Madame Bovary
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 Léon 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.
Léon, 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 Léon, 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
Léon 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 Artémise, 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.”
Léon, 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 Artémise 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.