Part 10

— What? she said sharply; music? Ah! my God, yes! have I not my household to manage, my husband to care for, a thousand things in short, many duties that come first!

She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then she put on a worried air. Two or three times even she repeated:

— He is so good!

The clerk was fond of M. Bovary. But this tenderness toward him surprised him unpleasantly; nevertheless he continued his praise, which he heard everyone bestowing, he said, and especially the chemist.

— Ah! he is a worthy man, Emma replied.

— Certainly, said the clerk.

And he began to speak of Madame Homais, whose very careless dress ordinarily gave them cause to laugh.

— What does that matter? Emma interrupted. A good mother of a family does not trouble herself about her attire.

Then she fell back into her silence. It was the same on following days; her conversation, her manners, everything changed. She was seen taking her housekeeping to heart, returning regularly to church, and keeping her servant with more severity.

She took Berthe from the nurse. Félicité brought her when visitors came, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show her limbs. She declared she adored children; they were her consolation, her joy, her madness, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outpourings which, to anyone but Yonvillais, would have recalled the Sachette of Notre-Dame de Paris.

When Charles came home, he found his slippers warming by the ashes. His waistcoats now never lacked lining, nor his shirts buttons, and there was even pleasure in beholding in the wardrobe all the cotton caps arranged in equal piles. She no longer grumbled, as formerly, at taking turns in the garden; whatever he proposed was always agreed to, although she did not guess the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; — and when Léon saw him in the corner of the fire, after dinner, his two hands on his belly, his two feet on the andirons, his cheek flushed by digestion, his eyes moist with happiness, with the child crawling on the carpet, and this slender-waisted woman who, over the back of the armchair, came to kiss him on the forehead:

— What madness! he said to himself, and how to reach her?

She therefore seemed to him so virtuous and inaccessible, that all hope, even the vaguest, abandoned him.

But, by this renunciation, he placed her in extraordinary conditions. She detached herself, for him, from the fleshly qualities of which he had nothing to gain; and she went, in his heart, ever ascending and withdrawing from him, in the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that takes flight. It was one of those pure sentiments that do not embarrass the exercise of life, that one cultivates because they are rare, and whose loss would grieve more than their possession rejoices.

Emma grew thin, her cheeks paled, her face lengthened. With her black bands, her large eyes, her straight nose, her birdlike gait, and now always silent, did she not seem to traverse existence scarce touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague imprint of some sublime predestination? She was so sad and so calm, so gentle at once and so reserved, that one felt near her seized by an icy charm, as one shivers in churches beneath the scent of flowers mingled with the cold of marbles. The others even did not escape this seduction. The chemist said:

— She is a woman of great capacity, and who would not be out of place in a subprefecture.

The bourgeoises admired her economy, the clients her politeness, the poor her charity.

But she was full of covetousness, of rage, of hatred. This gown with its straight folds hid a heart in turmoil, and those so modest lips told not of its tempest. She was in love with Léon, and she sought solitude, in order the better to delight in his image. The sight of his person troubled the voluptuousness of this meditation. Emma palpitated at the sound of his steps; then, in his presence, the emotion fell, and there remained to her afterward only an immense astonishment that ended in sadness.

Léon did not know, when he left her house in despair, that she rose behind him in order to see him in the street. She concerned herself with his goings, she spied upon his face, she invented a whole story to find pretext to visit his room. The chemist's wife seemed to her most happy to sleep under the same roof; and her thoughts continually alighted upon that house, like the pigeons of the Lion d'Or who came there to dip, in the gutters, their pink feet and white wings. But the more Emma perceived her love, the more she thrust it back, so that it might not appear, and to diminish it. She could have wished that Léon suspected it; and she imagined chances, catastrophes that would have facilitated it. What held her back, no doubt, was laziness or dread, and also modesty. She thought she had repulsed him too far, that it was no longer time, that all was lost. Then pride, the joy of saying to herself: "I am virtuous," and of looking at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed herself making.

Then, the appetites of the flesh, the covetousness of money, and the melancholies of passion, all mingled in one same suffering; — and, instead of turning her thought from it, she attached it the more, exciting herself to pain and seeking everywhere the occasions for it. She fretted at a badly served dish or a half-open door, moaned for the velvet she had not, the happiness wanting to her, her dreams too lofty, her house too narrow.

What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to suspect her torment. The conviction he had of making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his security therein, ingratitude. For whom then was she chaste? Was he not, he, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and like the pointed tongue of that complex strap that buckled her on every side?

Therefore she turned upon him alone the numerous hatred that resulted from her vexations, and each effort to lessen it served only to increase it; for this useless sorrow added itself to the other motives of despair and contributed yet more to the estrangement. Her own gentleness to herself gave her rebellions. Domestic mediocrity drove her to luxurious fancies, marital tenderness to adulterous desires. She could have wished Charles would beat her, the better to detest him justly, and avenge herself. She was astonished sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came to her mind; and she must continue to smile, hear it repeated that she was happy, pretend to be so, let him believe it!

She had disgusts, however, of this hypocrisy. Temptations seized her to flee with Léon, somewhere, far away, to try a new destiny; but immediately there opened in her soul a vague gulf, full of darkness.

— Besides, he no longer loves me, she thought; what is to become of me? what help to expect, what consolation, what relief?

She remained broken, panting, inert, sobbing in a low voice and with tears that fell.

— Why not tell Monsieur? the servant asked her, when she came in during these fits.

— It is the nerves, Emma answered; do not speak of it to him, you would grieve him.

— Ah! yes, Félicité resumed, you are just like Guérine, the daughter of old Guérin, the fisherman of Pollet, whom I knew at Dieppe, before coming to you. She was so sad, so sad, that to see her standing on the threshold of her house, she gave you the effect of a funeral cloth hung before the door. Her ill, it seems, was a kind of fog she had in her head, and the doctors could do nothing, nor the curé either. When it took her too strongly, she went alone to the edge of the sea, so that the customs lieutenant, making his round, often found her stretched flat on her belly and weeping on the pebbles. Then, after her marriage, it passed, they say.

— But, as for me, Emma resumed, it is after marriage that it came to me.

VI

One evening when the window was open, and, seated on the edge, she had just been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, who was clipping the box, she suddenly heard the Angelus ring.

It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom; a warm wind rolls over the tilled borders, and the gardens, like women, seem to make their toilet for the feasts of summer. Through the lattice of the arbor and beyond all around, one saw the river in the meadow, where it traced upon the grass wandering sinuosities. The evening vapor passed between the leafless poplars, softening their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze arrested on their branches. In the distance, cattle moved; one heard neither their steps nor their lowing; and the bell, ever ringing, continued in the air its peaceful lamentation.

At this repeated tinkling, the young woman's thought wandered into her old memories of youth and boarding-school. She recalled the tall candlesticks, which rose above the altar beyond the vases full of flowers and the tabernacle with little columns. She could have wished, as formerly, to be still confounded in the long line of white veils, marked here and there with black by the stiff hoods of the good sisters bent over their prie-Dieu; on Sundays, at mass, when she raised her head, she caught sight of the sweet face of the Virgin amid the bluish whirls of incense that rose. Then a tenderness seized her; she felt herself soft and all abandoned, like a bird's down that wheels in the storm; and it was without being aware of it that she made her way toward the church, disposed to any devotion whatsoever, provided she might absorb her soul therein and that her whole existence disappear there.

She met, on the square, Lestiboudois, who was returning; for, not to curtail the day, he preferred to interrupt his task and then resume it, so that he rang the Angelus at his convenience. Besides, the ringing, done earlier, warned the lads of catechism hour.

Already some, who had arrived, were playing marbles on the slabs of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, scything with their clogs the great nettles grown between the little enclosure and the last tombs. It was the only place that was green; all the rest was but stones, and continually covered with a fine dust, despite the sacristy broom.

The children in slippers ran there as on a parquet made for them, and one heard the bursts of their voices through the humming of the bell. It diminished with the oscillations of the great rope, which, falling from the heights of the steeple, dragged on the ground at its end. Swallows passed uttering little cries, cut the air on the edge of their flight, and quickly re-entered their yellow nests, under the tiles of the eaves. At the back of the church, a lamp burned, that is to say a wick of a night-light in a suspended glass. Its light, from afar, seemed a whitish spot that trembled on the oil. A long ray of sun traversed the whole nave and rendered yet darker the side-aisles and the angles.

— Where is the curé? Madame Bovary asked a young boy who was amusing himself shaking the turnstile in its too-loose hole.

— He is coming, he answered.

Indeed, the presbytery door creaked, the Abbé Bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.

— Those rascals! murmured the ecclesiastic, always the same!

And, picking up a tattered catechism that he had just struck with his foot:

— They respect nothing!

But, as soon as he caught sight of Madame Bovary:

— Excuse me, he said, I did not recognize you.

He stuffed the catechism into his pocket and stopped, continuing to swing between two fingers the heavy key of the sacristy.

The light of the setting sun that struck full upon his face paled the lasting of his soutane, shiny at the elbows, frayed at the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed on his broad chest the line of the little buttons, and they became more numerous as they departed from his rabat, where rested the abundant folds of his red skin; it was sown with yellow spots that disappeared in the rough hairs of his graying beard. He had just dined and breathed noisily.

— How are you? he added.

— Ill, Emma answered; I suffer.

— Well, I too, the ecclesiastic replied. These first heats, do they not, soften you astonishingly? Still, what would you! we are born to suffer, as says Saint Paul. But, M. Bovary, what does he think of it?

— Him! she made with a gesture of disdain.

— What! the goodman replied quite astonished, he does not order you something?

— Ah! Emma said, it is not the remedies of earth that I should need.

But the curate, from time to time, looked into the church, where all the lads kneeling pushed each other with the shoulder, and fell like cardboard capuchins.

— I should like to know..., she resumed.

— Wait, wait, Riboudet, cried the ecclesiastic in an angry voice, I am going to warm your ears, bad scamp!

Then, turning toward Emma:

— It is the son of Boudet the carpenter; his parents are well-off and let him have his fancies. Yet he would learn quickly, if he wished, for he is full of wit. And I sometimes, in jest, call him therefore Riboudet (like the hill one takes to go to Maromme), and I even say: my Riboudet. Ah! ah! Mont-Riboudet! The other day, I reported that word to Monseigneur, who laughed at it — he deigned to laugh at it. — And M. Bovary, how goes he?

She seemed not to hear. He continued:

— Always very busy, no doubt? for we are certainly, he and I, the two persons of the parish who have the most to do. But he, he is the physician of bodies, he added with a thick laugh, and I, I am of souls!

She fixed upon the priest supplicating eyes.

— Yes..., she said, you relieve all miseries.

— Ah! do not speak to me of it, Madame Bovary! This morning even, I had to go into the Bas-Diauville for a cow that had the bloat; they believed it was a spell. All their cows, I know not how... But, pardon! Longuermarre and Boudet! sack of paper! will you be done!

And, with a bound, he sprang into the church.

The lads then pressed around the great desk, climbed on the chanter's stool, opened the missal; and others, on cat's feet, soon ventured even into the confessional. But the curé, suddenly, distributed over all a shower of box-ears. Taking them by the collar of the jacket, he lifted them from the ground and set them on two knees on the choir paving, firmly, as if he would have planted them there.

— Go, he said when he was returned near Emma, and deploying his broad indienne handkerchief, of which he put a corner between his teeth, the farmers are much to be pitied!

— There are others, she answered.

— Assuredly! the workmen of the towns, for example.

— It is not they...

— Pardon me! I have known there poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I assure you, true saints, who even lacked bread.

— But those, Emma resumed (and the corners of her mouth twisted as she spoke), those, Monsieur le Curé, who have bread, and who have not...

— Fire in winter, said the priest.

— Eh! what does it matter?

— How! what does it matter? It seems to me, that when one is well warmed, well nourished... for after all...

— My God! my God! she sighed.

— Do you feel unwell? he said, advancing with an anxious air; it is the digestion, no doubt? You must go home, Madame Bovary, drink a little tea; that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with brown sugar.

— Why?

And she had the air of someone waking from a dream.

— It is that you passed your hand over your brow. I thought a dizziness had seized you.

Then, recollecting herself:

— But you were asking me something? What was it? I no longer know.

— I? Nothing... nothing..., Emma repeated. And her gaze, which she wandered around her, slowly lowered upon the old man in soutane. They looked at each other, face to face, without speaking.

— Then, Madame Bovary, he said at last, excuse me, but duty above all, you know; I must dispatch my urchins. Here are the first communions that are going to come. We shall be surprised again, I fear! Also, from the Ascension, I hold them recta every Wednesday one hour more. These poor children! one cannot direct them too soon into the way of the Lord, as, moreover, he recommended it to us himself by the mouth of his divine Son... Good health, Madame; my respects to Monsieur your husband!

And he entered the church, making from the door a genuflection.

Emma saw him disappear between the double line of benches, walking with heavy steps, his head a little inclined on his shoulder, and with his two hands half-open, which he carried outward.

Then she turned on her heels, all of a block like a statue on a pivot, and took the road to her house. But the loud voice of the curé, the clear voice of the lads still reached her ear and continued behind her:

— Are you a Christian?

— Yes, I am a Christian.

— What is a Christian?

— It is he who, being baptized..., baptized..., baptized.

She mounted the steps of her staircase holding to the rail, and, when she was in her room, let herself fall into an armchair.

The whitish daylight of the panes lowered gently with undulations. The furniture in its place seemed become more immobile and to lose itself in the shadow as in a tenebrous ocean. The fireplace was out, the clock still beat, and Emma vaguely wondered at this calm of things, while there was in herself so much upheaval. But, between the window and the worktable, little Berthe was there, who staggered on her knitted boots, and tried to come near her mother, to seize, by the end, the ribbons of her apron.

— Leave me! said the latter, pushing her away with the hand.

The little girl soon came back still nearer against her knees; and, leaning on them with her arms, she lifted toward her her big blue eye, while a thread of pure saliva flowed from her lip onto the silk of the apron.

— Leave me! repeated the young woman quite irritated.

Her face frightened the child, who began to cry.

— Eh! leave me then! she said, pushing her away with the elbow.

Berthe went to fall at the foot of the commode, against the brass hook; she cut her cheek there, the blood came. Madame Bovary threw herself to raise her, broke the bell-cord, called the servant with all her strength, and was about to begin to curse herself, when Charles appeared. It was dinner hour, he was coming home.

— Look, dear friend, Emma said in a tranquil voice, here is the little one who, in playing, has just wounded herself on the ground.

Charles reassured her, the case was not grave, and he went to fetch some diachylon.

Madame Bovary did not go down into the room; she wished to remain alone to watch her child. Then, in contemplating her sleeping, what remained to her of uneasiness dissipated by degrees, and she appeared to herself very silly and very good to have been troubled just now for so little. Berthe, indeed, no longer sobbed. Her breathing, now, insensibly lifted the cotton coverlet. Big tears stopped at the corner of her half-closed eyelids, which let see between the lashes two pale pupils, sunken; the sticking-plaster, stuck on her cheek, drew obliquely the taut skin.

— It is a strange thing, Emma thought, how ugly this child is!

When Charles, at eleven o'clock in the evening, returned from the chemist's (where he had gone, after dinner, to leave what remained to him of the diachylon), he found his wife standing near the cradle.

— Since I assure you it will be nothing, he said kissing her on the forehead; do not trouble yourself, poor dear, you will make yourself ill!

He had stayed a long time at the apothecary's. Although he had not shown himself there very moved, M. Homais, nevertheless, had striven to steady him, to cheer his spirits.

Then they had talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood and of the heedlessness of servants. Madame Homais knew something of it, still bearing on her chest the marks of a bowlful of embers that a cook, formerly, had let fall on her apron. So these good parents took a quantity of precautions. Knives never were sharpened, nor rooms waxed. There were iron grates at the windows and strong bars at the doorframes. The little Homais, despite their independence, could not stir without a supervisor behind them; at the least cold, their father stuffed them with pectorals, and up to more than four years they all wore, implacably, quilted pads. It was, it is true, a mania of Madame Homais; her husband was inwardly afflicted by it, fearing for the organs of intellect the possible results of such compression, and he went so far as to say to her:

— You mean then to make of them Caribs or Botocudos?

Charles, however, had tried several times to interrupt the conversation.

— I should have to speak with you, he had breathed low into the ear of the clerk, who began to walk before him on the staircase.

— Would he suspect something? Léon wondered. He had heartbeats and lost himself in conjectures.

Finally Charles, having closed the door, begged him to see for himself at Rouen what might be the prices of a fine daguerreotype; it was a sentimental surprise he reserved for his wife, a delicate attention, her portrait in black coat. But he wished beforehand to know where he stood; these steps were not to embarrass M. Léon, since he went to the city every week, almost.

To what end? Homais suspected thereunder some young man's story, an intrigue. But he was mistaken; Léon pursued no love-affair. More than ever he was sad, and Madame Lefrançois perceived it well by the quantity of food he now left on his plate. To know more, she questioned the collector; Binet replied, in a surly tone, that he was not paid by the police.

His comrade, however, seemed to him very singular; for often Léon threw himself back on his chair spreading his arms, and complained vaguely of existence.

— It is that you take not enough diversion, said the collector.

— Which?

— I, in your place, I should have a turn!

— But I do not know how to turn, answered the clerk.

— Oh! it is true! the other made, caressing his jaw, with an air of disdain mingled with satisfaction.

Léon was weary of loving without result; then he began to feel that dejection which the repetition of the same life causes you, when no interest directs it and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and the Yonvillais, that the sight of certain people, of certain houses irritated him beyond bearing; and the chemist, goodfellow though he was, became him completely insupportable. Meanwhile, the perspective of a new situation frightened him as much as it seduced him.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”