

"Yes."

"But when?"

"Immediately."

"It's a trick," said the chemist, when he saw Leon. "I wanted to
interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let's go
and have a glass of garus at Bridoux'."

Leon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist
joked him about quill-drivers and the law.

"Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents
you? Be a man! Let's go to Bridoux'. You'll see his dog. It's
very interesting."

And as the clerk still insisted--

"I'll go with you. I'll read a paper while I wait for you, or
turn over the leaves of a 'Code.'"

Leon, bewildered by Emma's anger, Monsieur Homais' chatter, and,

perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as
it were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating--

"Let's go to Bridoux'. It's just by here, in the Rue Malpalu."

Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that

indefinable feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts,
he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux', whom they found in
his small yard, superintending three workmen, who panted as they
turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water.
Homais gave them some good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took
some garus. Twenty times Leon tried to escape, but the other
seized him by the arm saying--

"Presently! I'm coming! We'll go to the 'Fanal de Rouen' to see

the fellows there. I'll introduce you to Thornassin."

At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the

hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of
anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their
rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up
other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of
heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious
too, and cowardly.

Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no

doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love
always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch
our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.

They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside

their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of
flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a
waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external
aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on
her next journey. Then she confessed to herself that she felt
nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a
new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than
ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her
corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She
went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was
closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one
movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.

Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those
quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms,
something vague and dreary that seemed to Leon to glide between
them subtly as if to separate them.

He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she
must have passed, he thought, through every experience of
suffering and of pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened
him a little. Besides, he rebelled against his absorption, daily
more marked, by her personality. He begrudged Emma this constant
victory. He even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the
creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at the
sight of strong drinks.

She did not fail, in truth, to lavish all sorts of attentions

upon him, from the delicacies of food to the coquettries of dress
and languishing looks. She brought roses to her breast from
Yonville, which she threw into his face; was anxious about his
health, gave him advice as to his conduct; and, in order the more
surely to keep her hold on him, hoping perhaps that heaven would
take her part, she tied a medal of the Virgin round his neck. She
inquired like a virtuous mother about his companions. She said to
him--

"Don't see them; don't go out; think only of ourselves; love me!"

She would have liked to be able to watch over his life; and the
idea occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near
the hotel there was always a kind of loafer who accosted
travellers, and who would not refuse. But her pride revolted at
this.

"Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does it matter
to me? As If I cared for him!"

One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone
along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she
sat down on a form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that
time had been! How she longed for the ineffable sentiments of
love that she had tried to figure to herself out of books! The
first month of her marriage, her rides in the wood, the viscount
that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed before her eyes.
And Leon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the others.

"Yet I love him," she said to herself.

No matter! She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came
this insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay
of everything on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a
being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of
exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a
lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to
heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how
impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it;
everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every
joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left
upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater
delight.

A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were
heard from the convent-clock. Four o'clock! And it seemed to her
that she had been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity
of passions may be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small
space.

Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more about money
matters than an archduchess.

Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald, came to

her house, saying he had been sent by Monsieur Vincart of Rouen.
He took out the pins that held together the side-pockets of his
long green overcoat, stuck them into his sleeve, and politely
handed her a paper.

It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, and which
Lheureux, in spite of all his professions, had paid away to
Vincart. She sent her servant for him. He could not come. Then
the stranger, who had remained standing, casting right and left
curious glances, that his thick, fair eyebrows hid, asked with a
naive air--

"What answer am I to take Monsieur Vincart?"

"Oh," said Emma, "tell him that I haven't it. I will send next
week; he must wait; yes, till next week."
And the fellow went without another word.

But the next day at twelve o'clock she received a summons, and
the sight of the stamped paper, on which appeared several times
in large letters, "Maitre Hareng, bailiff at Buchy," so
frightened her that she rushed in hot haste to the linendraper's.
She found him in his shop, doing up a parcel.

"Your obedient!" he said; "I am at your service."

But Lheureux, all the same, went on with his work, helped by a
young girl of about thirteen, somewhat hunch-backed, who was at
once his clerk and his servant.

Then, his clogs clattering on the shop-boards, he went up in

front of Madame Bovary to the first door, and introduced her into
a narrow closet, where, in a large bureau in sapon-wood, lay some
ledgers, protected by a horizontal padlocked iron bar. Against
the wall, under some remnants of calico, one glimpsed a safe, but
of such dimensions that it must contain something besides bills
and money. Monsieur Lheureux, in fact, went in for pawnbroking,
and it was there that he had put Madame Bovary's gold chain,
together with the earrings of poor old Tellier, who, at last
forced to sell out, had bought a meagre store of grocery at
Quincampoix, where he was dying of catarrh amongst his candles,
that were less yellow than his face.

Lheureux sat down in a large cane arm-chair, saying: "What news?"

"See!"

And she showed him the paper.

"Well how can I help it?"

Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he had given
not to pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.

"But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own throat."

"And what will happen now?" she went on.

"Oh, it's very simple; a judgment and then a distraint--that's

about it!"
Emma kept down a desire to strike him, and asked gently if there
was no way of quieting Monsieur Vincart.

"I dare say! Quiet Vincart! You don't know him; he's more
ferocious than an Arab!"

Still Monsieur Lheureux must interfere.

"Well, listen. It seems to me so far I've been very good to you."

And opening one of his ledgers, "See," he said. Then running up
the page with his finger, "Let's see! let's see! August 3d, two
hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23d,
forty-six. In April--"

He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.

"Not to speak of the bills signed by Monsieur Bovary, one for

seven hundred francs, and another for three hundred. As to your
little installments, with the interest, why, there's no end to
'em; one gets quite muddled over 'em. I'll have nothing more to
do with it."

She wept; she even called him "her good Monsieur Lheureux." But
he always fell back upon "that rascal Vincart." Besides, he
hadn't a brass farthing; no one was paying him now-a-days; they
were eating his coat off his back; a poor shopkeeper like him
couldn't advance money.

Emma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was biting the
feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at her silence, for
he went on--

"Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I might--"

"Besides," said she, "as soon as the balance of Barneville--"

"What!"

And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemed much
surprised. Then in a honied voice--

"And we agree, you say?"

"Oh! to anything you like."

On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures,

and declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affair
was shady, and that he was being bled, he wrote out four bills
for two hundred and fifty francs each, to fall due month by
month.

"Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it's settled.

I don't play the fool; I'm straight enough."

Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of

which, however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.

"When I think that there's a dress at threepence-halfpenny a

yard, and warranted fast colours! And yet they actually swallow
it! Of course you understand one doesn't tell them what it really
is!" He hoped by this confession of dishonesty to others to quite
convince her of his probity to her.

Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipure that
he had lately picked up "at a sale."

"Isn't it lovely?" said Lheureux. "It is very much used now for
the backs of arm-chairs. It's quite the rage."

And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the guipure in some

blue paper and put it in Emma's hands.

"But at least let me know--"

"Yes, another time," he replied, turning on his heel.

That same evening she urged Bovary to write to his mother, to ask
her to send as quickly as possible the whole of the balance due
from the father's estate. The mother-in-law replied that she had
nothing more, the winding up was over, and there was due to them
besides Barneville an income of six hundred francs, that she
would pay them punctually.

Then Madame Bovary sent in accounts to two or three patients, and

she made large use of this method, which was very successful. She
was always careful to add a postscript: "Do not mention this to
my husband; you know how proud he is. Excuse me. Yours
obediently." There were some complaints; she intercepted them.

To get money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the
old odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant
blood standing her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she
picked up nick-nacks secondhand, that, in default of anyone else,
Monsieur Lheureux would certainly take off her hands. She bought
ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed
from Felicite, from Madame Lefrancois, from the landlady at the
Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no matter where.

With the money she at last received from Barneville she paid two
bills; the other fifteen hundred francs fell due. She renewed the
bills, and thus it was continually.

Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make a calculation, but she

discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them
possible. Then she recommenced, soon got confused, gave it all
up, and thought no more about it.

The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen leaving it
with angry faces. Handkerchiefs were lying about on the stoves,
and little Berthe, to the great scandal of Madame Homais, wore
stockings with holes in them. If Charles timidly ventured a
remark, she answered roughly that it wasn't her fault.

What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? He explained

everything through her old nervous illness, and reproaching
himself with having taken her infirmities for faults, accused
himself of egotism, and longed to go and take her in his arms.

"Ah, no!" he said to himself; "I should worry her."

And he did not stir.

After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he took little

Berthe on his knees, and unfolding his medical journal, tried to
teach her to read. But the child, who never had any lessons, soon
looked up with large, sad eyes and began to cry. Then he
comforted her; went to fetch water in her can to make rivers on
the sand path, or broke off branches from the privet hedges to
plant trees in the beds. This did not spoil the garden much, all
choked now with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois for so many
days. Then the child grew cold and asked for her mother.

"Call the servant," said Charles. "You know, dearie, that mamma
does not like to be disturbed."

Autumn was setting in, and the leaves were already falling, as
they did two years ago when she was ill. Where would it all end?
And he walked up and down, his hands behind his back.
Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there
all day long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning
Turkish pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's
shop. In order not to have at night this sleeping man stretched
at her side, by dint of manoeuvring, she at last succeeded in
banishing him to the second floor, while she read till morning
extravagant books, full of pictures of orgies and thrilling
situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out, and Charles
hurried to her.

"Oh, go away!" she would say.

Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner

flame to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all
desire, she threw open her window, breathed in the cold air,
shook loose in the wind her masses of hair, too heavy, and,
gazing upon the stars, longed for some princely love. She thought
of him, of Leon. She would then have given anything for a single
one of those meetings that surfeited her.

These were her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous, and
when he alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit
liberally, which happened pretty well every time. He tried to
make her understand that they would be quite as comfortable
somewhere else, in a smaller hotel, but she always found some
objection.

One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her bag (they
were old Roualt's wedding present), begging him to pawn them at
once for her, and Leon obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him.
He was afraid of compromising himself.

Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress's ways were

growing odd, and that they were perhaps not wrong in wishing to
separate him from her.

In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to

warn her that he was "ruining himself with a married woman," and
the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of
families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster,
who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer
Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He
kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes,
to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such an
intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself.
He implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this
sacrifice in his own interest, to do it at least for his,
Dubocage's sake.

At last Leon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached
himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry
and lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without
reckoning the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the
stove in the morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it
was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted
sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his
youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself
capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most
mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears
within him the debris of a poet.

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast,
and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain
amount of music, dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he
no longer noted.

They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of
possession that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick
of him as he was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all
the platitudes of marriage.

But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated
at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or
from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more,
exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She
accused Leon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and
she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their
separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to
it herself.

She none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of
the notion that a woman must write to her lover.

But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom
fashioned out of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading,
her strongest lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible,
that she palpitated wondering, without, however, the power to
imagine him clearly, so lost was he, like a god, beneath the
abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in that azure land where
silk ladders hang from balconies under the breath of flowers, in
the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was coming, and
would carry her right away in a kiss.

Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love
wearied her more than great debauchery.

She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received
summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would
have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.

On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening

went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a
club wig, and three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced
all night to the wild tones of the trombones; people gathered
round her, and in the morning she found herself on the steps of
the theatre together with five or six masks, debardeuses* and
sailors, Leon's comrades, who were talking about having supper.

* People dressed as longshoremen.

The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of one on the
harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed
them to a little room on the fourth floor.

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

expenses. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a
shopman--what company for her! As to the women, Emma soon
perceived from the tone of their voices that they must almost
belong to the lowest class. Then she was frightened, pushed back
her chair, and cast down her eyes.

The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was on fire,
her eyes smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her head she
seemed to feel the floor of the ball-room rebounding again
beneath the rhythmical pulsation of the thousands of dancing
feet. And now the smell of the punch, the smoke of the cigars,
made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her to the window.

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

out in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The livid
river was shivering in the wind; there was no one on the bridges;
the street lamps were going out.

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

servant's room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron
passed by, and made a deafening metallic vibration against the
walls of the houses.

She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Leon she
must get back, and at last was alone at the Hotel de Boulogne.
Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished
that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away
to regions of purity, and there grow young again.

She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, and the
Faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked some gardens.
She walked rapidly; the fresh air calming her; and, little by
little, the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the
lights, the supper, those women, all disappeared like mists
fading away. Then, reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she threw herself
on the bed in her little room on the second floor, where there
were pictures of the "Tour de Nesle." At four o'clock Hivert
awoke her.

When she got home, Felicite showed her behind the clock a grey
paper. She read--

"In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment."

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

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

"By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary." Then,
skipping several lines, she read, "Within twenty-four hours,
without fail--" But what? "To pay the sum of eight thousand
francs." And there was even at the bottom, "She will be
constrained thereto by every form of law, and notably by a writ
of distraint on her furniture and effects."

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

she thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she saw through
all his devices, the object of his kindnesses. What reassured her
was the very magnitude of the sum.

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

bills, and renewing these bills that grew at each new falling-in,
she had ended by preparing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux which
he was impatiently awaiting for his speculations.

She presented herself at his place with an offhand air.

"You know what has happened to me? No doubt it's a joke!"

"How so?"

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

"My good lady, did you think I should go on to all eternity being
your purveyor and banker, for the love of God? Now be just. I
must get back what I've laid out. Now be just."

She cried out against the debt.

"Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it. There's a
judgment. It's been notified to you. Besides, it isn't my fault.
It's Vincart's."

"Could you not--?"

"Oh, nothing whatever."

"But still, now talk it over."

And she began beating about the bush; she had known nothing about
it; it was a surprise.

"Whose fault is that?" said Lheureux, bowing ironically. "While

I'm slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about."

"Ah! no lecturing."

"It never does any harm," he replied.

She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty
white and slender hand against the shopkeeper's knee.

"There, that'll do! Anyone'd think you wanted to seduce me!"

"You are a wretch!" she cried.

"Oh, oh! go it! go it!"

"I will show you up. I shall tell my husband."

"All right! I too. I'll show your husband something."

And Lheureux drew from his strong box the receipt for eighteen
hundred francs that she had given him when Vincart had discounted
the bills.

"Do you think," he added, "that he'll not understand your little
theft, the poor dear man?"

She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a

pole-axe. He was walking up and down from the window to the
bureau, repeating all the while--

"Ah! I'll show him! I'll show him!" Then he approached her, and
in a soft voice said--

"It isn't pleasant, I know; but, after all, no bones are broken,
and, since that is the only way that is left for you paying back
my money--"

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

"Bah! when one has friends like you!"

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

shuddered to her very heart.

"I promise you," she said, "to sign--"

"I've enough of your signatures."

"I will sell something."

"Get along!" he said, shrugging his shoulders; "you've not got

anything."

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

"Annette, don't forget the three coupons of No. 14."

The servant appeared. Emma understood, and asked how much money
would be wanted to put a stop to the proceedings.

"It is too late."

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

sum--a third--perhaps the whole?"
"No; it's no use!"

And he pushed her gently towards the staircase.

"I implore you, Monsieur Lheureux, just a few days more!" She was
sobbing.

"There! tears now!"

"You are driving me to despair!"

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

Chapter Seven

She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff,
with two assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up
the inventory for the distraint.

They began with Bovary's consulting-room, and did not write down
the phrenological head, which was considered an "instrument of
his profession"; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the
saucepans, the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all
the nick-nacks on the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the
linen, the dressing-room; and her whole existence to its most
intimate details, was, like a corpse on whom a post-mortem is
made, outspread before the eyes of these three men.

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

white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to
time--"Allow me, madame. You allow me?" Often he uttered
exclamations. "Charming! very pretty." Then he began writing
again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand.

When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She
kept a desk there in which Rodolphe's letters were locked. It had
to be opened.

"Ah! a correspondence," said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet

smile. "But allow me, for I must make sure the box contains
nothing else." And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to
shake out napoleons. Then she grew angered to see this coarse
hand, with fingers red and pulpy like slugs, touching these pages
against which her heart had beaten.
They went at last. Felicite came back. Emma had sent her out to
watch for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly
installed the man in possession under the roof, where he swore he
would remain.

During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched

him with a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in
every line of his face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the
chimney-piece ornamented with Chinese screens, over the large
curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had,
softened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather
an immense regret, that, far from crushing, irritated her
passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the
fire-dogs.

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

noise.

"Is anyone walking upstairs?" said Charles.

"No," she replied; "it is a window that has been left open, and
is rattling in the wind."

The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the
brokers whose names she knew. They were at their country-places
or on journeys. She was not discouraged; and those whom she did
manage to see she asked for money, declaring she must have some,
and that she would pay it back. Some laughed in her face; all
refused.

At two o'clock she hurried to Leon, and knocked at the door. No

one answered. At length he appeared.

"What brings you here?"

"Do I disturb you?"

"No; but--" And he admitted that his landlord didn't like his
having "women" there.

"I must speak to you," she went on.

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

"No, no! Down there, in our home!"

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

On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very
pale. She said to him--

"Leon, you will do me a service?"

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

"Listen, I want eight thousand francs."

"But you are mad!"

"Not yet."

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

explained her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it;
her mother-in-law detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but
he, Leon, he would set about finding this indispensable sum.

"How on earth can I?"

"What a coward you are!" she cried.

Then he said stupidly, "You are exaggerating the difficulty.

Perhaps, with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be
stopped."

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

that they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Leon,
could be security instead of her.

"Go, try, try! I will love you so!"

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

"I have been to three people with no success."

Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney

corners, motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as
she stamped her feet. He heard her murmuring--

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

"But where?"

"At your office." And she looked at him.

An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their
lids drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look,
so that the young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute
will of this woman who was urging him to a crime. Then he was
afraid, and to avoid any explanation he smote his forehead,
crying--

"Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope"

(this was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant);
"and I will bring it you to-morrow," he added.

Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had
expected. Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--

"However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for

me, my darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!"

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

strength left for any sentiment.

Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville,

mechanically obeying the force of old habits.

The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and
sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen
folk, in Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She
reached the Place du Parvis. People were coming out after
vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three doors like a
stream through the three arches of a bridge, and in the middle
one, more motionless than a rock, stood the beadle.

Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope,
she had entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out
before her, less profound than her love; and she walked on
weeping beneath her veil, giddy, staggering, almost fainting.

"Take care!" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard

that was thrown open.

She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between
the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who
was it? She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.

Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was
empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean
against a wall to keep herself from falling.

Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know.
All within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost,
sinking at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost
with joy that, on reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good
Homais, who was watching a large box full of pharmaceutical
stores being hoisted on to the "Hirondelle." In his hand he held
tied in a silk handkerchief six cheminots for his wife.

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

loaves, that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige
of Gothic food that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the
Crusades, and with which the robust Normans gorged themselves of
yore, fancying they saw on the table, in the light of the yellow
torches, between tankards of hippocras and huge boars' heads, the
heads of Saracens to be devoured. The druggist's wife crunched
them up as they had done--heroically, despite her wretched teeth.
And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never failed to
bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the
Rue Massacre.

"Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her

into the "Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords
of the netting, and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive
and Napoleonic.

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

"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable

industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to
work. Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are
floundering about in mere barbarism."

The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door,
as if it were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.

"This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection."

And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for
the first time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque
cornea," "sclerotic," "facies," then asked him in a paternal
tone--

"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself."

He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The
blind man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost
idiotic. At last Monsieur Homais opened his purse--

"Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my
advice: you'll be the better for it."

Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the
druggist said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic
pomade of his own composition, and he gave his address--"Monsieur
Homais, near the market, pretty well known."

"Now," said Hivert, "for all this trouble you'll give us your
performance."

The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown
back, whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue,
and rubbed his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of
hollow yell like a famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw
him over her shoulder a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune.
It seemed to her very fine thus to throw it away.

The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant
out through the window, crying--

"No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose
the diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries."

The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes
gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable
fatigue overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied,
discouraged, almost asleep.

"Come what may come!" she said to herself. "And then, who knows?
Why, at any moment could not some extraordinary event occur?
Lheureux even might die!"

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

voices in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a
large bill fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was
climbing on to a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this
moment the rural guard seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais
came out of his shop, and Mere Lefrangois, in the midst of the
crowd, seemed to be perorating.

"Madame! madame!" cried Felicite, running in, "it's abominable!"

And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that
she had just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all
her furniture was for sale.

Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and

mistress had no secret one from the other. At last Felicite
sighed--

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

"Do you think--"

And this question meant to say--

"You who know the house through the servant, has the master
spoken sometimes of me?"

"Yes, you'd do well to go there."

She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads,
and that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the
Place), she took the path by the river, outside the village.

She reached the notary's gate quite breathless. The sky was
sombre, and a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell,
Theodore in a red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to
open the door almost familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and
showed her into the dining-room.

A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up

the niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the
oak-stained paper hung Steuben's "Esmeralda" and Schopin's
"Potiphar." The ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes,
the crystal door-knobs, the parquet and the furniture, all shone
with a scrupulous, English cleanliness; the windows were
ornamented at each corner with stained glass.

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

The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his
breast with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and
quickly put on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked
on the right side, whence looked out the ends of three fair curls
drawn from the back of the head, following the line of his bald
skull.

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

apologising profusely for his rudeness.

"I have come," she said, "to beg you, sir--"

"What, madame? I am listening."

And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin

knew it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from
whom he always got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was
asked to make.

So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the
bills, small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made
out at long dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when,
gathering together all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had
bidden his friend Vincart take in his own name all the necessary
proceedings, not wishing to pass for a tiger with his
fellow-citizens.

She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheureux, to

which the notary replied from time to time with some
insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he
buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which were thrust
two diamond pins, held together by a small gold chain; and he
smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous fashion. But
noticing that her feet were damp, he said--

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

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

tone--

"Beautiful things spoil nothing."

Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began
telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her
wants. He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without
leaving off eating, he had turned completely round towards her,
so that his knee brushed against her boot, whose sole curled
round as it smoked against the stove.

But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and
declared he was very sorry he had not had the management of her
fortune before, for there were hundreds of ways very convenient,
even for a lady, of turning her money to account. They might,
either in the turf-peats of Grumesnil or building-ground at
Havre, almost without risk, have ventured on some excellent
speculations; and he let her consume herself with rage at the
thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly have made.

"How was it," he went on, "that you didn't come to me?"

"I hardly know," she said.

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

who ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very
devoted to you. You do not doubt that, I hope?"

He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss,
then held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her
fingers whilst he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid
voice murmured like a running brook; a light shone in his eyes
through the glimmering of his spectacles, and his hand was
advancing up Emma's sleeve to press her arm. She felt against her
cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed her horribly.

She sprang up and said to him--

"Sir, I am waiting."

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

"This money."

"But--" Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire,

"Well, yes!"

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

dressing-gown.

"For pity's sake, stay. I love you!"

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

She recoiled with a terrible look, crying--

"You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am

to be pitied--not to be sold."

And she went out.

The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine
embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of
them at last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an
adventure might have carried him too far.

"What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!" she said to

herself, as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the
path. The disappointment of her failure increased the indignation
of her outraged modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued
her implacably, and, strengthening herself in her pride, she had
never felt so much esteem for herself nor so much contempt for
others. A spirit of warfare transformed her. She would have liked
to strike all men, to spit in their faces, to crush them, and she
walked rapidly straight on, pale, quivering, maddened, searching
the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes, and as it were rejoicing
in the hate that was choking her.

When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go
on; and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?

Felicite was waiting for her at the door. "Well?"

"No!" said Emma.

And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the
various persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help
her. But each time that Felicite named someone Emma replied--

"Impossible! they will not!"

"And the master'll soon be in."

"I know that well enough. Leave me alone."

She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now;
and when Charles came in she would have to say to him--

"Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours.
In your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and
it is I, poor man, who have ruined you."

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

and at last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.

"Yes," she murmured, grinding her teeth, "he will forgive me, he
who would give a million if I would forgive him for having known
me! Never! never!"

This thought of Bovary's superiority to her exasperated her.

Then, whether she confessed or did not confess, presently,
immediately, to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the
same; so she must wait for this horrible scene, and bear the
weight of his magnanimity. The desire to return to Lheureux's
seized her--what would be the use? To write to her father--it was
too late; and perhaps, she began to repent now that she had not
yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of a horse in the
alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter than the
plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the
square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to
Lestiboudois in front of the church, saw her go in to the
tax-collector's.

She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up
to the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props,
stationed themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of
Binet's room.

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

indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres
hollowed out one within the other, the whole as straight as an
obelisk, and of no use whatever; and he was beginning on the last
piece--he was nearing his goal. In the twilight of the workshop
the white dust was flying from his tools like a shower of sparks
under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the two wheels were
turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his nostrils
distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete
happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace
occupations, which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and
satisfy by a realisation of that beyond which such minds have not
a dream.

"Ah! there she is!" exclaimed Madame Tuvache.

But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was
saying.
At last these ladies thought they made out the word "francs," and
Madame Tuvache whispered in a low voice--

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

"Apparently!" replied the other.

They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the
candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet
stroked his beard with satisfaction.

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

"Why, he doesn't sell anything," objected her neighbour.

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

if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant
manner. She came nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no
longer spoke.

"Is she making him advances?" said Madame Tuvache. Binet was
scarlet to his very ears. She took hold of his hands.

"Oh, it's too much!"

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

the tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at
Lutzen, had been through the French campaign, and had even been
recommended for the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a
serpent, recoiled as far as he could from her, crying--

"Madame! what do you mean?"

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

"But where is she?" continued Madame Caron, for she had

disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going
up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if making for the
cemetery, they were lost in conjectures.

"Nurse Rollet," she said on reaching the nurse's, "I am choking;

unlace me!" She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her
with a petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she
did not answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began
spinning flax.

"Oh, leave off!" she murmured, fancying she heard Binet's lathe.

"What's bothering her?" said the nurse to herself. "Why has she
come here?"

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

her from her home.

Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw
things but vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic
persistence. She looked at the scales on the walls, two brands
smoking end to end, and a long spider crawling over her head in a
rent in the beam. At last she began to collect her thoughts. She
remembered--one day--Leon--Oh! how long ago that was--the sun was
shining on the river, and the clematis were perfuming the air.
Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon began to
recall the day before.

"What time is it?" she asked.

Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to
that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly,
saying--

"Nearly three."

"Ahl thanks, thanks!"

For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,
perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told
the nurse to run to her house to fetch him.

"Be quick!"

"But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!"

She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.
Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she
already saw herself at Lheureux's spreading out her three
bank-notes on his bureau. Then she would have to invent some
story to explain matters to Bovary. What should it be?

The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no
clock in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the
length of time. She began walking round the garden, step by step;
she went into the path by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping
that the woman would have come back by another road. At last,
weary of waiting, assailed by fears that she thrust from her, no
longer conscious whether she had been here a century or a moment,
she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and stopped her ears.
The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken Mere Rollet
said to her--

"There is no one at your house!"

"What?"

"Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you;

they're looking for you."

Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about
her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back
instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and
uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of
lightning in a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so
good, so delicate, so generous! And besides, should he hesitate
to do her this service, she would know well enough how to
constrain him to it by re-waking, in a single moment, their lost
love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not seeing that she was
hastening to offer herself to that which but a while ago had so
angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.

Chapter Eight

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

How shall I begin?" And as she went on she recognised the
thickets, the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the chateau
yonder. All the sensations of her first tenderness came back to
her, and her poor aching heart opened out amorously. A warm wind
blew in her face; the melting snow fell drop by drop from the
buds to the grass.

She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She
reached the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees.
They were swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The
dogs in their kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices
resounded, but brought out no one.
She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters
that led to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which
several doors in a row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His
was at the top, right at the end, on the left. When she placed
her fingers on the lock her strength suddenly deserted her. She
was afraid, almost wished he would not be there, though this was
her only hope, her last chance of salvation. She collected her
thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening herself by the
feeling of present necessity, went in.

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

smoking a pipe.

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

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

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

open her lips.

"You have not changed; you are charming as ever!"

"Oh," she replied bitterly, "they are poor charms since you
disdained them."

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

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

She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight
of him, so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed;
in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on
which depended the honour, the very life of a third person.

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

He replied philosophically--

"Such is life!"

"Has life," Emma went on, "been good to you at least, since our
separation?"

"Oh, neither good nor bad."

"Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted."

"Yes, perhaps."

"You think so?" she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. "Oh,
Rodolphe! if you but knew! I loved you so!"

It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time,
their fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With
a gesture of pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking
upon his breast she said to him--

"How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the
habit of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I
will tell you about all that and you will see. And you--you fled
from me!"

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

consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises the
stronger sex. Emma went on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing
than an amorous kitten--

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

excuse them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are
indeed a man; you have everything to make one love you. But we'll
begin again, won't we? We will love one another. See! I am
laughing; I am happy! Oh, speak!"

And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a
tear, like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.

He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand
was caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored
like a golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her
brow; at last he kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the
tips of his lips.

"Why, you have been crying! What for?"

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

her love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last
remnant of resistance, and then he cried out--

"Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was
imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is
it. Tell me!" He was kneeling by her.
"Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand
francs."

"But--but--" said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a

grave expression.

"You know," she went on quickly, "that my husband had placed his
whole fortune at a notary's. He ran away. So we borrowed; the
patients don't pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is
not yet done; we shall have the money later on. But to-day, for
want of three thousand francs, we are to be sold up. It is to be
at once, this very moment, and, counting upon your friendship, I
have come to you."

"Ah!" thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, "that was what she
came for." At last he said with a calm air--

"Dear madame, I have not got them."

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

given them, although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine
things: a demand for money being, of all the winds that blow upon
love, the coldest and most destructive.

First she looked at him for some moments.

"You have not got them!" she repeated several times. "You have
not got them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You
never loved me. You are no better than the others."

She was betraying, ruining herself.

Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was "hard up" himself.

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

And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against
its panoply, "But when one is so poor one doesn't have silver on
the butt of one's gun. One doesn't buy a clock inlaid with
tortoise shell," she went on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, "nor
silver-gilt whistles for one's whips," and she touched them, "nor
charms for one's watch. Oh, he wants for nothing! even to a
liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself; you live well.
You have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you travel to
Paris. Why, if it were but that," she cried, taking up two studs
from the mantelpiece, "but the least of these trifles, one can
get money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!"

And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain
breaking as it struck against the wall.

"But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all,
worked for you with my hands, I would have begged on the
highroads for a smile, for a look, to hear you say 'Thanks!' And
you sit there quietly in your arm-chair, as if you had not made
me suffer enough already! But for you, and you know it, I might
have lived happily. What made you do it? Was it a bet? Yet you
loved me--you said so. And but a moment since--Ah! it would have
been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with your
kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you
swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years
you held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our
plans for the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your
letter! it tore my heart! And then when I come back to him--to
him, rich, happy, free--to implore the help the first stranger
would give, a suppliant, and bringing back to him all my
tenderness, he repulses me because it would cost him three
thousand francs!"

"I haven't got them," replied Rodolphe, with that perfect calm
with which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield.

She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her,
and she passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the
heaps of dead leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached
the ha-ha hedge in front of the gate; she broke her nails against
the lock in her haste to open it. Then a hundred steps farther
on, breathless, almost falling, she stopped. And now turning
round, she once more saw the impassive chateau, with the park,
the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the facade.

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

herself than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed
to hear bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the
fields. The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the
sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking
into foam. Everything in her head, of memories, ideas, went off
at once like a thousand pieces of fireworks. She saw her father,
Lheureux's closet, their room at home, another landscape. Madness
was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and managed to recover
herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did not in the
least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was in,
that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her
love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as
wounded men, dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding
wounds.

Night was falling, crows were flying about.

Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in

the air like fulminating balls when they strike, and were
whirling, whirling, to melt at last upon the snow between the
branches of the trees. In the midst of each of them appeared the
face of Rodolphe. They multiplied and drew near her, penetrating,
her. It all disappeared; she recognised the lights of the houses
that shone through the fog.

Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was
panting as if her heart would burst. Then in an ecstasy of
heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran down the hill,
crossed the cow-plank, the foot-path, the alley, the market, and
reached the chemist's shop. She was about to enter, but at the
sound of the bell someone might come, and slipping in by the
gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she
went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on
the stove was burning. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying
out a dish.

"Ah! they are dining; I will wait."

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

"The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the--"

"What?"

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

stood out white against the black background of the night. She
seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a
phantom. Without understanding what she wanted, he had the
presentiment of something terrible.

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

voice, "I want it; give it to me."

As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of
the forks on the plates in the dining-room.
She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from
sleeping.

"I must tell master."

"No, stay!" Then with an indifferent air, "Oh, it's not worth
while; I'll tell him presently. Come, light me upstairs."

She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened.
Against the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum.

"Justin!" called the druggist impatiently.

"Let us go up."

And he followed her. The key turned in the lock, and she went
straight to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her,
seized the blue jar, tore out the cork, plunged in her hand, and
withdrawing it full of a white powder, she began eating it.

"Stop!" he cried, rushing at her.

"Hush! someone will come."

He was in despair, was calling out.

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

Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with something of the
serenity of one that had performed a duty.

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

home, Emma had just gone out. He cried aloud, wept, fainted, but
she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Felicite to
Homais, to Monsieur Tuvache, to Lheureux, to the "Lion d'Or,"
everywhere, and in the intervals of his agony he saw his
reputation destroyed, their fortune lost, Berthe's future ruined.
By what?--Not a word! He waited till six in the evening. At last,
unable to bear it any longer, and fancying she had gone to Rouen,
he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no one, again
waited, and returned home. She had come back.

"What was the matter? Why? Explain to me."

She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter, which she
sealed slowly, adding the date and the hour. Then she said in a
solemn tone:

"You are to read it to-morrow; till then, I pray you, do not ask
me a single question. No, not one!"

"But--"

"Oh, leave me!"

She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she felt
in her mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and again closed her
eyes.

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

suffering. But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the
clock, the crackling of the fire, and Charles breathing as he
stood upright by her bed.

"Ah! it is but a little thing, death!" she thought. "I shall fall
asleep and all will be over."

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

frightful taste of ink continued.

"I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty," she sighed.

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

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

She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly time
to draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow.

"Take it away," she said quickly; "throw it away."

He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, afraid
that the slightest movement might make her vomit. But she felt an
icy cold creeping from her feet to her heart.

"Ah! it is beginning," she murmured.

"What did you say?"

She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full
of agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very
heavy were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o'clock the
vomiting began again.

Charles noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was a sort
of white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain.

"This is extraordinary--very singular," he repeated.

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

Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his hand over
her stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back
terror-stricken.

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

shaken by a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the
sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her
unequal pulse was now almost imperceptible.

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

rigid in the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth
chattered, her dilated eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all
questions she replied only with a shake of the head; she even
smiled once or twice. Gradually, her moaning grew louder; a
hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she was better and
that she would get up presently. But she was seized with
convulsions and cried out--

"Ah! my God! It is horrible!"

He threw himself on his knees by her bed.

"Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven's sake!"

And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such as she

had never seen.

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

writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: "Accuse no
one." He stopped, passed his hands across his eyes, and read it
over again.

"What! help--help!"

He could only keep repeating the word: "Poisoned! poisoned!"

Felicite ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the market-place;
Madame Lefrancois heard it at the "Lion d'Or"; some got up to go
and tell their neighbours, and all night the village was on the
alert.

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

He knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist
had never believed that there could be so terrible a sight.

He went home to write to Monsieur Canivet and to Doctor

Lariviere. He lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough
copies. Hippolyte went to Neufchatel, and Justin so spurred
Bovary's horse that he left it foundered and three parts dead by
the hill at Bois-Guillaume.

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

read it; the lines were dancing.

"Be calm," said the druggist; "we have only to administer a

powerful antidote. What is the poison?"

Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic.

"Very well," said Homais, "we must make an analysis."

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

and the other, who did not understand, answered--

"Oh, do anything! save her!"

Then going back to her, he sank upon the carpet, and lay there
with his head leaning against the edge of her bed, sobbing.

"Don't cry," she said to him. "Soon I shall not trouble you any
more."

"Why was it? Who drove you to it?"

She replied. "It had to be, my dear!"

"Weren't you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!"

"Yes, that is true--you are good--you."

And she passed her hand slowly over his hair. The sweetness of
this sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being
dissolving in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just
when she was confessing more love for him than ever. And he could
think of nothing; he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent
need for some immediate resolution gave the finishing stroke to
the turmoil of his mind.

So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and
meanness, and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated
no one now; a twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts,
and, of all earthly noises, Emma heard none but the intermittent
lamentations of this poor heart, sweet and indistinct like the
echo of a symphony dying away.

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

"You are not worse, are you?" asked Charles.

"No, no!"

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

servant's arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare
feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the disordered room,
and half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the
table. They reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year's
day and Mid-Lent, when thus awakened early by candle-light she
came to her mother's bed to fetch her presents, for she began
saying--

"But where is it, mamma?" And as everybody was silent, "But I

can't see my little stocking."

Felicite held her over the bed while she still kept looking
towards the mantelpiece.

"Has nurse taken it?" she asked.

And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her
adulteries and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her
head, as at the loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to
her mouth. But Berthe remained perched on the bed.

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

Her mother looked at her. "I am frightened!" cried the child,

recoiling.

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

"That will do. Take her away," cried Charles, who was sobbing in
the alcove.

Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated;
and at every insignificant word, at every respiration a little
more easy, he regained hope. At last, when Canivet came in, he
threw himself into his arms.

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

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

himself, "never beating about the bush," he prescribed, an emetic
in order to empty the stomach completely.

She soon began vomiting blood. Her lips became drawn. Her limbs
were convulsed, her whole body covered with brown spots, and her
pulse slipped beneath the fingers like a stretched thread, like a
harp-string nearly breaking.

After this she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison,
railed at it, and implored it to be quick, and thrust away with
her stiffened arms everything that Charles, in more agony than
herself, tried to make her drink. He stood up, his handkerchief
to his lips, with a rattling sound in his throat, weeping, and
choked by sobs that shook his whole body. Felicite was running
hither and thither in the room. Homais, motionless, uttered great
sighs; and Monsieur Canivet, always retaining his self-command,
nevertheless began to feel uneasy.

"The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the
cause ceases--"

"The effect must cease," said Homais, "that is evident."

"Oh, save her!" cried Bovary.

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

the hypothesis, "It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm," Canivet was
about to administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of
a whip; all the windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three
horses abreast, up to their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round
the corner of the market. It was Doctor Lariviere.

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

Bovary raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled
off his skull-cap long before the doctor had come in.

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

to that generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners,
who, loving their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with
enthusiasm and wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he
was angry; and his students so revered him that they tried, as
soon as they were themselves in practice, to imitate him as much
as possible. So that in all the towns about they were found
wearing his long wadded merino overcoat and black frock-coat,
whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny hands--very
beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be more
ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles,
and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers,
generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without
believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the
keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a
demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked
straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all
assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along, full of
that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness of great
talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and
irreproachable life.

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

cadaverous face of Emma stretched out on her back with her mouth
open. Then, while apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his
fingers up and down beneath his nostrils, and repeated--

"Good! good!"

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

him; they looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he
was to the sight of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on
his shirt-frill.

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

him.

"She is very ill, isn't she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything!

Oh, think of something, you who have saved so many!"

Charles caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly,
imploringly, half-fainting against his breast.
"Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be
done."

And Doctor Lariviere turned away.

"You are going?"

"I will come back."

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

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

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

temperament keep away from celebrities, so he begged Monsieur
Lariviere to do him the signal honour of accepting some
breakfast.

He sent quickly to the "Lion d'Or" for some pigeons; to the

butcher's for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for
cream; and to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself
aided in the preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she
pulled together the strings of her jacket--

"You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn't
been told the night before--"

"Wine glasses!" whispered Homais.

"If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed

trotters."

"Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!"

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

details as to the catastrophe.

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

intolerable pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma."

"But how did she poison herself?"

"I don't know, doctor, and I don't even know where she can have
procured the arsenious acid."

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

tremble.

"What's the matter?" said the chemist.

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

"Imbecile!" cried Homais. "awkward lout! block-head! confounded

ass!"

But suddenly controlling himself--

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

introduced a tube--"

"You would have done better," said the physician, "to introduce
your fingers into her throat."

His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a

severe lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so
arrogant and so verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day
very modest. He smiled without ceasing in an approving manner.

Homais dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought

of Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of
egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor
transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell
cantharides, upas, the manchineel, vipers.

"I have even read that various persons have found themselves
under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by
black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement
fumigation. At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn
up by one of our pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the
illustrious Cadet de Gassicourt!"

Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines

that are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make
his coffee at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised
it, and mixed it himself.

"Saccharum, doctor?" said he, offering the sugar.

Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the
physician's opinion on their constitutions.
At last Monsieur Lariviere was about to leave, when Madame Homais
asked for a consultation about her husband. He was making his
blood too thick by going to sleep every evening after dinner.

"Oh, it isn't his blood that's too thick," said the physician.

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

the door. But the chemist's shop was full of people; he had the
greatest difficulty in getting rid of Monsieur Tuvache, who
feared his spouse would get inflammation of the lungs, because
she was in the habit of spitting on the ashes; then of Monsieur
Binet, who sometimes experienced sudden attacks of great hunger;
and of Madame Caron, who suffered from tinglings; of Lheureux,
who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had rheumatism; and of
Madame Lefrancois, who had heartburn. At last the three horses
started; and it was the general opinion that he had not shown
himself at all obliging.

Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur

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

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

attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was
personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of
the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.

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

returned to Bovary's in company with Canivet whom Monsieur
Lariviere, before leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit;
and he would, but for his wife's objections, have taken his two
sons with him, in order to accustom them to great occasions; that
this might be a lesson, an example, a solemn picture, that should
remain in their heads later on.

The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the
work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or
six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix
between two lighted candles.

Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately
wide open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that
hideous and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they
wanted already to cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a
statue and with eyes red as fire, Charles, not weeping, stood
opposite her at the foot of the bed, while the priest, bending
one knee, was muttering words in a low voice.
She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing
suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst
of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her
first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude
that were beginning.

The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward
her neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body
of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring
strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then
he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right
thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First upon
the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the
nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous
odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had
curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands
that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles
of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy
her desires, and that would now walk no more.

The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil
into the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell
her that she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus
Christ and abandon herself to the divine mercy.

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

blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was
soon to be surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her
fingers, and the taper, but for Monsieur Bournisien would have
fallen to the ground.

However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an
expression of serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.

The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to
Bovary that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when
he thought it meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered
the day when, so near death, she had received the communion.
Perhaps there was no need to despair, he thought.

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

dream; then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass,
and remained some time bending over it, until the big tears fell
from her eyes. Then she turned away her head with a sigh and fell
back upon the pillows.
Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue
protruded from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler,
like the two globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one
might have thought her already dead but for the fearful labouring
of her ribs, shaken by violent breathing, as if the soul were
struggling to free itself. Felicite knelt down before the
crucifix, and the druggist himself slightly bent his knees, while
Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at the Place. Bournisien had
again begun to pray, his face bowed against the edge of the bed,
his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Charles
was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched
towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering
at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin.
As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his
prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes
all seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that
tolled like a passing bell.

Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the
clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that
sang--

"Maids in the warmth of a summer day

Dream of love and of love always"

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

her eyes fixed, staring.

"Where the sickle blades have been,

Nannette, gathering ears of corn,
Passes bending down, my queen,
To the earth where they were born."

"The blind man!" she cried. And Emma began to laugh, an

atrocious, frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the
hideous face of the poor wretch that stood out against the
eternal night like a menace.

"The wind is strong this summer day,

Her petticoat has flown away."

She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew
near. She was dead.
Chapter Nine

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

so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to
resign ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that
she did not move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying--

"Farewell! farewell!"

Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room.

"Restrain yourself!"

"Yes." said he, struggling, "I'll be quiet. I'll not do anything.

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

And he wept.

"Cry," said the chemist; "let nature take her course; that will
solace you."

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

the sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the
Place he was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged
himself as far as Yonville, in the hope of getting the
antiphlogistic pomade, was asking every passer-by where the
druggist lived.

"There now! as if I hadn't got other fish to fry. Well, so much

the worse; you must come later on."

And he entered the shop hurriedly.

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

Bovary, to invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and
work it up into an article for the "Fanal," without counting the
people who were waiting to get the news from him; and when the
Yonvillers had all heard his story of the arsenic that she had
mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla cream. Homais once more
returned to Bovary's.

He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an

arm-chair near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the
flags of the floor.
"Now," said the chemist, "you ought yourself to fix the hour for
the ceremony."

"Why? What ceremony?" Then, in a stammering, frightened voice,

"Oh, no! not that. No! I want to see her here."

Homais, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on

the whatnot to water the geraniums.

"Ah! thanks," said Charles; "you are good."

But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that
this action of the druggist recalled to him.

Then to distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little

horticulture: plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his head in
sign of approbation.

"Besides, the fine days will soon be here again."

"Ah!" said Bovary.

The druggist, at his wit's end, began softly to draw aside the
small window-curtain.

"Hallo! there's Monsieur Tuvache passing."

Charles repeated like a machine---

"Monsieur Tuvache passing!"

Homais did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral
arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him
to them.

He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after

sobbing for some time, wrote--

"I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes,

and a wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders.
Three coffins, one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no
one say anything to me. I shall have strength. Over all there is
to be placed a large piece of green velvet. This is my wish; see
that it is done."

The two men were much surprised at Bovary's romantic ideas. The
chemist at once went to him and said--

"This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--"

"What's that to you?" cried Charles. "Leave me! You did not love
her. Go!"

The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He
discoursed on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great,
was very good: one must submit to his decrees without a murmur;
nay, must even thank him.

Charles burst out into blasphemies: "I hate your God!"

"The spirit of rebellion is still upon you," sighed the

ecclesiastic.

Bovary was far away. He was walking with great strides along by
the wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised
to heaven looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf
stirred.

A fine rain was falling: Charles, whose chest was bare, at last
began to shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen.

At six o'clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on

the Place; it was the "Hirondelle" coming in, and he remained
with his forehead against the windowpane, watching all the
passengers get out, one after the other. Felicite put down a
mattress for him in the drawing-room. He threw himself upon it
and fell asleep.

Although a philosopher, Monsieur Homais respected the dead. So

bearing no grudge to poor Charles, he came back again in the
evening to sit up with the body; bringing with him three volumes
and a pocket-book for taking notes.

Monsieur Bournisien was there, and two large candles were burning
at the head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove.
The druggist, on whom the silence weighed, was not long before he
began formulating some regrets about this "unfortunate young
woman." and the priest replied that there was nothing to do now
but pray for her.

"Yet," Homais went on, "one of two things; either she died in a
state of grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need
of our prayers; or else she departed impertinent (that is, I
believe, the ecclesiastical expression), and then--"

Bournisien interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the

less necessary to pray.

"But," objected the chemist, "since God knows all our needs, what
can be the good of prayer?"

"What!" cried the ecclesiastic, "prayer! Why, aren't you a

Christian?"

"Excuse me," said Homais; "I admire Christianity. To begin with,

it enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a
morality--"

"That isn't the question. All the texts-"

"Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the
texts have been falsified by the Jesuits."

Charles came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the
curtains.

Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of
her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower
part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her
hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes
were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks
like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk
in from her breast to her knees, and then rose at the tips of her
toes, and it seemed to Charles that infinite masses, an enormous
load, were weighing upon her.

The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of
the river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace.
Monsieur Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily, and
Homais' pen was scratching over the paper.

"Come, my good friend," he said, "withdraw; this spectacle is

tearing you to pieces."

Charles once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their
discussions.

"Read Voltaire," said the one, "read D'Holbach, read the

'Encyclopaedia'!"

"Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews,'" said the other;

"read 'The Meaning of Christianity,' by Nicolas, formerly a
magistrate."

They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without
listening to each other. Bournisien was scandalized at such
audacity; Homais marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on
the point of insulting one another when Charles suddenly
reappeared. A fascination drew him. He was continually coming
upstairs.

He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself
in a contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful.

He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and

he said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might
perhaps succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he,
and cried in a low voice, "Emma! Emma!" His strong breathing made
the flames of the candles tremble against the wall.

At daybreak Madame Bovary senior arrived. Charles as he embraced

her burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist
had done, to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the
funeral. He became so angry that she was silent, and he even
commissioned her to go to town at once and buy what was
necessary.

Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe
to Madame Homais'; Felicite was in the room upstairs with Madame
Lefrancois.

In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their

hands, unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and
formed a large semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered
faces, and swinging one leg crossed over the other knee, they
uttered deep sighs at intervals; each one was inordinately bored,
and yet none would be the first to go.

Homais, when he returned at nine o'clock (for the last two days
only Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a
stock of camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried
a large jar full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata.
Just then the servant, Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Bovary
senior were busy about Emma, finishing dressing her, and they
were drawing down the long stiff veil that covered her to her
satin shoes.

Felicite was sobbing--"Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!"

"Look at her," said the landlady, sighing; "how pretty she still
is! Now, couldn't you swear she was going to get up in a minute?"

Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise
the head a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she
were vomiting, from her mouth.

"Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!" cried Madame Lefrancois.

"Now, just come and help," she said to the chemist. "Perhaps
you're afraid?"

"I afraid?" replied he, shrugging his shoulders. "I dare say!
I've seen all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying
pharmacy. We used to make punch in the dissecting room!
Nothingness does not terrify a philosopher; and, as I often say,
I even intend to leave my body to the hospitals, in order, later
on, to serve science."

The cure on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on
the reply of the druggist, went on--"The blow, you see, is still
too recent."

Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other

people, to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed
a discussion on the celibacy of priests.

"For," said the chemist, "it is unnatural that a man should do

without women! There have been crimes--"

"But, good heaven!" cried the ecclesiastic, "how do you expect an

individual who is married to keep the secrets of the
confessional, for example?"

Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he

enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He
cited various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become
honest. Military men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had
felt the scales fall from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a
minister--

His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the

over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this
awoke the chemist.

"Come, take a pinch of snuff," he said to him. "Take it; it'll

relieve you."

A continual barking was heard in the distance. "Do you hear that
dog howling?" said the chemist.

"They smell the dead," replied the priest. "It's like bees; they
leave their hives on the decease of any person."

Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again

dropped asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on
moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin
sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore.

They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs,

puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement
uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no
more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping.

Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he
came to bid her farewell.

The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish

vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming
in. There were few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the
candles fell in great drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles
watched them burn, tiring his eyes against the glare of their
yellow flame.

The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma

was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond
her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--
the silence, the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising
from the ground.

Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench

against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the
threshold of their house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard
the laughter of the happy boys beneath the apple-trees: the room
was filled with the perfume of her hair; and her dress rustled in
his arms with a noise like electricity. The dress was still the
same.
For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her
attitudes, her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of
despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible as the
waves of an overflowing sea.

A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his

fingers, palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of
horror that awoke the other two.

They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Felicite came
up to say that he wanted some of her hair.

"Cut some off," replied the druggist.

And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors
in hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in
several places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion,
Homais gave two or three great cuts at random that left white
patches amongst that beautiful black hair.

The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not
without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each
other reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur
Bournisien sprinkled the room with holy water and Homais threw a
little chlorine water on the floor.

Felicite had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each
of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And
the druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in
the morning sighed--

"My word! I should like to take some sustenance."

The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say
mass, came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a
little without knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that
comes upon us after times of sadness, and at the last glass the
priest said to the druggist, as he clapped him on the shoulder--

"We shall end by understanding one another."

In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker's men, who were
coming in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture
of hearing the hammer resound against the wood. Next day they
lowered her into her oak coffin, that was fitted into the other
two; but as the bier was too large, they had to fill up the gaps
with the wool of a mattress. At last, when the three lids had
been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was placed outside in
front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the people of
Yonville began to flock round.

Old Rouault arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the
black cloth!

Chapter Ten

He had only received the chemist's letter thirty-six hours after

the event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Homais had
so worded it that it was impossible to make out what it was all
about.

First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next,

he understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last,
he had put on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to
his boots, and set out at full speed; and the whole of the way
old Rouault, panting, was torn by anguish. Once even he was
obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he heard voices round about
him; he felt himself going mad.

Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He

shuddered, horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy
Virgin three chasubles for the church, and that he would go
barefooted from the cemetery at Bertaux to the chapel of
Vassonville.

He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open
the door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats,
emptied a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again
mounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it dashed along.

He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors
would discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the
miraculous cures he had been told about. Then she appeared to him
dead. She was there; before his eyes, lying on her back in the
middle of the road. He reined up, and the hallucination
disappeared.

At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of

coffee one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in
the name in writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt
it there, but did not dare to open it.

At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the

jest of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have
known it. But no! There was nothing extraordinary about the
country; the sky was blue, the trees swayed; a flock of sheep
passed. He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward
upon his horse, belabouring it with great blows, the girths
dripping with blood.

When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into

Bovary's arms: "My girl! Emma! my child! tell me--"

The other replied, sobbing, "I don't know! I don't know! It's a
curse!"

The druggist separated them. "These horrible details are useless.

I will tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people
coming. Dignity! Come now! Philosophy!"

The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several
times. "Yes! courage!"

"Oh," cried the old man, "so I will have, by God! I'll go along
o' her to the end!"

The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And
seated in a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and
repass in front of them continually the three chanting
choristers.

The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur

Bournisien, in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He
bowed before the tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his
arms. Lestiboudois went about the church with his whalebone
stick. The bier stood near the lectern, between four rows of
candles. Charles felt inclined to get up and put them out.

Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw

himself into the hope of a future life in which he should see her
again. He imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far
away, for a long time. But when he thought of her lying there, and
that all was over, that they would lay her in the earth, he was
seized with a fierce, gloomy, despairful rage. At times he
thought he felt nothing more, and he enjoyed this lull in his
pain, whilst at the same time he reproached himself for being a
wretch.

The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the

stones, striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the
end of the church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man
in a coarse brown jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte,
the stable-boy at the "Lion d'Or." He had put on his new leg.

One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection,

and the coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate.

"Oh, make haste! I am in pain!" cried Bovary, angrily throwing

him a five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow.

They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He

remembered that once, in the early times, they had been to mass
together, and they had sat down on the other side, on the right,
by the wall. The bell began again. There was a great moving of
chairs; the bearers slipped their three staves under the coffin,
and everyone left the church.

Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in

again, pale, staggering.

People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at

the head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with
a nod those who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors,
stood amidst the crowd.

The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a

little. The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys
recited the De profundis*, and their voices echoed over the
fields, rising and falling with their undulations. Sometimes they
disappeared in the windings of the path; but the great silver
cross rose always before the trees.

*Psalm CXXX.

The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each

of them carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Charles
felt himself growing weaker at this continual repetition of
prayers and torches, beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of
cassocks. A fresh breeze was blowing; the rye and colza were
sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at the roadsides and on the
hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds filled the air; the
jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the crowing of a
cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal running
away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy
clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris.
Charles as he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered
mornings like this, when, after visiting some patient, he came
out from one and returned to her.

The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to
time, laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more
slowly, and it advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that
pitches with every wave.

They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in
the grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all
round; and while the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the
sides kept noiselessly slipping down at the corners.

Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon
them. He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At
last a thud was heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up.
Then Bournisien took the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois;
with his left hand all the time sprinkling water, with the right
he vigorously threw in a large spadeful; and the wood of the
coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth that dread sound that
seems to us the reverberation of eternity.

The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his

neighbour. This was Homais. He swung it gravely, then handed it
to Charles, who sank to his knees in the earth and threw in
handfuls of it, crying, "Adieu!" He sent her kisses; he dragged
himself towards the grave, to engulf himself with her. They led
him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps, like the
others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over.

Old Rouault on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which
Homais in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing.
He also noticed that Monsieur Binet had not been present, and
that Tuvache had "made off" after mass, and that Theodore, the
notary's servant wore a blue coat, "as if one could not have got
a black coat, since that is the custom, by Jove!" And to share
his observations with others he went from group to group. They
were deploring Emma's death, especially Lheureux, who had not
failed to come to the funeral.

"Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!"

The druggist continued, "Do you know that but for me he would
have committed some fatal attempt upon himself?"

"Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in
my shop."

"I haven't had leisure," said Homais, "to prepare a few words that I would have cast
upon her tomb."

Charles on getting home undressed, and old Rouault put on his

blue blouse. It was a new one, and as he had often during the
journey wiped his eyes on the sleeves, the dye had stained his
face, and the traces of tears made lines in the layer of dust
that covered it.

Madame Bovary senior was with them. All three were silent. At
last the old fellow sighed--

"Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you
had just lost your first deceased? I consoled you at that time. I
thought of something to say then, but now--" Then, with a loud
groan that shook his whole chest, "Ah! this is the end for me, do
you see! I saw my wife go, then my son, and now to-day it's my
daughter."

He wanted to go back at once to Bertaux, saying that he could not

sleep in this house. He even refused to see his granddaughter.

"No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only you'll kiss her many
times for me. Good-bye! you're a good fellow! And then I shall
never forget that," he said, slapping his thigh. "Never fear, you
shall always have your turkey."

But when he reached the top of the hill he turned back, as he had
turned once before on the road of Saint-Victor when he had parted
from her. The windows of the village were all on fire beneath the
slanting rays of the sun sinking behind the field. He put his
hand over his eyes, and saw in the horizon an enclosure of walls,
where trees here and there formed black clusters between white
stones; then he went on his way at a gentle trot, for his nag had
gone lame.

Despite their fatigue, Charles and his mother stayed very long
that evening talking together. They spoke of the days of the past
and of the future. She would come to live at Yonville; she would
keep house for him; they would never part again. She was
ingenious and caressing, rejoicing in her heart at gaining once
more an affection that had wandered from her for so many years.
Midnight struck. The village as usual was silent, and Charles,
awake, thought always of her.

Rodolphe, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the

wood all day, was sleeping quietly in his chateau, and Leon, down
yonder, always slept.

There was another who at that hour was not asleep.

On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees

weeping, and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow
beneath the load of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and
fathomless as the night. The gate suddenly grated. It was
Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his spade, that he had forgotten.
He recognised Justin climbing over the wall, and at last knew who
was the culprit who stole his potatoes.

Chapter Eleven

The next day Charles had the child brought back. She asked for
her mamma. They told her she was away; that she would bring her
back some playthings. Berthe spoke of her again several times,
then at last thought no more of her. The child's gaiety broke
Bovary's heart, and he had to bear besides the intolerable
consolations of the chemist.

Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on anew

his friend Vincart, and Charles pledged himself for exorbitant
sums; for he would never consent to let the smallest of the
things that had belonged to HER be sold. His mother was
exasperated with him; he grew even more angry than she did. He
had altogether changed. She left the house.

Then everyone began "taking advantage" of him. Mademoiselle

Lempereur presented a bill for six months' teaching, although
Emma had never taken a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had
shown Bovary); it was an arrangement between the two women. The
man at the circulating library demanded three years'
subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due for some
twenty letters, and when Charles asked for an explanation, she
had the delicacy to reply--
"Oh, I don't know. It was for her business affairs."

With every debt he paid Charles thought he had come to the end of
them. But others followed ceaselessly. He sent in accounts for
professional attendance. He was shown the letters his wife had
written. Then he had to apologise.

Felicite now wore Madame Bovary's gowns; not all, for he had kept
some of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room,
locking himself up there; she was about her height, and often
Charles, seeing her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and
cried out--

"Oh, stay, stay!"

But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by

Theodore, stealing all that was left of the wardrobe.

It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to
inform him of the "marriage of Monsieur Leon Dupuis her son,
notary at Yvetot, to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of
Bondeville." Charles, among the other congratulations he sent
him, wrote this sentence--

"How glad my poor wife would have been!"

One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up
to the attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper.
He opened it and read: "Courage, Emma, courage. I would not bring
misery into your life." It was Rodolphe's letter, fallen to the
ground between the boxes, where it had remained, and that the
wind from the dormer window had just blown towards the door. And
Charles stood, motionless and staring, in the very same place
where, long ago, Emma, in despair, and paler even than he, had
thought of dying. At last he discovered a small R at the bottom
of the second page. What did this mean? He remembered Rodolphe's
attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when
they had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of
the letter deceived him.

"Perhaps they loved one another platonically," he said to

himself.

Besides, Charles was not of those who go to the bottom of things;

he shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the
immensity of his woe.

Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly

must have coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him
for this; he was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her,
that inflamed his despair, and that was boundless, because it was
now unrealisable.

To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her

predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took
to wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and,
like her, signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the
grave.

He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold

the drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the
bedroom, her own room, remained as before. After his dinner
Charles went up there. He pushed the round table in front of the
fire, and drew up her armchair. He sat down opposite it. A candle
burnt in one of the gilt candlesticks. Berthe by his side was
painting prints.

He suffered, poor man, at seeing her so badly dressed, with

laceless boots, and the arm-holes of her pinafore torn down to
the hips; for the charwoman took no care of her. But she was so
sweet, so pretty, and her little head bent forward so gracefully,
letting the dear fair hair fall over her rosy cheeks, that an
infinite joy came upon him, a happiness mingled with bitterness,
like those ill-made wines that taste of resin. He mended her
toys, made her puppets from cardboard, or sewed up half-torn
dolls. Then, if his eyes fell upon the workbox, a ribbon lying
about, or even a pin left in a crack of the table, he began to
dream, and looked so sad that she became as sad as he.

No one now came to see them, for Justin had run away to Rouen,
where he was a grocer's assistant, and the druggist's children
saw less and less of the child, Monsieur Homais not caring,
seeing the difference of their social position, to continue the
intimacy.

The blind man, whom he had not been able to cure with the pomade,
had gone back to the hill of Bois-Guillaume, where he told the
travellers of the vain attempt of the druggist, to such an
extent, that Homais when he went to town hid himself behind the
curtains of the "Hirondelle" to avoid meeting him. He detested
him, and wishing, in the interests of his own reputation, to get
rid of him at all costs, he directed against him a secret
battery, that betrayed the depth of his intellect and the
baseness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one
could read in the "Fanal de Rouen" editorials such as these--

"All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy
have, no doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a wretch
suffering from a horrible facial wound. He importunes, persecutes
one, and levies a regular tax on all travellers. Are we still
living in the monstrous times of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds
were permitted to display in our public places leprosy and
scrofulas they had brought back from the Crusades?"

Or--

"In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to our

great towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. Some are
seen going about alone, and these are not, perhaps, the least
dangerous. What are our ediles about?"

Then Homais invented anecdotes--

"Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse--" And

then followed the story of an accident caused by the presence of
the blind man.

He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he was
released. He began again, and Homais began again. It was a
struggle. Homais won it, for his foe was condemned to life-long
confinement in an asylum.

This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was no longer a

dog run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten in the parish, of
which he did not immediately inform the public, guided always by
the love of progress and the hate of priests. He instituted
comparisons between the elementary and clerical schools to the
detriment of the latter; called to mind the massacre of St.
Bartholomew a propos of a grant of one hundred francs to the
church, and denounced abuses, aired new views. That was his
phrase. Homais was digging and delving; he was becoming
dangerous.

However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism, and

soon a book, a work was necessary to him. Then he composed
"General Statistics of the Canton of Yonville, followed by
Climatological Remarks." The statistics drove him to philosophy.
He busied himself with great questions: the social problem,
moralisation of the poorer classes, pisciculture, caoutchouc,
railways, etc. He even began to blush at being a bourgeois. He
affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two chic
Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.

He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well

abreast of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of
chocolates; he was the first to introduce "cocoa" and "revalenta"
into the Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the
hydro-electric Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when
at night he took off his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood quite
dazzled before the golden spiral beneath which he was hidden,
and felt her ardour redouble for this man more bandaged than a
Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi.

He had fine ideas about Emma's tomb. First he proposed a broken

column with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta,
a sort of rotunda, or else a "mass of ruins." And in all his
plans Homais always stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked
upon as the indispensable symbol of sorrow.

Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to look at some

tombs at a funeral furnisher's, accompanied by an artist, one
Vaufrylard, a friend of Bridoux's, who made puns all the time. At
last, after having examined some hundred designs, having ordered
an estimate and made another journey to Rouen, Charles decided in
favour of a mausoleum, which on the two principal sides was to
have a "spirit bearing an extinguished torch."

As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so fine as

Sta viator*, and he got no further; he racked his brain, he
constantly repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon Amabilen
conjugem calcas**, which was adopted.

* Rest traveler.
** Tread upon a loving wife.

A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually thinking of

Emma, was forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image
fading from his memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet
every night he dreamt of her; it was always the same dream. He
drew near her, but when he was about to clasp her she fell into
decay in his arms.
For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Monsieur
Bournisien even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up.
Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said
Homais. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never
failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death
agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone
knows.

In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he was far from
being able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux refused to renew
any more bills. A distraint became imminent. Then he appealed to
his mother, who consented to let him take a mortgage on her
property, but with a great many recriminations against Emma; and
in return for her sacrifice she asked for a shawl that had
escaped the depredations of Felicite. Charles refused to give it
her; they quarrelled.

She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to

have the little girl, who could help her in the house, to live
with her. Charles consented to this, but when the time for
parting came, all his courage failed him. Then there was a final,
complete rupture.

As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of

his child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed
sometimes, and had red spots on her cheeks.

Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the
chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him
in the laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut
out rounds of paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited
Pythagoras' table in a breath. He was the happiest of fathers,
the most fortunate of men.

Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais hankered after the
cross of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it.

"First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by

a boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense,
various works of public utility, such as" (and he recalled his
pamphlet entitled, "Cider, its manufacture and effects," besides
observation on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy;
his volume of statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis);
"without counting that I am a member of several learned
societies" (he was member of a single one).
"In short!" he cried, making a pirouette, "if it were only for
distinguishing myself at fires!"

Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He secretly did the

prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself--in a
word, prostituted himself. He even addressed a petition to the
sovereign in which he implored him to "do him justice"; he called
him "our good king," and compared him to Henri IV.

And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his
nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to
bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to
represent the Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips
of grass running from the top to imitate the ribband. He walked
round it with folded arms, meditating on the folly of the
Government and the ingratitude of men.

From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on

his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet opened the secret
drawer of a rosewood desk which Emma had generally used. One day,
however, he sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the
spring. All Leon's letters were there. There could be no doubt
this time. He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every
corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls,
sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box and broke
it open with a kick. Rodolphe's portrait flew full in his face in
the midst of the overturned love-letters.

People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no

one, refused even to visit his patients. Then they said "he shut
himself up to drink."

Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden

hedge, and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily
clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as he walked up and down.

In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him and led
her to the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only
light left in the Place was that in Binet's window.

The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he

had no one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame
Lefrancois to be able to speak of her.

But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles
like himself. For Lheureux had at last established the "Favorites
du Commerce," and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for
doing errands, insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening
to go over "to the opposition shop."

One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his
horse--his last resource--he met Rodolphe.

They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another.
Rodolphe, who had only sent his card, first stammered some
apologies, then grew bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it
was in the month of August and very hot) to the length of
inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the public-house.

Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he

talked, and Charles was lost in reverie at this face that she had
loved. He seemed to see again something of her in it. It was a
marvel to him. He would have liked to have been this man.

The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling

out with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip
in. Charles was not listening to him; Rodolphe noticed it, and he
followed the succession of memories that crossed his face. This
gradually grew redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips
quivered. There was at last a moment when Charles, full of a
sombre fury, fixed his eyes on Rodolphe, who, in something of
fear, stopped talking. But soon the same look of weary lassitude
came back to his face.

"I don't blame you," he said.

Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his hands, went on in
a broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow--

"No, I don't blame you now."

He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made--

"It is the fault of fatality!"

Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very
offhand from a man in his position, comic even, and a little
mean.

The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour.
Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves
threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air,
the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in
bloom, and Charles was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague
love influences that filled his aching heart.

At seven o'clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the
afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner.

His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his
mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.

"Come along, papa," she said.

And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to

the ground. He was dead.

Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Monsieur

Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing.

When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five

centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary's
going to her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old
Rouault was paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her.
She is poor, and sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living.

Since Bovary's death three doctors have followed one another at

Yonville without any success, so severely did Homais attack them.
He has an enormous practice; the authorities treat him with
consideration, and public opinion protects him.

He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.