Madame Bovary
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_[13] 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!”
[13] 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