Madame Bovary
“You who know the house through the servant, has the master spoken
sometimes of me?”
“Yes, you’d do well to go there.”
She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads, and
that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the Place), she
took the path by the river, outside the village.
She reached the notary’s gate quite breathless. The sky was sombre, and
a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell, Theodore in a
red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to open the door almost
familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and showed her into the dining-room.
A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up the
niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the oak-stained
paper hung Steuben’s “Esmeralda” and Schopin’s “Potiphar.” The
ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs,
the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a scrupulous, English
cleanliness; the windows were ornamented at each corner with stained
glass.
“Now this,” thought Emma, “is the dining-room I ought to have.”
The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his breast
with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and quickly put
on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked on the right side,
whence looked out the ends of three fair curls drawn from the back of
the head, following the line of his bald skull.
After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast, apologising
profusely for his rudeness.
“I have come,” she said, “to beg you, sir--”
“What, madame? I am listening.”
And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin knew
it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from whom he always
got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was asked to make.
So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the bills,
small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made out at long
dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when, gathering together
all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had bidden his friend Vincart
take in his own name all the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass
for a tiger with his fellow-citizens.
She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheureux, to which the
notary replied from time to time with some insignificant word. Eating
his cutlet and drinking his tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue
cravat, into which were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a
small gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous
fashion. But noticing that her feet were damp, he said--
“Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the porcelain.”
She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a gallant tone--
“Beautiful things spoil nothing.”
Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began
telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her wants.
He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without leaving off
eating, he had turned completely round towards her, so that his knee
brushed against her boot, whose sole curled round as it smoked against
the stove.
But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and declared
he was very sorry he had not had the management of her fortune before,
for there were hundreds of ways very convenient, even for a lady, of
turning her money to account. They might, either in the turf-peats
of Grumesnil or building-ground at Havre, almost without risk, have
ventured on some excellent speculations; and he let her consume herself
with rage at the thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly
have made.
“How was it,” he went on, “that you didn’t come to me?”
“I hardly know,” she said.
“Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary, who
ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very devoted to
you. You do not doubt that, I hope?”
He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss, then
held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her fingers whilst
he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid voice murmured like a
running brook; a light shone in his eyes through the glimmering of his
spectacles, and his hand was advancing up Emma’s sleeve to press her
arm. She felt against her cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed
her horribly.
She sprang up and said to him--
“Sir, I am waiting.”
“For what?” said the notary, who suddenly became very pale.
“This money.”
“But--” Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire, “Well,
yes!”
He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his
dressing-gown.
“For pity’s sake, stay. I love you!”
He seized her by her waist. Madame Bovary’s face flushed purple. She
recoiled with a terrible look, crying--
“You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am to be
pitied--not to be sold.”
And she went out.
The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine
embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of them at
last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an adventure might
have carried him too far.
“What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!” she said to herself,
as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the path. The
disappointment of her failure increased the indignation of her outraged
modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued her implacably, and,
strengthening herself in her pride, she had never felt so much esteem
for herself nor so much contempt for others. A spirit of warfare
transformed her. She would have liked to strike all men, to spit in
their faces, to crush them, and she walked rapidly straight on, pale,
quivering, maddened, searching the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes,
and as it were rejoicing in the hate that was choking her.
When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go on;
and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?
Félicité was waiting for her at the door. “Well?”
“No!” said Emma.
And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the various
persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help her. But each
time that Félicité named someone Emma replied--
“Impossible! they will not!”
“And the master’ll soon be in.”
“I know that well enough. Leave me alone.”
She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now; and
when Charles came in she would have to say to him--
“Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours. In
your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and it is I,
poor man, who have ruined you.”
Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly, and at
last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.
“Yes,” she murmured, grinding her teeth, “he will forgive me, he who
would give a million if I would forgive him for having known me! Never!
never!”
This thought of Bovary’s superiority to her exasperated her. Then,
whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, immediately,
to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the same; so she must wait
for this horrible scene, and bear the weight of his magnanimity. The
desire to return to Lheureux’s seized her--what would be the use? To
write to her father--it was too late; and perhaps, she began to repent
now that she had not yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of
a horse in the alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter
than the plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the
square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to Lestiboudois in
front of the church, saw her go in to the tax-collector’s.
She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up to
the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props, stationed
themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of Binet’s room.
He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those
indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed
out one within the other, the whole as straight as an obelisk, and of no
use whatever; and he was beginning on the last piece--he was nearing his
goal. In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his
tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the
two wheels were turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his
nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete
happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations,
which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a
realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream.
“Ah! there she is!” exclaimed Madame Tuvache.
But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was saying.
At last these ladies thought they made out the word “francs,” and Madame
Tuvache whispered in a low voice--
“She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes.”
“Apparently!” replied the other.
They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the
candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet stroked
his beard with satisfaction.
“Do you think she wants to order something of him?” said Madame Tuvache.
“Why, he doesn’t sell anything,” objected her neighbour.
The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he
did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came
nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no longer spoke.
“Is she making him advances?” said Madame Tuvache. Binet was scarlet to
his very ears. She took hold of his hands.
“Oh, it’s too much!”
And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for the
tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at Lutzen,
had been through the French campaign, and had even been recommended for
the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a serpent, recoiled as far as he
could from her, crying--
“Madame! what do you mean?”
“Women like that ought to be whipped,” said Madame Tuvache.
“But where is she?” continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared
whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue,
and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost
in conjectures.
“Nurse Rollet,” she said on reaching the nurse’s, “I am choking; unlace
me!” She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her with a
petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she did not
answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax.
“Oh, leave off!” she murmured, fancying she heard Binet’s lathe.
“What’s bothering her?” said the nurse to herself. “Why has she come
here?”
She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from
her home.
Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw things but
vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic persistence. She looked
at the scales on the walls, two brands smoking end to end, and a long
spider crawling over her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began
to collect her thoughts. She remembered--one day--Léon--Oh! how long
ago that was--the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were
perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon
began to recall the day before.
“What time is it?” she asked.
Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side
of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying--
“Nearly three.”
“Ah! thanks, thanks!”
For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,
perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told the
nurse to run to her house to fetch him.
“Be quick!”
“But, my dear lady, I’m going, I’m going!”
She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.