Part 11

This apprehension soon turned to impatience, and then Paris, far off, waved for him the fanfare of its masked balls with the laughter of its grisettes. Since he was to finish his law studies there, why did he not leave? who hindered him? And he began making inner preparations: he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished, in his head, an apartment. He would lead the life of an artist there! He would take guitar lessons! He would have a dressing gown, a Basque beret, blue velvet slippers! And already he admired, upon his mantelpiece, two foils crossed in saltire, with a death's head and the guitar above.

The difficult thing was his mother's consent; yet nothing seemed more reasonable. His employer himself urged him to visit another office, where he might develop further. Taking therefore a middle course, Léon sought some position as second clerk at Rouen, found none, and at last wrote his mother a long detailed letter, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live in Paris immediately. She consented.

He did not hurry. Each day, for a whole month, Hivert carried for him from Yonville to Rouen, from Rouen to Yonville, trunks, valises, parcels; and, when Léon had replenished his wardrobe, had his three armchairs re-stuffed, bought a supply of scarves, taken in short more precautions than for a voyage around the world, he put himself off from week to week, until he received a second maternal letter urging him to depart, since he wished, before the holidays, to pass his examination.

When the moment came for embraces, Madame Homais wept; Justin sobbed; Homais, like a strong man, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself to the notary's gate, who was taking Léon to Rouen in his carriage. The latter had just time to bid farewell to M. Bovary.

When he was at the top of the stairs, he stopped, so out of breath did he feel. At his entrance, Madame Bovary rose quickly.

— It is I again! said Léon.

— I was sure of it!

She bit her lips, and a flood of blood ran beneath her skin, which colored all in pink, from the roots of her hair to the edge of her collar. She remained standing, leaning her shoulder against the wainscot.

— Monsieur is not here then? he resumed.

— He is away.

She repeated:

— He is away.

Then there was a silence. They looked at each other; and their thoughts, mingled in the same anguish, clasped tightly, like two palpitating breasts.

— I should like to kiss Berthe, said Léon.

Emma went down a few steps, and she called Félicité.

He cast quickly around him a wide glance that spread over the walls, the shelves, the mantelpiece, as if to penetrate all, carry all away.

But she came back in, and the servant brought Berthe, who was shaking a windmill upside down at the end of a string.

Léon kissed her on the neck several times.

— Farewell, poor child! farewell, dear little one, farewell! And he returned her to her mother.

— Take her away, said the latter.

They remained alone.

Madame Bovary, her back turned, had her face placed against a pane; Léon held his cap in his hand and beat it gently along his thigh.

— It is going to rain, said Emma.

— I have a coat, he answered.

— Ah!

She turned away, her chin lowered and her brow forward. The light glided upon it like upon marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's being able to know what Emma was looking at on the horizon or what she was thinking in the depths of herself.

— Well, farewell! he sighed.

She raised her head with a brusque movement:

— Yes, farewell... go!

They advanced one toward the other; he held out his hand, she hesitated.

— English fashion then, said she abandoning hers while striving to laugh.

Léon felt her within his fingers, and the very substance of all his being seemed to him to descend into that moist palm.

Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared.

When he was beneath the market hall, he stopped, and he hid behind a pillar, in order to contemplate one last time that white house with its four green shutters. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window, in the room; but the curtain, unhooking from its peg as if no one touched it, moved slowly its long oblique folds, which in a single bound spread all out, and it remained straight, more immobile than a plaster wall. Léon began to run.

He perceived from afar, on the road, his employer's cabriolet, and beside it a man in a smock who held the horse. Homais and M. Guillaumin were chatting together. They were waiting for him.

— Embrace me, said the apothecary with tears in his eyes. There is your overcoat, my good friend; take care of the cold! Take care of yourself! Spare yourself!

— Come, Léon, into the carriage! said the notary.

Homais leaned over the splash-guard, and, in a voice broken by sobs, let fall these two sad words:

— Safe journey!

— Good evening, answered M. Guillaumin. Let go all!

They set off, and Homais went back.

Madame Bovary had opened her window upon the garden, and she was looking at the clouds.

They were massing at the west toward Rouen, and rolled quickly their black volutes, from behind which passed the great lines of the sun, like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty sky had the whiteness of porcelain. But a gust of wind made the poplars bend, and suddenly the rain fell; it crackled on the green leaves. Then the sun reappeared, the hens sang, sparrows beat their wings in the damp bushes, and the pools of water upon the sand, as they flowed away, carried off the pink flowers of an acacia.

— Ah! how far he must be already! she thought.

M. Homais, as was his custom, came at half past six, during dinner.

— Well, said he sitting down, we have then shipped off our young man this morning?

— It seems! answered the doctor.

Then, turning on his chair:

— And what is new with you?

— Not much. My wife, only, was a bit moved this afternoon. You know, women, a trifle troubles them! mine especially! And one would be wrong to rebel against that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours.

— Poor Léon! said Charles, how will he live at Paris?... Will he grow accustomed to it?

Madame Bovary sighed.

— Come now! said the pharmacist clicking his tongue, fine dinners at the caterer's! masked balls! champagne! all that will roll along, I assure you.

— I do not believe he will stray, objected Bovary.

— Nor I! replied briskly M. Homais, though he will have however to follow the others, at the risk of passing for a Jesuit. And you do not know the life those jokers lead, in the Latin Quarter, with the actresses! Besides, students are much thought of at Paris. For a little talent at pleasing, they are received in the best society, and there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which afterwards furnishes them the occasions to make very fine marriages.

— But, said the doctor, I am afraid for him that... there...

— You are right, interrupted the apothecary, that is the reverse of the medal! and one is there continually obliged to have one's hand upon one's purse. Thus, you are in a public garden, I suppose; a fellow presents himself, well dressed, even decorated, and whom one would take for a diplomat; he accosts you; you chat; he insinuates himself, offers you a pinch or picks up your hat. Then one grows more intimate; he takes you to the café, invites you to come to his country house, makes you, between two wines, form all sorts of acquaintances, and, three quarters of the time, it is only to plunder your purse or drag you into pernicious steps.

— That is true, answered Charles; but I was thinking especially of illnesses, of typhoid fever, for example, which attacks students from the provinces.

Emma shuddered.

— Because of the change of regimen, continued the pharmacist, and the perturbation which results therefrom in the general economy. And then, the water of Paris, you see! the dishes of restaurateurs, all those spiced foods end by heating your blood and are not worth, whatever is said, a good pot-au-feu. I have always, as for me, preferred bourgeois cooking: it is healthier! Also, when I studied pharmacy at Rouen, I had myself boarded in a boarding-house; I ate with the professors.

And he continued therefore to set forth his general opinions and his personal sympathies, until the moment when Justin came to fetch him for an eggnog that had to be made.

— Not an instant of rest! he cried, always at the chain! I cannot go out a minute! One must, like a plough-horse, be sweating blood and water! What a collar of misery!

Then, when he was at the door:

— By the way, said he, do you know the news?

— What then?

— It is that it is very probable, resumed Homais raising his eyebrows and assuming a most serious face, that the agricultural show of the Seine-Inférieure will be held this year at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumor, at least, is circulating. This morning, the newspaper touched upon it. That would be of the last importance for our district! But we will talk of it later. I can see, I thank you; Justin has the lantern.

VII

The following day was, for Emma, a funereal day. All seemed to her enveloped by a black atmosphere which floated confusedly over the outside of things, and sorrow rushed into her soul with soft howlings, as the winter wind does in abandoned castles. It was that reverie one has over what will not return, the weariness that seizes you after each accomplished fact, that grief finally which the interruption of every accustomed movement brings you, the abrupt cessation of a prolonged vibration.

As after the return from La Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles whirled in her head, she had a dreary melancholy, a numbed despair. Léon reappeared taller, handsomer, sweeter, vaguer; though separated from her, he had not left her, he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to keep his shadow. She could not detach her gaze from that carpet where he had walked, from those empty pieces of furniture where he had sat. The river still flowed, and slowly pushed its little waves along the slippery bank. They had walked there many a time, at that same murmur of the waves, upon the moss-covered pebbles. What fine suns they had had! what fine afternoons, alone, in the shade, at the bottom of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, resting on a stool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow made the pages of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbor tremble... Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only possible hope of a happiness! Why had she not seized that happiness, when it presented itself! Why not have held him with two hands, on two knees, when he wished to flee? And she cursed herself for not having loved Léon; she thirsted for his lips. The desire took her to run to rejoin him, to throw herself into his arms, to say to him: "It is I, I am yours!" But Emma embarrassed herself beforehand with the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increasing with a regret, became only the more active.

Thenceforth, that memory of Léon was like the center of her boredom; it sparkled there more strongly than, in a Russian steppe, a fire of travelers abandoned upon the snow. She precipitated herself toward him, she cuddled against him, she stirred delicately this hearth near to dying out, she went seeking all around her what might enliven it further; and the most distant reminiscences as well as the most immediate occasions, what she felt with what she imagined, her cravings for voluptuousness which dispersed, her projects of happiness which cracked in the wind like dead branches, her sterile virtue, her fallen hopes, the domestic litter, she gathered all, took all, and made all serve to warm her sadness.

Meanwhile the flames grew calm, whether the provision of herself was exhausted, or the heaping-up too considerable. Love, little by little, went out through absence, regret stifled under habit; and that gleam of conflagration which purpled her pale sky covered itself with more shadow and faded by degrees. In the drowsiness of her conscience, she even took the repugnances of the husband for aspirations toward the lover, the burnings of hatred for the re-warmings of tenderness; but, as the hurricane still blew, and the passion consumed itself to the ashes, and no help came, no sun appeared, it was on all sides complete night, and she remained lost in a horrible cold which pierced her through.

Then the bad days of Tostes began again. She esteemed herself now much more unhappy: for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty that it would not end.

A woman who had imposed such great sacrifices upon herself could well do without fancies. She bought herself a Gothic prie-Dieu, and she spent in one month fourteen francs on lemons to clean her nails; she wrote to Rouen, in order to have a dress in blue cashmere; she chose at Lheureux's the finest of his scarves; she tied it at her waist over her dressing gown; and, the shutters closed, with a book in her hand, she remained stretched upon a sofa in this attire.

Often, she varied her coiffure: she put it Chinese style, in soft curls, in braided plaits; she made a part on the side of her head and rolled her hair underneath, like a man.

She wished to learn Italian: she bought dictionaries, a grammar, a supply of white paper. She tried serious readings, history and philosophy. At night, sometimes, Charles woke with a start, believing someone came to fetch him for a patient:

— I am going, he stammered.

And it was the noise of a match that Emma struck in order to relight the lamp. But it was with her readings as with her tapestries, which, all begun, encumbered her wardrobe; she took them up, left them, passed to others.

She had fits, wherein one might easily have pushed her to extravagances. She maintained one day, against her husband, that she would well drink a large half-glass of brandy, and, as Charles had the stupidity to defy her, she swallowed the brandy to the end.

Despite her flighty airs (that was the word of the bourgeoises of Yonville), Emma however did not seem joyful, and, usually, she kept at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction which puckers the faces of old maids and those of fallen ambitious men. She was pale everywhere, white as linen; the skin of her nose drew toward the nostrils, her eyes looked at you in a vague manner. Having discovered three gray hairs on her temples, she spoke much of her old age.

Often faintings seized her. One day even, she had a spitting of blood, and, as Charles hastened, letting appear his uneasiness:

— Ah bah! she answered, what does that matter?

Charles went to take refuge in his office; and he wept, his two elbows on the table, seated in his desk-chair, under the phrenological head.

Then he wrote to his mother to beg her to come, and they had together long conferences about Emma.

What to resolve? what to do, since she refused all treatment?

— Do you know what your wife needs? resumed Madame Bovary. It would be forced occupations, manual works! If she were like so many others, constrained to earn her bread, she would not have those vapors, which come to her from a heap of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness wherein she lives.

— Yet she occupies herself, said Charles.

— Ah! she occupies herself! At what then? At reading novels, bad books, works which are against religion and in which one mocks the priests by speeches drawn from Voltaire. But all that goes far, my poor child, and someone who has no religion always ends by turning bad.

Therefore it was resolved that they would prevent Emma from reading novels. The undertaking did not seem easy. The good lady charged herself with it: she was to, when she passed through Rouen, go in person to the book-lender and represent to him that Emma was ceasing her subscriptions. Would one not have the right to warn the police, if the bookseller persisted nonetheless in his trade of poisoner?

The farewells of the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law were dry. During the three weeks they had remained together, they had not exchanged four words, apart from the inquiries and compliments when they met at table, and in the evening before going to bed.

Madame Bovary mother left on a Wednesday, which was market day at Yonville.

The Square, from the morning, was encumbered by a file of carts which, all rear-end and shafts in the air, stretched along the houses from the church to the inn. On the other side, there were canvas booths where one sold cotton goods, blankets and woolen stockings, with halters for the horses and packets of blue ribbons, which at the end flew off in the wind. Heavy hardware was spread upon the ground, between pyramids of eggs and baskets of cheeses, from which sticky straws came out; near the grain-machines, hens which clucked in flat cages passed their necks through the bars. The crowd, encumbering itself at the same spot without wishing to move, threatened sometimes to break the front of the pharmacy. On Wednesdays, it never emptied and one pushed there, less to buy medicines than to take consultations, so famous was the reputation of Sir Homais in the surrounding villages. His robust assurance had fascinated the country-folk. They regarded him as a greater doctor than all the doctors.

Emma was leaning at her window (she placed herself there often: the window, in the provinces, replaces the theaters and the promenade), and she amused herself considering the throng of boors, when she perceived a gentleman clothed in a green velvet redingote. He was gloved in yellow gloves, though he was shod in heavy gaiters; and he directed himself toward the doctor's house, followed by a peasant walking head low in a wholly reflective air.

— May I see Monsieur? he asked Justin, who was chatting on the threshold with Félicité.

And, taking him for the servant of the house:

— Tell him that M. Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is here.

It was not through territorial vanity that the new arrival had added to his name the particle, but in order to make himself better known. La Huchette, indeed, was an estate near Yonville, whose château he had just acquired, with two farms which he cultivated himself, without too much constraining himself however. He lived, as a bachelor, and passed for having at least fifteen thousand pounds of income!

Charles entered the room. M. Boulanger presented his man to him, who wished to be bled because he felt ants along his body.

— That will purge me, he objected to all reasoning.

Bovary therefore ordered a bandage and a basin to be brought, and begged Justin to hold it. Then, addressing the peasant already pale:

— Do not be afraid, my good fellow.

— No, no, answered the other, go ahead!

And, with a fanfaron air, he held out his thick arm. Under the puncture of the lancet, the blood sprang and went to spatter against the glass.

— Bring the basin nearer! exclaimed Charles.

— Look! said the peasant, one would swear a little fountain flowing! As I have red blood! that must be a good sign, isn't it?

— Sometimes, resumed the health officer, one feels nothing at the beginning, then syncope declares itself, and more particularly among well-constituted people, like this one.

The countryman, at these words, let go the case he was turning between his fingers. A jerk of his shoulders made the back of the chair crack. His hat fell.

— I suspected it, said Bovary applying his finger on the vein.

The basin began to tremble in Justin's hands; his knees wavered, he grew pale.

— My wife! my wife! called Charles.

With a bound, she descended the stairs.

— Vinegar! he cried. Ah! my God, two at once!

And, in his emotion, he had difficulty placing the compress.

— It is nothing, said very tranquilly M. Boulanger, while he took Justin in his arms.

And he seated him on the table, leaning his back against the wall.

Madame Bovary set about loosening his cravat. There was a knot in the shirt-strings; she remained a few minutes moving her light fingers in the neck of the young boy; afterwards she poured vinegar upon her batiste handkerchief; she moistened his temples with it in little taps and she blew upon them, delicately.

The carter woke; but Justin's syncope still lasted, and his pupils disappeared in their pale sclera, like blue flowers in milk.

— It would be well, said Charles, to hide this from him.

Madame Bovary took the basin. To put it under the table, in the movement she made in bending, her dress (it was a summer dress with four flounces, of yellow color, long in the waist, wide in the skirt), her dress flared around her upon the tiles of the room; — and, as Emma, bent down, wavered a little in spreading her arms, the swelling of the stuff broke open here and there, according to the inflections of her bodice. Afterwards she went to take a carafe of water, and she was melting pieces of sugar when the pharmacist arrived. The servant had gone to fetch him in the uproar; at sight of his pupil with open eyes, he breathed again. Then, turning around him, he looked at him from head to foot.

— Fool! said he; little fool, truly! fool in three letters! A great matter, after all, a phlebotomy! and a lad who fears nothing! a kind of squirrel, such as you see him, who climbs to crack nuts at vertiginous heights. Ah! yes, speak, boast! there are fine dispositions to exercise pharmacy later; for you may find yourself called in grave circumstances, before the courts, in order to enlighten the conscience of the magistrates; and it will be necessary however to keep one's coolness, to reason, to show oneself a man, or else pass for an imbecile!

Justin answered not. The apothecary continued:

— Who asked you to come? You always importune monsieur and madame! Wednesdays, besides, your presence is more indispensable to me. There are now twenty people at the house. I left everything because of the interest I bear you. Come, go! run! wait for me, and watch the jars!

When Justin, who was dressing again, had left, they chatted a little of faintings. Madame Bovary had never had any.

— It is extraordinary for a lady! said M. Boulanger. Besides, there are people very delicate. Thus I have seen, in a duel, a witness lose consciousness merely at the noise of the pistols being loaded.

— Me, said the apothecary, the sight of others' blood does nothing to me at all; but the mere idea of my own flowing would suffice to cause me faintings, if I reflected too much upon it.

Meanwhile M. Boulanger dismissed his servant, urging him to calm his mind, since his fancy was past.

— It procured me the advantage of your acquaintance, added he.

And he looked at Emma during this phrase.

Then he deposited three francs on the corner of the table, saluted negligently and went away.

He was soon on the other side of the river (it was his road to return to La Huchette); and Emma perceived him in the meadow, who walked under the poplars, slackening from time to time, like someone who reflects.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”