Madame Bovary
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 Léon 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 Léon 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 Félicité, 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.