Madame Bovary
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 broken-kneed, 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 despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all
would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed
her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
existence appeared 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 château. 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.