Part 12

— She is very nice! he said to himself; she is very nice, that doctor's wife! Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, and the bearing of a Parisienne. Where the devil does she come from? Where ever did that fat fellow find her?

M. Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four years old; he was of a brutal temperament and a penetrating intelligence, having moreover frequented women a great deal, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was dreaming of her, and of her husband.

— I believe he is very stupid. She is no doubt tired of him. He has dirty nails and a three-day beard. While he trots off to his patients, she stays behind darning socks. And one is bored! one would like to live in the city, to dance the polka every evening! Poor little woman! She gapes after love like a carp after water on a kitchen table. With three words of gallantry, she would adore you; I am sure of it! she would be tender! charming!... Yes, but how to get rid of her afterwards?

Then the encumbrances of pleasure, foreseen in perspective, made him, by contrast, think of his mistress. She was an actress from Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had dwelt on that image, of which he had, even in memory, a surfeit:

— Ah! Madame Bovary, he thought, is much prettier than she, fresher above all. Virginie, decidedly, is beginning to get too fat. She is so tiresome with her joys. And besides, what a mania for shrimp!

The countryside was deserted, and Rodolphe heard around him only the regular swishing of the grasses whipping his shoe, with the cry of crickets hidden far off among the oats; he saw Emma again in the room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.

— Oh! I shall have her! he cried, crushing with a blow of his stick a clod of earth before him.

And immediately he examined the political side of the undertaking. He asked himself:

— Where to meet? by what means? One will constantly have the brat on one's shoulders, and the servant, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of considerable annoyances. Bah! he said, one loses too much time that way!

Then he began again:

— It is that she has eyes that enter your heart like augers. And that pale complexion!... I, who adore pale women!

At the top of the Argueil hill, his resolution was taken.

— There is nothing left but to seek opportunities. Well, I shall pass by there sometimes, I shall send them game, poultry; I shall have myself bled, if need be; we shall become friends, I shall invite them to my house... Ah, by Jove! he added, the agricultural show is soon; she will be there, I shall see her. We shall begin, and boldly, for that is the surest.

VIII

They arrived, indeed, those famous Agricultural Show days! From the morning of the solemnity, all the inhabitants, on their doorsteps, spoke of the preparations; they had garlanded with ivy the pediment of the town hall; a tent in a meadow had been erected for the banquet, and, in the middle of the Square, before the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the Prefect and the names of the prize-winning cultivators. The national guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville) had come to join the firemen's corps, of which Binet was the captain. He wore that day a collar even higher than usual; and, belted in his tunic, he had his torso so stiff and immobile, that the whole vital part of his person seemed to have descended into his two legs, which rose in cadence, at marked steps, in a single movement. As a rivalry subsisted between the tax collector and the colonel, the one and the other, to show their talents, made their men maneuver separately. One saw alternately pass and repass the red epaulettes and the black plastrons. It never ended and always began again! Never had there been such a display of pomp! Several bourgeois, from the day before, had washed their houses; tricolored flags hung from half-open windows; all the taverns were full; and, with the fine weather that prevailed, the starched bonnets, the gold crosses and the colored kerchiefs appeared whiter than snow, glittered in the bright sun, and relieved with their scattered variegation the somber monotony of the frock coats and blue smocks. The farmers' wives from the surroundings pulled out, on dismounting from horseback, the large pin that tightened around their body their dress tucked up for fear of stains; and the husbands, on the contrary, in order to protect their hats, kept over them pocket handkerchiefs, of which they held one corner between their teeth.

The crowd arrived in the main street by the two ends of the village. It overflowed from the lanes, the alleys, the houses, and one heard from time to time the fall of door hammers, behind the bourgeoises in thread gloves, who came out to see the festivity. What was especially admired were two tall yews covered with lanterns that flanked a platform where the authorities were to sit; and there were besides, against the four columns of the town hall, four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, enriched with inscriptions in gold letters. One read on the first: "To Commerce"; on the second: "To Agriculture"; on the third: "To Industry"; and on the fourth: "To the Fine Arts".

But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken Madame Lefrançois, the innkeeper. Standing on the steps of her kitchen, she murmured into her chin:

— What stupidity! what stupidity with their canvas booth! Do they think the Prefect will be glad to dine down there, under a tent, like a mountebank? They call such bother, doing good for the country! It was not worth the trouble, then, to go fetch a caterer from Neufchâtel! And for whom? for cowherds! for barefoot vagabonds!

The apothecary passed by. He wore a black coat, nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and exceptionally a hat, — a low-crowned hat.

— Your servant! he said; excuse me, I am in a hurry.

And as the stout widow asked him where he was going:

— That seems funny to you, doesn't it? me who stays always more confined in my laboratory than the old man's rat in his cheese.

— What cheese? said the innkeeper.

— No, nothing! it is nothing! replied Homais. I only wanted to express to you, Madame Lefrançois, that I usually stay quite shut up at home. Today however, given the circumstance, I must indeed...

— Ah! you are going there? she said with an air of disdain.

— Yes, I am going there, replied the apothecary astonished; am I not part of the consultative commission?

Mother Lefrançois considered him a few minutes, and ended by answering with a smile:

— That is something else! But what does farming matter to you? you understand it then?

— Certainly, I understand it, since I am a pharmacist, that is to say a chemist! and chemistry, Madame Lefrançois, having for its object the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all bodies in nature, it follows that agriculture is found included in its domain! And, indeed, composition of fertilizers, fermentation of liquids, analysis of gases and influence of miasmas, what is all that, I ask you, if not pure and simple chemistry?

The innkeeper answered nothing. Homais continued:

— Do you believe that one must, to be an agronomist, have oneself plowed the land or fattened poultry? But one must rather know the constitution of the substances in question, the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soils, minerals, waters, the density of different bodies and their capillarity! and who knows what else? And one must thoroughly possess all its principles of hygiene, to direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the regimen of animals, the feeding of servants! one must moreover, Madame Lefrançois, possess botany; be able to discern plants, do you understand, which are the wholesome from the deleterious, which the unproductive and which the nutritive, whether it is good to pull them up here and reseed them there, to propagate some, to destroy others; in short, one must keep abreast of science through pamphlets and public papers, always be on the alert, in order to point out improvements...

The innkeeper did not take her eyes off the door of the French café, and the pharmacist went on:

— Would to God that our cultivators were chemists, or at least that they listened more to the counsel of science! Thus, I recently wrote a fine opuscule, a memoir of more than seventy-two pages, entitled: On Cider, on its Fabrication and its Effects; followed by some new reflections on this subject, which I sent to the Agronomic Society of Rouen; which even earned me the honor of being received among its members, agriculture section, pomology class; well, if my work had been given to the public...

But the apothecary stopped, so preoccupied did Madame Lefrançois appear.

— Just look at them! she said, one understands nothing of it! a similar cookshop!

And, with shoulder shrugs that pulled on her chest the stitches of her knitting, she pointed with both hands at her rival's tavern, from which songs were then issuing.

— Besides, he won't last long, she added; within a week, all is finished.

Homais drew back in stupefaction. She came down her three steps, and, speaking to him ear to ear:

— You don't know that? He is to be seized this week. It is Lheureux who is having him sold. He assassinated him with bills.

— What an dreadful catastrophe! cried the apothecary, who always had expressions suited to all imaginable circumstances.

The hostess then began to tell him this story, which she knew from Théodore, M. Guillaumin's servant, and, though she execrated Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was a flatterer, a crawler...

— Ah! look, she said, there he is under the market halls; he is bowing to Madame Bovary, who has a green hat. She is even on the arm of M. Boulanger.

— Madame Bovary! said Homais. I hasten to go offer her my respects. Perhaps she will be glad to have a place in the enclosure, under the peristyle.

And, without listening to Mother Lefrançois, who called him back to tell him more, the pharmacist moved away at a rapid pace, smile on his lips and leg taut, distributing right and left a quantity of salutations and filling much space with the large skirts of his black coat, which fluttered behind him in the wind.

Rodolphe, having spotted him from afar, had taken a quick pace; but Madame Bovary grew breathless; he therefore slowed down and said to her, smiling, in a brutal tone:

— It is to avoid that fat man; you know, the apothecary.

She gave him a nudge with her elbow.

— What does that mean? he wondered.

And he regarded her out of the corner of his eye, while continuing to walk.

Her profile was so calm, that one could guess nothing in it. It stood out in full light, in the oval of her hood which had pale ribbons resembling reed leaves. Her eyes with long curved lashes looked before her, and, though wide open, they seemed a little narrowed by the cheekbones, because of the blood, which beat gently under her fine skin. A pink color traversed the partition of her nose. She inclined her head on her shoulder, and one saw between her lips the pearly tip of her white teeth.

— Is she making fun of me? thought Rodolphe.

This gesture of Emma's, however, had been but a warning; for M. Lheureux was accompanying them, and he spoke to them from time to time, as if to enter into conversation:

— Here is a superb day! everyone is out! the winds are in the east.

And Madame Bovary, no more than Rodolphe, hardly answered him, while at the slightest movement they made, he drew near saying: "Beg pardon?" and raised his hand to his hat.

When they were in front of the marshal's house, instead of following the road to the barrier, Rodolphe, abruptly, took a path, dragging Madame Bovary along; he cried:

— Good evening, M. Lheureux! au plaisir!

— How you dismissed him! she said laughing.

— Why, he resumed, let oneself be invaded by others? and, besides, since today I have the happiness of being with you...

Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he spoke of the fine weather and the pleasure of walking on the grass. Some daisies were sprouting again.

— Here are some pretty daisies, he said, and enough to furnish many oracles to all the lovers of the country.

He added:

— If I were to pick some. What do you think?

— Are you in love then? she said, coughing a little.

— Eh! eh! who knows? answered Rodolphe.

The meadow began to fill, and the housewives jostled you with their large umbrellas, their baskets and their brats. Often one had to step aside before a long file of countrywomen, servant girls in blue stockings, with flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelled of milk, when one passed near them. They walked holding each other by the hand, and thus spread over the whole length of the prairie, from the line of aspens to the banquet tent. But it was the time of the examination, and the cultivators, one after another, entered a kind of hippodrome formed by a long rope borne on sticks.

The beasts were there, the nose turned toward the string, and aligning confusedly their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs drove their snout into the earth; calves bellowed; ewes bleated; the cows, one leg folded, spread their belly on the grass, and, ruminating slowly, blinked their heavy eyelids, under the gnats that buzzed around them. Carters, with bare arms, held by the halter some rearing stallions, who neighed at full nostrils toward the mares. They remained peaceful, stretching the head and the hanging mane, while their foals rested in their shadow, or came to suckle them sometimes; and, on the long undulation of all those packed bodies, one saw rise in the wind, like a wave, some white mane, or else sharp horns thrust out, and heads of men that ran. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces further, there was a great black bull muzzled, wearing an iron ring at the nostril, and who moved no more than a beast of bronze. A ragged child held him by a rope.

Meanwhile, between the two rows, some gentlemen advanced with a heavy step, examining each animal, then consulting in low voice. One of them, who seemed more considerable, took, while walking, some notes in an album. It was the president of the jury: M. Derozerays de la Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe, he came forward quickly, and said to him smiling in an amiable air:

— Why, M. Boulanger, you are abandoning us?

Rodolphe protested he was coming; but when the president had disappeared:

— Faith no, he resumed, I shall not go; your company is worth as much as his.

And, while making fun of the show, Rodolphe, to circulate more at ease, showed the gendarme his blue pass, and even he stopped sometimes before some fine subject, that Madame Bovary admired little. He noticed it, and then began to make jokes about the ladies of Yonville, regarding their toilette; then he excused himself for the negligence of his own. She had that incoherence of common and refined things, where the vulgar, usually, believes to glimpse the revelation of an eccentric existence, the disorders of feeling, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, which seduces or exasperates it. Thus his batiste shirt with pleated frilled cuffs puffed at random of the wind, in the opening of his waistcoat, which was of gray fustian, and his trousers with wide stripes uncovered at the ankles his nankeen boots, cracked with varnished leather. They were so varnished, that the grass was reflected in them. He trampled with them the horse droppings, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat set askew.

— Besides, he added, when one lives in the country...

— All is lost labor, said Emma.

— That is true! replied Rodolphe. To think that not one of these good fellows is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!

Then they spoke of provincial mediocrity, of the lives it stifled, of the illusions that were lost there.

— Also, said Rodolphe, I sink into a sadness...

— You! she said with astonishment. But I thought you very gay?

— Ah! yes, in appearance, because in the midst of the world I know how to put on my face a mocking mask; and yet how many times, at the sight of a cemetery, in the moonlight, I have asked myself if I would not do better to go rejoin those who are asleep...

— Oh! And your friends? she said. You do not think of them.

— My friends? which ones? do I have any? Who cares about me?

And he accompanied these last words with a kind of whistle between his lips.

But they were obliged to separate from each other, because of a great scaffolding of chairs that a man carried behind them. He was so overloaded, that one saw only the tip of his clogs, with the end of his two arms, spread straight. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carting through the multitude the chairs of the church. Full of imagination for all that concerned his interests, he had discovered this means of profiting from the show; and his idea succeeded for him, for he no longer knew which way to turn. Indeed, the villagers, who were hot, disputed these seats whose straw smelled of incense, and leaned against their big backs soiled by candle wax, with a certain veneration.

Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's arm again; he continued as if speaking to himself:

— Yes! so many things were lacking to me! always alone! Ah! if I had had a goal in life, if I had met an affection, if I had found someone... Oh! how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, I would have overcome all, broken all!

— It seems to me however, said Emma, that you are hardly to be pitied.

— Ah! you think so? said Rodolphe.

— For after all..., she resumed, you are free.

She hesitated:

— Rich.

— Do not make fun of me, he answered.

And she was swearing that she was not making fun, when a cannon shot rang out; immediately, one pushed, pell-mell, toward the village.

It was a false alarm. M. the Prefect was not arriving; and the members of the jury found themselves quite embarrassed, not knowing whether they should begin the session or wait still.

At last, at the end of the Square, appeared a great hired landau, drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat whipped roundly. Binet had only time to cry: "To arms!" and the colonel to imitate him. They ran toward the stacks. They precipitated themselves. Some even forgot their collar. But the prefectoral equipage seemed to guess this embarrassment, and the two yoked nags, swaying on their trace, arrived at a trot before the peristyle of the town hall, just at the moment when the national guard and the firemen deployed there, drum beating, and marking the step.

— Shoulder arms! cried Binet.

— Halt! cried the colonel. By file to the left!

And after, a present arms where the clatter of the pan covers, unfolding, rang like a copper pot tumbling down the stairs, all the rifles fell back.

Then they saw descend from the carriage a gentleman clothed in a short coat with silver embroidery, bald on the forehead, wearing a tuft at the occiput, having a pale complexion and the appearance of the most benign. His two eyes, very large and covered with thick eyelids, half closed to consider the multitude, at the same time that he raised his pointed nose and made smile his receding mouth. He recognized the mayor by his sash, and explained to him that M. the Prefect could not come. He was, himself, a prefectural counselor; then he added some excuses. Tuvache answered with courtesies, the other avowed himself confused; and they remained thus, face to face, and their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all around, the municipal council, the notables, the national guard and the crowd. M. the counselor, pressing against his chest his little tricorne black hat, reiterated his salutations, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, smiled also, stammered, sought his phrases, protested his devotion to the monarchy, and the honor that was done to Yonville.

Hippolyte, the inn servant, came to take by the bridle the coachman's horses, and while limping on his club foot, he led them under the porch of the Lion d'or, where many peasants gathered to look at the carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen in file went up to sit on the platform, in the red utrecht velvet armchairs that Madame Tuvache had lent.

All those people resembled each other. Their soft blond faces, a little tanned by the sun, had the color of sweet cider, and their puffing sideburns escaped from stiff large collars, held by white cravats with well-spread rosette. All the waistcoats were of velvet, with shawl; all the watches bore at the end of a long ribbon some oval seal in cornelian; and one pressed one's two hands on one's two thighs, carefully spreading the fork of the trousers, whose unshrunk cloth shone more brightly than the leather of the heavy boots.

The ladies of society stood behind, under the vestibule, while the common of the crowd was in front, standing, or else seated on chairs. Indeed, Lestiboudois had brought there all those he had moved from the meadow, and even he ran every minute to fetch others in the church, and caused such a jam by his trade, that one had great difficulty to reach the little stair of the platform.

— I, I find, said M. Lheureux (addressing the pharmacist, who passed by to gain his place), that one should have planted there two Venetian masts: with something a little severe and rich as novelties, it would have been a very pretty effect.

— Certainly, answered Homais. But, what would you have! it is the mayor who took everything under his hat. He has not much taste, that poor Tuvache, and he is even completely devoid of what is called the genius of the arts.

Meanwhile Rodolphe, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall, into the deliberation room, and, as it was empty, he had declared that one would be well there to enjoy the spectacle more at ease. He took three stools around the oval table, under the bust of the monarch, and, having brought them near one of the windows, they sat down one near the other.

There was an agitation on the platform, long whisperings, parleys. At last, M. the Counselor stood up. One now knew that he was called Lieuvain, and one repeated his name from one to the other, in the crowd. When he had therefore collated some sheets and applied his eye to them to see better, he began:

"Gentlemen,

"That it be permitted to me first (before speaking to you of the object of this gathering of today, and this sentiment, I am sure, will be shared by you all), that it be permitted to me, I say, to render justice to the superior administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentlemen, to our sovereign, to this well-beloved king to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is indifferent, and who directs at once with so firm and so wise a hand the chariot of the State amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing besides how to make respected peace as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture and the fine arts."

— I should, said Rodolphe, move back a little.

— Why? said Emma.

But, at this moment, the voice of the Counselor rose in an extraordinary tone. He declaimed:

"The time is no more, gentlemen, when civil discord bloodied our public squares, when the proprietor, the merchant, the worker himself, on falling asleep in the evening in peaceful slumber, trembled at the thought of being awakened all at once by the sound of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive maxims audaciously sapped the bases..."

— It is that one might, resumed Rodolphe, perceive me from below; then I would have fifteen days of excuses to give, and, with my bad reputation...

“Stories of the world, in your language.”