Madame Bovary
And he called through the peep-hole that looked down into the shop--
“Annette, don’t forget the three coupons of No. 14.”
The servant appeared. Emma understood, and asked how much money would be
wanted to put a stop to the proceedings.
“It is too late.”
“But if I brought you several thousand francs--a quarter of the sum--a
third--perhaps the whole?”
“No; it’s no use!”
And he pushed her gently towards the staircase.
“I implore you, Monsieur Lheureux, just a few days more!” She was
sobbing.
“There! tears now!”
“You are driving me to despair!”
“What do I care?” said he, shutting the door.
Chapter Seven
She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff, with two
assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up the inventory for
the distraint.
They began with Bovary’s consulting-room, and did not write down
the phrenological head, which was considered an “instrument of his
profession”; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the saucepans,
the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all the nick-nacks on
the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room;
and her whole existence to its most intimate details, was, like a corpse
on whom a post-mortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three
men.
Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white
choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time--“Allow
me, madame. You allow me?” Often he uttered exclamations. “Charming!
very pretty.” Then he began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn
inkstand in his left hand.
When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a
desk there in which Rodolphe’s letters were locked. It had to be opened.
“Ah! a correspondence,” said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet smile. “But
allow me, for I must make sure the box contains nothing else.” And he
tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she
grew angered to see this coarse hand, with fingers red and pulpy like
slugs, touching these pages against which her heart had beaten.
They went at last. Félicité came back. Emma had sent her out to watch
for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly installed the
man in possession under the roof, where he swore he would remain.
During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched him with
a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in every line of his
face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the chimney-piece ornamented
with Chinese screens, over the large curtains, the armchairs, all
those things, in a word, that had, softened the bitterness of her life,
remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, that, far from crushing,
irritated her passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on
the fire-dogs.
Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise.
“Is anyone walking upstairs?” said Charles.
“No,” she replied; “it is a window that has been left open, and is
rattling in the wind.”
The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the brokers whose
names she knew. They were at their country-places or on journeys. She
was not discouraged; and those whom she did manage to see she asked for
money, declaring she must have some, and that she would pay it back.
Some laughed in her face; all refused.
At two o’clock she hurried to Léon, and knocked at the door. No one
answered. At length he appeared.
“What brings you here?”
“Do I disturb you?”
“No; but--” And he admitted that his landlord didn’t like his having
“women” there.
“I must speak to you,” she went on.
Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.
“No, no! Down there, in our home!”
And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.
On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She
said to him--
“Léon, you will do me a service?”
And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added--
“Listen, I want eight thousand francs.”
“But you are mad!”
“Not yet.”
And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained
her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law
detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but he, Léon, he would set
about finding this indispensable sum.
“How on earth can I?”
“What a coward you are!” she cried.
Then he said stupidly, “You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps,
with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be stopped.”
All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that
they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Léon, could be
security instead of her.
“Go, try, try! I will love you so!”
He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with solemn
face--
“I have been to three people with no success.”
Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners,
motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her
feet. He heard her murmuring--
“If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some.”
“But where?”
“At your office.” And she looked at him.
An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids
drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the
young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman
who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any
explanation he smote his forehead, crying--
“Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope” (this
was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); “and I will
bring it you to-morrow,” he added.
Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected.
Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--
“However, if you don’t see me by three o’clock do not wait for me, my
darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!”
He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no strength
left for any sentiment.
Four o’clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically
obeying the force of old habits.
The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp,
when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in
Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the
Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed
out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of
a bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock, stood the
beadle.
Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had
entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out before her, less
profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil,
giddy, staggering, almost fainting.
“Take care!” cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was
thrown open.
She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the
shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it?
She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.
Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She
was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep
herself from falling.
Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All
within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking
at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on
reaching the “Croix-Rouge,” she saw the good Homais, who was watching
a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the
“Hirondelle.” In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six
cheminots for his wife.
Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves,
that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food
that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which
the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the
table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras
and huge boars’ heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The
druggist’s wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite
her wretched teeth. And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never
failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker’s in the
Rue Massacre.
“Charmed to see you,” he said, offering Emma a hand to help her into the
“Hirondelle.” Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting,
and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic.
But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he
exclaimed--
“I can’t understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable
industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work.
Progress, my word! creeps at a snail’s pace. We are floundering about in
mere barbarism.”
The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it
were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.
“This,” said the chemist, “is a scrofulous affection.”
And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first
time, murmured something about “cornea,” “opaque cornea,” “sclerotic,”
“facies,” then asked him in a paternal tone--
“My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you’d do better to die yourself.”
He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind
man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last
Monsieur Homais opened his purse--
“Now there’s a sou; give me back two lairds, and don’t forget my advice:
you’ll be the better for it.”
Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the druggist
said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic pomade of his own
composition, and he gave his address--“Monsieur Homais, near the market,
pretty well known.”
“Now,” said Hivert, “for all this trouble you’ll give us your
performance.”
The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back,
whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed
his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a
famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder
a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine
thus to throw it away.
The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant out
through the window, crying--
“No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the
diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries.”
The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes
gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue
overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied, discouraged, almost
asleep.
“Come what may come!” she said to herself. “And then, who knows? Why, at
any moment could not some extraordinary event occur? Lheureux even might
die!”
At nine o’clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of voices
in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a large bill
fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was climbing on to
a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this moment the rural guard
seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais came out of his shop, and Mere
Lefrançois, in the midst of the crowd, seemed to be perorating.
“Madame! madame!” cried Félicité, running in, “it’s abominable!”
And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that she had
just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all her furniture
was for sale.
Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and mistress had
no secret one from the other. At last Félicité sighed--
“If I were you, madame, I should go to Monsieur Guillaumin.”
“Do you think--”
And this question meant to say--