Part 17

Through the mere effect of her loving habits, Madame Bovary changed her ways. Her glances became bolder, her speech freer; she even had the indecency to walk about with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in her mouth, as if to flout the world; and finally, those who still doubted no longer doubted when she was seen one day getting down from the Hirondelle, her waist tight-laced in a waistcoat, after the fashion of a man; and old Madame Bovary, who, after a frightful scene with her husband, had come to take refuge with her son, was not the least scandalized of the bourgeois ladies. Many other things displeased her: first, Charles had not heeded her advice to forbid the novels; then, the style of the household was distasteful to her; she permitted herself some remarks, and they quarreled, once especially over Félicité.

The elder Madame Bovary, the evening before, in crossing the corridor, had surprised her in the company of a man, a man with a brown cravat, about forty years old, who, at the sound of her steps, had quickly slipped out of the kitchen. Then Emma began to laugh; but the good lady flew into a passion, declaring that unless one made mock of morals, one ought to watch over those of the servants.

— What world are you from? said the daughter-in-law, with a look so impertinent that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not defending her own cause.

— Leave! said the young woman, springing up.

— Emma!... mamma!... cried Charles, to bring them back.

But they had both fled in their exasperation. Emma stamped her foot, repeating:

— Ah! what manners! what a peasant!

He ran to his mother; she was beside herself, she stammered:

— She is an insolent woman! a flighty one! worse, perhaps!

And she wanted to leave immediately, if the other did not come and apologize. Charles therefore went back to his wife and besought her to yield; he fell on his knees; she ended by answering:

— Very well! I will go.

In fact, she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity of a marchioness, saying to her:

— Forgive me, madame.

Then, having gone up to her room, Emma threw herself flat on her bed, and there she wept like a child, her head buried in the pillow.

She and Rodolphe had agreed that, in case of an extraordinary event, she would attach to the blind a little scrap of white paper, so that, if by chance he happened to be at Yonville, he would come running to the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal; she had been waiting three quarters of an hour when suddenly she caught sight of Rodolphe at the corner of the market halls. She was tempted to open the window and call to him; but already he had disappeared. She fell back in despair.

Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking on the pavement. It was he, no doubt; she went down the stairs, crossed the yard. He was there, outside. She threw herself into his arms.

— Do take care, said he.

— Ah! if you knew! she went on. And she began to tell him everything, hurriedly, without order, exaggerating the facts, inventing several, and pouring out parentheses so abundantly that he understood nothing of it.

— Come, my poor angel, take heart, console yourself, patience!

— But it is four years now that I have been patient and suffering!... A love like ours ought to be avowed to the face of heaven! They are torturing me. I can bear it no longer! Save me!

She pressed close against Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, sparkled like flames beneath the water; her bosom heaved with rapid throbs; never had he loved her so much, so much so that he lost his head and said to her:

— What is to be done? what do you want?

— Take me away! she cried. Carry me off!... Oh! I beg you!

And she flung herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the unexpected consent that exhaled from it in a kiss.

— But... Rodolphe began again.

— What then?

— And your daughter?

She reflected a few minutes, then answered:

— We will take her, no matter.

— What a woman! he said to himself, watching her go away.

For she had just slipped into the garden. She was being called.

In the following days, the mother Bovary was very much astonished at her daughter-in-law's metamorphosis. Indeed, Emma showed herself more docile, and even carried deference so far as to ask her for a recipe for pickling gherkins.

Was it in order the better to dupe them both? or did she wish, by a sort of voluptuous stoicism, to feel more deeply the bitterness of the things she was about to abandon? But she paid no heed to it, on the contrary; she lived as if lost in the anticipated savoring of her coming happiness. It was with Rodolphe an eternal subject of conversation. She leaned on his shoulder, she murmured:

— Eh! when we are in the mail-coach!... Do you think of it? Is it possible? It seems to me that at the moment I feel the carriage leap forward, it will be as if we were mounting in a balloon, as if we were setting off toward the clouds. Do you know I count the days?... And you?

Never was Madame Bovary so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty which results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and which is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. Her covetousness, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure and her always youthful illusions, as manure, rain, winds and sun do for flowers, had by degrees developed her, and she blossomed forth at last in the fullness of her nature. Her eyelids seemed made on purpose for her long amorous looks in which the pupil was lost, while a strong breath parted her thin nostrils and lifted the fleshy corner of her lips, shadowed in the light by a little black down. One would have said that a skillful artist in corruptions had arranged upon her nape the twist of her hair: it rolled in a heavy mass, negligently, and according to the hazards of adultery, which undid it every day. Her voice now took softer inflections, her waist also; something subtle that penetrated you was even emitted by the draperies of her gown and the arch of her foot. Charles, as in the early days of his marriage, found her delicious and quite irresistible.

When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare wake her. The porcelain night-light rounded upon the ceiling a trembling brightness, and the closed curtains of the little cradle made like a white hut that bulged in the shadow, at the edge of the bed. Charles looked at them. He thought he heard the light breath of his child. She would be growing up now; each season, quickly, would bring a progress. He saw her already returning from school at nightfall, all laughing, with her ink-stained pinafore, and carrying her basket on her arm; then they would have to put her in boarding-school, that would cost much; how to manage? Then he reflected. He thought of renting a small farm in the neighborhood, and that he would supervise it himself, every morning, on his way to see his patients. He would save the income from it, he would place it in the savings bank; then he would buy shares, somewhere, no matter where; besides, the practice would increase; he counted on it, for he wished Berthe to be well brought up, to have accomplishments, to learn the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later, at fifteen, when, resembling her mother, she would wear, like her, in summer, big straw hats! They would be taken from afar for the two sisters. He pictured her working in the evening near them, under the lamp-light; she would embroider slippers for him; she would look after the housekeeping; she would fill the whole house with her gentleness and her gaiety. Finally, they would think of her settlement: they would find her some worthy fellow with a solid position; he would make her happy; that would last always.

Emma did not sleep, she pretended to be asleep; and, while he dozed at her side, she woke to other dreams.

At the gallop of four horses, she had been borne away for eight days toward a new country, whence they would never return. They went, they went, their arms entwined, without speaking. Often, from the top of a mountain, they suddenly caught sight of some splendid city with domes, bridges, ships, forests of lemon trees and cathedrals of white marble, whose pointed bell-towers bore storks' nests. They walked at a foot's pace, because of the great flagstones, and there were upon the ground bouquets of flowers that women dressed in red bodices offered you. Bells were heard ringing, mules neighing, with the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains, whose vapor flying off refreshed heaps of fruits, arranged in pyramids at the feet of pale statues, who smiled beneath the jets of water. And then they arrived, one evening, in a fishing village, where brown nets dried in the wind, along the cliff and the cabins. It is there that they would stop to live; they would inhabit a low house, with a flat roof, shaded by a palm tree, at the bottom of a gulf, on the edge of the sea. They would walk in gondolas, they would swing in a hammock; and their existence would be easy and broad like their silk garments, all warm and starry like the mild nights they contemplated. Meanwhile, upon the immensity of that future which she made appear to herself, nothing particular arose; the days, all magnificent, resembled one another like waves; and that rocked at the horizon, infinite, harmonious, bluish and covered with sun. But the child began to cough in her cradle, or else Bovary snored more loudly, and Emma fell asleep only in the morning, when the dawn whitened the panes and when little Justin, in the square, was already opening the shutters of the pharmacy.

She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux and said to him:

— I should need a coat, a large coat, with a long collar, lined.

— You are going on a journey? asked he.

— No! but... never mind, I am counting on you, are you not? and quickly!

He bowed.

— I should need also, she went on, a trunk... not too heavy... convenient.

— Yes, yes, I understand, about ninety-two centimeters by fifty, as they are made nowadays.

— With a traveling bag.

— Decidedly, thought Lheureux, there is some mischief underneath.

— And see, said Madame Bovary, drawing her watch from her belt, take this; you will pay yourself from it.

But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew each other; did he doubt her? What childishness! She insisted, however, that he take at least the chain, and already Lheureux had put it in his pocket and was going away, when she called him back.

— You will leave everything at your place. As for the coat, — she seemed to reflect, — do not bring it either; only, you will give me the address of the workman and warn him to keep it at my disposal.

It was in the coming month that they were to flee. She would leave Yonville as if to go on errands to Rouen. Rodolphe would have booked the seats, taken passports, and even written to Paris, in order to have the whole mail-coach as far as Marseilles, where they would buy a calash, and from there, continue without stopping, by the road to Genoa. She would have taken care to send her luggage to Lheureux's, which would be directly carried to the Hirondelle, so that no one would thus have any suspicion; and, in all this, never was her child spoken of. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps she did not think of it.

He wished to have two weeks more before him, to finish some arrangements; then, at the end of eight days, he asked for fifteen others; then he said he was ill; afterwards he took a journey; the month of August passed, and, after all these delays, they settled that it would be irrevocably for the 4th of September, a Monday.

Finally Saturday, the eve of the eve, arrived.

Rodolphe came in the evening, earlier than usual.

— Is all ready? she asked him.

— Yes.

Then they walked round a flower-bed, and went to sit near the terrace, on the coping of the wall.

— You are sad, said Emma.

— No, why?

And yet he looked at her strangely, in a tender fashion.

— Is it at leaving? she went on, at quitting your affections, your life? Ah! I understand... But, I, I have nothing in the world! you are all to me. So I shall be all to you, I shall be a family to you, a native land; I shall care for you, I shall love you.

— How charming you are! said he, seizing her in his arms.

— Truly? she said with a laugh of voluptuousness. Do you love me? Swear it then!

— If I love you! if I love you! but I adore you, my love!

The moon, quite round and purple-colored, rose close to the ground, at the end of the meadow. She mounted quickly between the branches of the poplars, which hid her from place to place, like a black curtain, pierced with holes. Then she appeared, resplendent with whiteness, in the empty sky that she lit up; and then, slackening, she let fall upon the river a great patch, which made an infinity of stars; and that silver light seemed to writhe there to the bottom, after the manner of a headless serpent covered with luminous scales. That also resembled some monstrous candelabra, from which streamed, all along, drops of molten diamond. The mild night spread around them; sheets of shadow filled the foliage. Emma, eyes half closed, breathed with great sighs the cool wind that blew. They did not speak, so lost were they in the invasion of their reverie. The tenderness of former days came back to their hearts, abundant and silent like the river that flowed, with as much softness as the perfume of the lilacs brought, and cast into their memory shadows more out of proportion and more melancholy than those of the motionless willows that lengthened upon the grass. Often some nocturnal beast, hedgehog or weasel, setting out to hunt, disturbed the leaves, or else one heard from time to time a ripe peach that fell all alone from the espalier.

— Ah! the beautiful night! said Rodolphe.

— We shall have others! Emma went on. And, as if speaking to herself:

— Yes, it will be pleasant to travel... Why is my heart sad, however? Is it the apprehension of the unknown..., the effect of habits quit..., or rather...? No, it is the excess of happiness! How weak I am, is it not? Forgive me!

— It is still time! he cried. Reflect, you may repent of it.

— Never! she said impetuously.

And, drawing nearer to him:

— What misfortune then can befall me? There is no desert, no precipice nor ocean that I would not cross with you. As we live together, it will be like an embrace each day more close, more complete! We shall have nothing to trouble us, no cares, no obstacle! We shall be alone, all to ourselves, eternally... Speak then, answer me.

He answered at regular intervals: "Yes... yes!..." She had passed her hands into his hair, and she repeated in a childish voice, despite big tears that fell:

— Rodolphe! Rodolphe!... Ah! Rodolphe, dear little Rodolphe!

Midnight struck.

— Midnight! said she. Come, it is tomorrow! one more day!

He rose to go; and, as if this gesture he made had been the signal of their flight, Emma, all at once, assuming a gay air:

— You have the passports?

— Yes.

— You forget nothing?

— No.

— You are sure of it?

— Certainly.

— It is at the Hôtel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me?... at noon?

He made a sign with his head.

— Till tomorrow then! said Emma in a last caress.

And she watched him go away.

He did not turn back. She ran after him, and, leaning over the edge of the water between the bushes:

— Till tomorrow! she cried.

He was already on the other side of the river and walking quickly across the meadow.

After a few minutes, Rodolphe stopped; and, when he saw her with her white garment gradually vanish in the shadow like a phantom, he was seized with such a beating of the heart, that he leaned against a tree so as not to fall.

— What a fool I am! he said, swearing frightfully. No matter, she was a pretty mistress!

And immediately, Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of that love, reappeared to him. At first he was softened, then he rebelled against her.

— For, after all, he exclaimed, gesticulating, I cannot expatriate myself, have the charge of a child.

He said these things to himself to fortify himself the more.

— And, besides, the embarrassments, the expense... Ah! no, no, a thousand times no! that would have been too stupid!

XIII

Scarcely arrived at his house, Rodolphe abruptly sat down at his desk, under the stag's head making a trophy against the wall. But, when he had the pen between his fingers, he could find nothing, so much so that, leaning on both elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him removed into a distant past, as if the resolution he had taken had just placed between them, all at once, an immense interval.

In order to recapture something of her, he went to look in the cupboard, at the bedside, for an old box of Reims biscuits where he usually locked up his letters from women, and there escaped from it a smell of damp dust and faded roses. First he noticed a pocket handkerchief, covered with pale droplets. It was a handkerchief of hers, once when she had bled from the nose, on a walk; he no longer remembered it. There was near it, knocking against all the corners, the miniature given by Emma; her attire seemed to him pretentious and her eyes askance of the most pitiable effect; then, by dint of considering that image and evoking the memory of the model, the features of Emma by degrees became confused in his memory, as if the living face and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had mutually effaced themselves. Finally he read her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical and urgent like business notes. He wished to see the long ones, those of former times; to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the others; and mechanically he began to rummage in that heap of papers and things, finding there pell-mell bouquets, a garter, a black mask, pins and hairs — hairs! brown, blond; some even, catching on the metal of the box, broke when one opened it.

Thus lounging among his memories, he examined the handwriting and the style of the letters, as varied as their spellings. They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love and others that asked for money. By reason of a word, he recalled faces, certain gestures, a tone of voice; sometimes, however, he recalled nothing.

Indeed, those women, coming at once into his thought, crowded one another there and shrank there, as under a same level of love which equalized them. Taking then a handful of the confused letters, he amused himself for some minutes making them fall in cascades, from his right hand into his left. Finally, bored, drowsy, Rodolphe went to put the box back in the cupboard, saying to himself:

— What a lot of nonsense!

Which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a college yard, had so trampled upon his heart, that nothing green grew there, and what passed through there, more heedless than the children, did not even leave there, as they do, its name carved on the wall.

— Come, said he, let us begin!

He wrote:

"Courage, Emma! courage! I do not wish to make the unhappiness of your existence..."

— After all, it is true, thought Rodolphe; I am acting in her interest; I am honest.

"Have you maturely weighed your determination? Do you know the abyss into which I was dragging you, poor angel? No, is it not? You were going, confident and mad, believing in happiness, in the future... Ah! unhappy that we are! senseless!"

Rodolphe stopped to find here some good excuse.

— If I told her that all my fortune is lost?... Ah! no, and besides, that would prevent nothing. It would have to be begun again later. Can one make women like that listen to reason!

He reflected, then added:

"I shall not forget you, believe it well, and I shall continually have for you a profound devotion; but, one day, sooner or later, that ardor (such is the lot of human things) would doubtless have diminished; there would have come to us wearinesses, and who knows even if I should not have had the atrocious grief of assisting at your remorses and of participating in them myself, since I should have caused them. The very idea of the sorrows that befall you tortures me, Emma! Forget me! Why must I have known you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! no, no, accuse only fatality of it!"

— Here is a word that always makes an effect, said he to himself.

"Ah! if you had been one of those women with a frivolous heart such as one sees, certainly, I could, out of selfishness, have attempted an experiment then without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, which makes at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. I myself had not reflected on it at first, and I rested in the shadow of that ideal happiness, as in that of the manchineel, without foreseeing the consequences."

— She will perhaps believe that it is through avarice that I give it up... Ah! no matter, so much the worse, it must be ended!

"The world is cruel, Emma. Everywhere where we should have been, it would have pursued us. You would have had to submit to indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, outrage perhaps. Outrage to you! Oh!... And I who would wish to seat you upon a throne! I who carry away your thought like a talisman! For I punish myself by exile for all the evil I have done you. I am leaving. Where? I know not, I am mad! Adieu! Be always good! Keep the memory of the unhappy man who has lost you. Teach my name to your child, that she may repeat it in her prayers."

The wick of the two candles trembled. Rodolphe rose to go shut the window, and, when he had reseated himself:

— It seems to me that is all. Ah! this still, for fear she should come to hunt me down:

"I shall be far when you read these sad lines; for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible so as to avoid the temptation of seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return; and perhaps, later, we shall talk together very coldly of our former loves. Adieu!"

And there was a last adieu, separated into two words: À Dieu! which he judged of an excellent taste.

— How shall I sign now? said he to himself. Your wholly devoted?... No. Your friend?... Yes, that is it.

"Your friend."

He reread his letter. It seemed good to him.

— Poor little woman! thought he, with tenderness. She will believe me more insensible than a rock; there should have been some tears upon this; but, as for me, I cannot weep; it is not my fault. Then, having poured water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger in it and let fall from on high a big drop, which made a pale stain on the ink; then, seeking to seal the letter, the seal _Amor nel cor_ chanced to hand.

— That does not quite fit the circumstance... Ah well! no matter!

After which, he smoked three pipes and went to bed.

The next day, when he was up (about two o'clock, he had slept late), Rodolphe had a basket of apricots gathered. He disposed the letter at the bottom, under vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his plowman, to carry that delicately to Madame Bovary. He used this means to correspond with her, sending her, according to the season, fruits or game.

— If she asks you for news of me, said he, you will answer that I have gone on a journey. You must give the basket to herself, into her own hands... Go, and take care!

“Stories of the world, in your language.”