Part 13

— Oh! you slander yourself, said Emma.

— No, no, she is execrable, I swear to you.

“But, gentlemen,” the Councillor went on, “if, dismissing from my memory those gloomy pictures, I turn my eyes upon the present situation of our beautiful fatherland: what do I see there? Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new lines of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the State, are establishing new relations; our great manufacturing centres have resumed their activity; religion, more firmly established, smiles in every heart; our ports are full, confidence is reborn, and at last France breathes!...”

— Besides, added Rodolphe, perhaps, from the world’s point of view, they are right?

— How so? she said.

— What! he said, do you not know that there are souls forever tormented? They need by turns the dream and the deed, the purest passions, the wildest enjoyments, and thus one throws oneself into every sort of whim, of madness.

Then she looked at him as one contemplates a traveller who has passed through extraordinary countries, and she resumed:

— We do not even have that distraction, we poor women!

— Sad distraction, for one does not find happiness in it.

— But is it ever found? she asked.

— Yes, it is met with one day, he answered.

“And this is what you have understood,” said the Councillor. “You, farmers and labourers of the countryside; you, peaceful pioneers of a work wholly of civilisation! you, men of progress and of morality! you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more to be dreaded truly than the disorders of the atmosphere...”

— It is met with one day, repeated Rodolphe, one day, suddenly, and when one had despaired of it. Then horizons open; it is like a voice that cries: ‘There he is!’ You feel the need to make the confession of your life to that person; to give them everything, to sacrifice everything to them! One does not explain oneself, one divines. One had glimpsed each other in one’s dreams. (And he looked at her.) At last, there it is, that treasure so long sought, there, before you; it shines, it sparkles. Yet one still doubts it, one dares not believe it; one remains dazzled by it, as if emerging from darkness into light.

And, in finishing these words, Rodolphe added pantomime to his speech. He passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with dizziness; then let it fall upon Emma’s. She withdrew hers. But the Councillor was still reading:

“And who would be surprised at this, gentlemen? He alone would be, who was blind enough, plunged enough (I do not fear to say it), plunged enough in the prejudices of another age to still misrecognise the spirit of the rural populations. For where, indeed, to find more patriotism than in the countryside, more devotion to the public cause, more intelligence, in a word? And I do not mean, gentlemen, that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and moderate intelligence, which applies above all else to the pursuit of useful ends, thus contributing to the good of each, to common improvement and to the support of States, fruit of respect for the laws and the practice of duties...”

— Ah! again, said Rodolphe. Always duties, I am crushed by those words. They are a pack of old dotards in flannel waistcoats, and of bigots with foot-warmers and rosaries, who continually sing in our ears: ‘Duty! duty!’ Eh! by Jove! duty is to feel what is great, to cherish what is beautiful, and not to accept all the conventions of society, with the ignominies it imposes on us.

— However..., however..., objected Madame Bovary.

— Eh no! why declaim against the passions? Are they not the only beautiful thing there is on earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, of music, of the arts, of everything in short?

— But one must, said Emma, follow the world’s opinion a little and obey its morality.

— Ah! that is because there are two of them, he replied. The little one, the conventional, that of men, that which changes ceaselessly and which bawls so loud, bustles about below, earth to earth, like that gathering of imbeciles you see there. But the other, the eternal, is all around and above, like the landscape that surrounds us and the blue sky that lights us.

M. Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with his pocket handkerchief. He resumed:

“And what should I do, gentlemen, to demonstrate here the usefulness of agriculture? Who, indeed, provides for our needs? who supplies our subsistence? Is it not the farmer? The farmer, gentlemen, who, sowing with a labouring hand the fertile furrows of the countryside, brings forth wheat, which, crushed, is made into powder by means of ingenious devices, comes out under the name of flour, and, from there, transported into the cities, is soon delivered to the baker, who makes of it nourishment for the poor as for the rich. Is it not the farmer again who fattens, for our clothing, his abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, for how should we feed ourselves without the farmer? And even, gentlemen, is there need to go so far to seek examples? Who has not often reflected on all the importance drawn from that modest animal, ornament of our farmyards, which provides at once a soft pillow for our beds, its succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should not finish, were I to enumerate one after another the different products that the well-cultivated earth, like a generous mother, lavishes upon her children. Here, it is the vine; elsewhere, cider apples; there, colza; further on, cheeses; and flax; gentlemen, let us not forget flax! which has taken in these latter years a considerable increase and upon which I shall more particularly call your attention.”

He had no need to call it: for all the mouths of the multitude were held open, as if to drink his words. Tuvache, beside him, listened with widening eyes; M. Derozerays, from time to time, gently closed his lids; and further off, the chemist, with his son Napoléon between his legs, cupped his hand to his ear so as not to lose a single syllable. The other members of the jury slowly nodded their chins in their waistcoats, in sign of approbation. The firemen, at the foot of the platform, rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, remained with elbow out, sabre point in the air. He might hear, but he could perceive nothing, because of the visor of his helmet which descended over his nose. His lieutenant, the younger son of M. Tuvache, had exaggerated his still further; for he wore an enormous one which wobbled on his head, letting a bit of his printed cotton scarf show. He smiled beneath it with a wholly childlike sweetness, and his pale little face, where drops were streaming, had an expression of enjoyment, of overwhelmment and of sleep.

The square up to the houses was crammed with people. One saw folks leaning on all the windows, others standing in all the doorways, and Justin, before the pharmacy window, seemed quite fixed in contemplation of what he looked at. Despite the silence, M. Lieuvain’s voice was lost in the air. It reached you in shreds of phrases, interrupted here and there by the noise of chairs in the crowd; then one heard, suddenly, behind one a long lowing of an ox, or else the bleating of lambs answering each other at the street corners. Indeed, the cowherds and shepherds had pushed their beasts thus far, and they bellowed from time to time, while tearing with their tongues some scrap of foliage hanging before their muzzles.

Rodolphe had drawn near to Emma, and he said in a low voice, speaking quickly:

— Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single feeling it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, calumniated, and, if at last two poor souls meet, all is organised so that they cannot join. They will try however, they will beat their wings, they will call to each other. Oh! no matter, sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will unite, will love, because fate demands it and they were born for one another.

He held his arms crossed upon his knees, and thus raising his face toward Emma, he looked at her closely, fixedly. She distinguished in his eyes little rays of gold irradiating all around his black pupils, and even she felt the scent of the pomade that glossed his hair. Then a languor seized her, she recalled that viscount who had made her waltz at La Vaubyessard, and whose beard exhaled, like that hair, a smell of vanilla and lemon; and, mechanically, she half-closed her eyelids to breathe it better: But, in the gesture she made bending back in her chair, she perceived afar, at the very end of the horizon, the old diligence the Hirondelle, which was slowly descending the slope of Les Leux, dragging after it a long plume of dust. It was in that yellow coach that Léon, so often, had returned to her; and by that road yonder he had departed forever! She thought she saw him opposite, at his window; then all mingled, clouds passed; it seemed to her she was still turning in the waltz, under the glow of the chandeliers, in the arm of the viscount, and that Léon was not far, who was about to come... and yet she still felt Rodolphe’s head beside her. The sweetness of that sensation thus penetrated her former longings, and like grains of sand under a gust of wind, they whirled in the subtle puff of perfume spreading over her soul. She opened her nostrils several times, strongly, to inhale the freshness of the ivy around the capitals. She drew off her gloves, she wiped her hands; then, with her handkerchief, fanned her face, while through the beating of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the Councillor who chanted his phrases.

He was saying:

“Continue! persevere! listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor the too hasty counsels of a temerarious empiricism! Apply yourselves above all to the improvement of the soil, to good fertilisers, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine and porcine breeds! Let these shows be for you like peaceful arenas where the victor, on leaving it, shall hold out his hand to the vanquished and fraternise with him, in hope of a better success! And you, venerable servants! humble domestics, whom no government until this day had taken into consideration for your painful labours, come receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be convinced that the State, henceforth, has its eyes fixed upon you, that it encourages you, that it protects you, that it will do right to your just claims and lighten, as far as lies in it, the burden of your painful sacrifices.”

M. Lieuvain then sat down; M. Derozerays rose, beginning another speech. His, perhaps, was not so flowery as the Councillor’s; but it recommended itself by a more positive style, that is to say by more special knowledge and loftier considerations. Thus, the praise of government held less place in it; religion and agriculture occupied more of it. One saw there the relation of the one and the other, and how they had always concurred to civilisation. Rodolphe, with Madame Bovary, was talking of dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Climbing back to the cradle of societies, the orator depicted for you those savage times when men lived on acorns, at the bottom of woods. Then they had quit the skins of beasts; donned cloth, dug furrows, planted the vine. Was that a good, and was there not in this discovery more drawbacks than advantages? M. Derozerays posed himself the problem. From magnetism, little by little, Rodolphe had come to affinities, and, while M. the president cited Cincinnatus at his plough, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and the emperors of China inaugurating the year by sowings, the young man explained to the young woman that these irresistible attractions drew their cause from some former existence.

— Thus, we, said he, why have we known each other? what chance willed it? It is that, across the distance, no doubt, like two rivers that flow to rejoin, our particular slopes had pushed us one toward the other.

And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.

“Lot of good cultivations!” cried the president.

— Earlier, for example, when I came to your house...

“To M. Bizet, of Quincampoix.”

— Did I know I should accompany you?

“Seventy francs!”

— A hundred times even I wished to leave, and I followed you, I stayed.

“Manures.”

— As I should stay this evening, tomorrow, the other days, all my life!

“To M. Caron, of Argueil, a gold medal!”

— For never have I found in the society of anyone a charm so complete.

“To M. Bain, of Givry-Saint-Martin!”

— Also, I, I shall carry away your memory.

“For a merino ram...”

— But you will forget me, I shall have passed like a shadow.

“To M. Belot, of Notre-Dame...”

— Oh! no, is it not so, I shall be something in your thought, in your life?

“Porcine breed, prize ex aequo: to MM. Lehérissé and Cullembourg; sixty francs!”

Rodolphe was squeezing her hand, and he felt it all warm and trembling like a captive turtledove that would take flight again; but, whether she tried to free it or whether she answered that pressure, she made a movement of the fingers; he cried:

— Oh! thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! you understand that I am yours! Let me see you, let me contemplate you!

A gust of wind that came in by the windows ruffled the cloth of the table, and, on the Square, below, all the great bonnets of the peasant women lifted, like wings of white butterflies that flutter.

“Use of oilseed cakes”, continued the president.

He hastened:

“Flemish fertiliser, — cultivation of flax, — drainage, — long-term leases, — servants’ wages.”

Rodolphe spoke no more. They looked at each other. A supreme desire made their dry lips tremble; and, softly, without effort, their fingers mingled.

“Catherine-Nicaise-Élisabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerrière, for fifty-four years of service on the same farm, a silver medal — of the value of twenty-five francs!”

“Where is she, Catherine Leroux?” repeated the Councillor.

She did not come forward, and one heard voices whispering:

— Go on!

— No.

— To the left!

— Don’t be afraid!

— Ah! how silly she is!

— Is she there at last? cried Tuvache.

— Yes!... there she is!

— Let her come up then!

Then was seen to advance upon the platform a little old woman of timid bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. She had on her feet heavy wooden clogs, and, along the hips, a large blue apron. Her thin face, surrounded by a borderless coif, was more wrinkled with creases than a withered reinette apple, and from the sleeves of her red jacket peeped two long hands, with knotted joints. The dust of barns, the potash of washings and the grease of wools had so encrusted, frayed, hardened them, that they seemed dirty though they were rinsed in clear water; and, from having served so much, they remained half-open, as if to present of themselves the humble witness of so many sufferings endured. Something of a monastic rigidity lifted the expression of her face. Nothing sad or tender softened that pale gaze. In the company of animals, she had taken their muteness and their placidity. It was the first time she saw herself in the midst of so numerous a company; and, inwardly startled by the flags, by the drums, by the gentlemen in black coats and by the Cross of Honour of the Councillor, she remained quite motionless, not knowing whether to advance or flee, nor why the crowd pushed her and why the examiners smiled at her. Thus stood, before those beaming bourgeois, that half-century of servitude.

“Approach, venerable Catherine-Nicaise-Élisabeth Leroux!” said M. the Councillor, who had taken from the president’s hands the list of laureates.

And, alternately examining the sheet of paper and the old woman, he repeated in a paternal tone:

“Approach, approach!”

— Are you deaf? said Tuvache, bounding in his armchair.

And he set about shouting in her ear:

— Fifty-four years of service! A silver medal! Twenty-five francs! It is for you.

Then, when she had her medal, she considered it. Then a smile of beatitude spread over her face, and one heard her mumbling as she went away:

— I shall give it to the curate of our place, for him to say masses for me.

— What fanaticism! exclaimed the chemist, leaning toward the notary.

The session was finished; the crowd dispersed; and, now that the speeches were read, each took up his rank and all returned to custom: the masters bullied the servants, and the latter struck the animals, indolent triumphants who returned to the stable, a green crown between the horns.

Meanwhile the National Guards had mounted to the first floor of the town hall, with brioches stuck on their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion who carried a basket of bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe’s arm; he saw her home; they separated before her door; then he walked alone in the meadow, while awaiting the hour of the banquet.

The feast was long, noisy, ill-served; one was so packed that one could hardly move the elbows, and the narrow planks that served as benches nearly broke under the weight of the guests. They ate abundantly. Each did himself by his share. Sweat ran on all foreheads; and a whitish vapour, like the mist of a river on an autumn morning, floated above the table, between the suspended lamps. Rodolphe, his back against the calico of the tent, thought so hard of Emma that he heard nothing. Behind him, on the grass, servants piled dirty plates; his neighbours spoke, he did not answer them; they filled his glass, and a silence established itself in his thought, despite the increases of the rumour. He dreamed of what she had said and of the shape of her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone upon the plates of the shakos; the folds of her gown descended along the walls, and days of love unrolled to infinity in the perspectives of the future.

He saw her again in the evening, during the fireworks; but she was with her husband, Madame Homais and the chemist, who was much troubled about the danger of stray rockets; and, every moment, he left the company to go give Binet recommendations.

The pyrotechnic pieces sent to the address of M. Tuvache had, by excess of precaution, been locked in his cellar; thus the damp powder hardly caught fire, and the principal piece, which was to represent a dragon biting its tail, completely failed. From time to time, a poor Roman candle set off; then the gaping crowd uttered a clamour wherein mingled the cry of women whose waists were tickled in the darkness. Emma, silent, gently snuggled against Charles’s shoulder; then, chin raised, she followed in the black sky the luminous jet of the rockets. Rodolphe contemplated her by the light of the coloured lamps that burned.

They went out little by little. The stars lit up. A few drops of rain began to fall. She tied her scarf over her bare head.

At that moment, the Councillor’s fiacre came out of the inn. His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed; and one perceived from afar, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his body swaying from right to left according to the pitching of the springs.

— Truly, said the apothecary, one should severely repress drunkenness! I should like that one inscribed, weekly, on the door of the town hall, on an ad hoc board, the names of all those who, during the week, should have intoxicated themselves with liquors. Besides, from the standpoint of statistics, one would have there like open annals that one might consult at need... But excuse me.

And he ran again toward the captain.

The latter was going home. He was about to see his lathe again.

— Perhaps you would not do ill, said Homais to him, to send one of your men or to go yourself...

— Leave me alone, answered the tax-collector, since there is nothing!

— Rest assured, said the apothecary, when he returned to his friends. M. Binet has certified to me that the measures were taken. No spark will have fallen. The pumps are full. Let us go to sleep.

— My faith! I need it, said Madame Homais, who was yawning considerably; but, no matter, we have had for our festival a very fine day.

Rodolphe repeated in a low voice and with a tender look:

— Oh! yes, very fine!

And, having saluted, they turned their backs.

Two days later, in the Fanal de Rouen there was a long article on the shows. Homais had composed it, with verve, the very next day:

“Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Where ran this crowd like the waves of a furious sea, under the torrents of a tropical sun that spread its heat upon our fields?”

Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly, the government did much, but, not enough! “Courage!” he cried to it; “a thousand reforms are indispensable, let us accomplish them.” Then, approaching the Councillor’s entrance, he did not forget “the martial air of our militia”, nor “our most sprightly village girls”, nor “the bald-headed old men, a sort of patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, debris of our immortal phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the drums.” He cited himself among the first of the jury members, and even recalled, in a note, that M. Homais, pharmacist, had sent a memoir on cider to the Agricultural Society. When he arrived at the distribution of rewards, he depicted the joy of the laureates in dithyrambic strokes. The father embraced his son, the brother his brother, the husband his wife. More than one showed with pride his humble medal, and no doubt, returned home, near his good housewife, he will have hung it weeping on the discreet walls of his cottage.

“Toward six o’clock, a banquet, set in M. Liégeard’s meadow, gathered the principal attendants of the feast. The greatest cordiality never ceased to reign there. Various toasts were drunk: M. Lieuvain, to the monarch! M. Tuvache, to the prefect! M. Derozerays, to agriculture! M. Homais, to industry and the fine arts, those two sisters! M. Leplichey, to improvements! In the evening, a brilliant fireworks display suddenly illuminated the skies. One might have said a veritable kaleidoscope, a true Opera decor, and for a moment our little locality could believe itself transported into the midst of a dream of the Thousand and One Nights.

“Let us note that no unfortunate event came to trouble this family gathering.”

And he added: “One has only remarked there the absence of the clergy. Doubtless the sacristies understand progress in another manner. As you like, gentlemen of Loyola!”

IX

Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not return. One evening, at last, he appeared.

He had said to himself, the day after the shows:

— Let us not go back too soon, that would be a mistake.

And, at the end of the week, he had left for the hunt. After the hunt, he had thought it was too late, then he reasoned thus:

— But, if from the first day she loved me, she must, by impatience to see me again, love me the more. Let us continue then!

And he understood his calculation had been good when, entering the room, he perceived Emma turn pale.

She was alone. The day was falling. The little muslin curtains, along the panes, thickened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, upon which struck a ray of sun, spread fires in the mirror, between the cut-outs of the coral.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”