Madame Bovary
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 his
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_[11] 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.”
[11] 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?” Léon 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 Léon 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. Léon 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 Léon often