Part 21

Madame Bovary took up her lorgnette. Léon, motionless, looked at her, not even attempting to utter a word or make a gesture, so discouraged did he feel before this double determination to chatter and to be indifferent.

The eternal guide went on:

—Near him, that woman on her knees weeping is his wife Diane de Poitiers, countess of Brézé, duchess of Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566; and, on the left, she who bears a child, the holy Virgin. Now, turn this way: here are the tombs of Amboise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister to King Louis XII. He did much good to the Cathedral. There were found in his will thirty thousand gold crowns for the poor.

And, without stopping, even as he spoke, he pushed them into a chapel encumbered with balustrades, displaced some of them, and uncovered a sort of block, which might well have been a badly made statue.

—It formerly adorned, he said with a long groan, the tomb of Richard Coeur de Lion, king of England and duke of Normandy. It is the Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this state. Out of spite they had buried it in earth, beneath the episcopal seat of Monseigneur. See here, this is the door by which he goes to his dwelling, Monseigneur. Let us go look at the windows of the Gargoyle.

But Léon briskly drew a silver coin from his pocket and seized Emma by the arm. The Swiss verger remained quite stupefied, not understanding this untimely munificence, when there remained so many things for the stranger to see. So, calling them back:

—Eh! sir. The spire! the spire!

—Thank you, said Léon.

—Sir is wrong! It will have four hundred and forty feet, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is entirely of cast iron, it...

Léon fled; for it seemed to him that his love, which, for nearly two hours now, had been immobilized in the church like the stones, was about to evaporate, like a smoke, through that sort of truncated pipe, that oblong cage, that open-work chimney, which so grotesquely hazards itself upon the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fanciful boiler-maker.

—Where are we going then? she said.

Without answering, he continued to walk with rapid steps, and already Madame Bovary was dipping her finger in the holy water, when they heard behind them a great panting breath, regularly interrupted by the rebound of a cane. Léon turned around.

—Sir!

—What?

And he recognized the verger, carrying under his arm and now balancing against his belly some twenty or so stout bound volumes. They were the works that described the cathedral.

—Fool! grumbled Léon, darting out of the church.

A lad was loitering on the parvis:

—Go fetch me a cab!

The child set off like a shot, by the rue des Quatre-Vents; then they remained alone a few minutes, face to face and a little embarrassed.

—Ah! Léon!... Truly... I do not know... whether I should...

She simpered. Then, with a serious air:

—It is very improper, you know?

—In what? replied the clerk. It is done in Paris!

And that saying, like an irresistible argument, decided her.

Meanwhile the cab did not arrive. Léon was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared.

—At least leave by the north portal! cried the verger, who had remained on the threshold, to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Damned in the flames of hell.

—Where is sir going? asked the coachman.

—Wherever you please! said Léon, pushing Emma into the carriage.

And the heavy machine set off.

She went down the rue Grand-Pont, crossed the place des Arts, the quai Napoléon, the pont Neuf and stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille.

—Continue! said a voice from inside.

The carriage set off again, and, letting itself, from the carrefour La Fayette, be carried by the descent, it entered at a great gallop into the railway station.

—No, straight ahead! cried the same voice.

The cab left the gates, and soon, arrived on the Cours, trotted gently, in the midst of the great elms. The coachman wiped his brow, put his leather hat between his knees and pushed the carriage outside the side-paths, to the edge of the water, near the grass.

She went along the river, on the towing-path paved with dry pebbles, and, for a long time, on the side of Oyssel, beyond the islands.

But suddenly she sprang with a bound through Quatremares, Sotteville, the Grande-Chaussée, the rue d'Elbeuf, and made her third halt before the botanical garden.

—Do go on! cried the voice more furiously.

And at once, taking up her course, she passed by Saint-Sever, by the quai des Curandiers, by the quai aux Meules, again by the bridge, by the place du Champ-de-Mars and behind the gardens of the hospital, where old men in black jackets walk in the sun, along a terrace all greened by ivy. She went up the boulevard Bouvreuil, traversed the boulevard Cauchoise, then all of Mont-Riboudet as far as the slope of Deville.

She came back; and then, without purpose or direction, at random, she wandered. She was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at mont Gargan, at the Rouge-Mare, and place du Gaillard-bois; rue Maladrerie, rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise, — before the Douane, — at the basse Vieille-Tour, at the Trois-Pipes and at the Cimetière Monumental. From time to time the coachman on his seat cast desperate glances at the taverns. He did not understand what fury of locomotion drove these persons to be unwilling to stop. He tried sometimes, and at once he heard behind him break out exclamations of anger. Then he lashed the harder his two sweating nags, but without heeding the jolts, catching here and there, caring nothing for it, demoralized, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue and sadness.

And on the port, amid the carts and the barrels, and in the streets, at the corner of the posts, the bourgeois opened wide astonished eyes before this thing so extraordinary in the provinces, a carriage with drawn blinds, which thus continually appeared, more closed than a tomb and tossed like a vessel.

Once, in the middle of the day, in full country, at the moment when the sun darted most strongly against the old silver lanterns, a bare hand passed under the little yellow linen curtains and threw out torn bits of paper, which scattered to the wind and fell farther off, like white butterflies, upon a field of red clover all in flower.

Then, toward six o'clock, the carriage stopped in a lane of the Beauvoisine quarter, and a woman got down from it who walked with lowered veil, without turning her head.

II

On arriving at the inn, Madame Bovary was astonished not to see the diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had ended by going away.

Nothing, however, forced her to leave; but she had given her word that she would return that very evening. Besides, Charles was expecting her; and already she felt in her heart that cowardly docility which is, for many women, at once the punishment and the ransom of adultery.

Quickly she made her trunk, paid the bill, took a cabriolet in the yard, and, pressing the groom, encouraging him, inquiring every minute as to the hour and the kilometers covered, managed to catch up with the Hirondelle near the first houses of Quincampoix.

Scarcely seated in her corner, she closed her eyes and opened them again at the foot of the hill, where she recognized from afar Félicité, who stood on watch before the blacksmith's house. Hivert held in his horses, and the cook, raising herself to the window, said mysteriously:

—Madame, you must go at once to M. Homais. It is about something urgent.

The village was silent as usual. At the street corners there were little pink heaps that smoked in the air; it was the time for jams, and all Yonville was making its provision the same day. But before the druggist's shop one admired a much larger heap, which surpassed the others by the superiority that a dispensary must have over bourgeois stoves, a general need over individual fancies.

She went in. The great armchair was overturned, and even the Fanal de Rouen lay on the ground, stretched between the two pestles. She pushed the corridor door; and, in the middle of the kitchen, among the brown jars full of stripped currants, grated sugar, lump sugar, scales on the table, basins on the fire, she perceived all the Homais, big and small, with aprons that came up to their chins and holding forks in their hands. Justin, standing, hung his head, and the pharmacist cried:

—Who told you to go fetch it in the capharnaüm?

—What is it? what is the matter?

—What is the matter? answered the apothecary. We are making jams: they are cooking; but they were going to overflow because of the broth too strong, and I order another basin. So he, out of softness, out of laziness, went to take, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key to the capharnaüm!

The apothecary thus called a cabinet, under the roofs, full of the utensils and the wares of his profession. Often he passed there alone long hours labeling, decanting, retying; and he considered it not as a simple storeroom, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence issued afterward, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses, teas, lotions and potions, which went to spread his celebrity in the surroundings. No one in the world set foot there; and he respected it so much that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the place where he displayed his pride, the capharnaüm was the refuge where, selfishly concentrating himself, Homais delighted in the exercise of his predilections; also the thoughtlessness of Justin seemed to him monstrous in irreverence; and, redder than the currants, he repeated:

—Yes, the capharnaüm! The key that locks up the acids with the caustic alkalis! To have gone to take a reserve basin! a basin with a lid! and which perhaps I shall never use! Everything has its importance in the delicate operations of our art! But the devil! one must establish distinctions and not employ for almost domestic uses what is destined for pharmaceuticals! It is as if one were to carve a pullet with a scalpel, as if a magistrate...

—But calm yourself! said Madame Homais.

And Athalie, pulling him by his redingote:

—Papa! papa!

—No, leave me! resumed the apothecary, leave me! zounds! One might as well set up as grocer, upon my word of honor! Go on! respect nothing! break! smash! let loose the leeches! burn the marshmallow! pickle gherkins in the jars! tear the bandages!

—You had nevertheless... said Emma.

—Presently! — Do you know what you exposed yourself to?... Have you seen nothing, in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer, articulate something!

—I do not... know, stammered the young lad.

—Ah! you do not know! Well, I know, I! You saw a bottle, of blue glass, sealed with yellow wax, which contains a white powder, on which even I had written: Dangerous! and do you know what was in it? Arsenic! and you are going to touch that! take a basin that is beside it!

—Beside it! cried Madame Homais, clasping her hands. Arsenic? You could have poisoned us all!

And the children began to cry out, as if they already felt in their bowels atrocious pains.

—Or poison a patient! continued the apothecary. You wanted then that I should go on the bench of criminals, in the assize court? see myself dragged to the scaffold? Do you ignore the care that I observe in manipulations, although I have nevertheless a furious habit of it. Often I frighten myself, when I think of my responsibility! for the government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that governs us is like a veritable sword of Damocles suspended over our heads!

Emma no longer thought of asking what they wanted of her, and the pharmacist pursued in gasping phrases:

—There is how you recognize the kindnesses one has for you! there is how you reward me for the wholly paternal cares I lavish on you! For, without me, where would you be? what would you do? Who provides you food, education, clothing, and all the means of figuring one day, with honor, in the ranks of society? But it is necessary for that to sweat hard on the oar, and to acquire, as they say, callouses on the hands. Fabricando fil faber, age quod agis.

He quoted Latin, so exasperated was he. He would have quoted Chinese and Greenlandic, had he known those two languages; for he found himself in one of those crises where the whole soul indistinctly shows what it encloses, like the Ocean, which, in tempests, opens from the seaweed of its shore to the sand of its abysses.

And he resumed.

—I begin to terribly repent having taken charge of your person! I should certainly have done better to let you formerly rot in your misery and in the dirt where you were born! You will never be good for anything but a tender of horned beasts! You have no aptitude for the sciences! hardly can you stick on a label! And you live there, at my house, like a canon, like a cock in paste, feasting yourself!

But Emma, turning toward Madame Homais:

—I had been sent for...

—Ah! my God! interrupted the good lady with a sad air, how shall I tell you?... It is a misfortune!

She did not finish. The apothecary thundered:

—Empty it! scour it! take it back! do hurry up!

And, shaking Justin by the collar of his smock, he made a book fall from his pocket.

The child stooped. Homais was quicker, and, having picked up the volume, he contemplated it, eyes wide, jaw open.

—The conjugal... love! said he, separating these two words slowly. Ah! very good! very good! very pretty! And engravings!... Ah! this is too much!

Madame Homais advanced.

—No! do not touch it!

The children wanted to see the pictures.

—Leave! he said imperiously.

And they left.

He walked first up and down, with great strides, keeping the volume open between his fingers, rolling his eyes, suffocated, swollen, apoplectic. Then he came straight at his pupil, and, planting himself before him with crossed arms:

—But you have then all the vices, wretched boy?... Take care, you are on a slope!... You had not then reflected that this infamous book could fall into the hands of my children, put the spark in their brain, tarnish the purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoléon! He is already formed like a man. Are you at least quite sure they have not read it? can you certify me...

—But finally, sir, said Emma, you had something to tell me?

—It is true, madame... Your father-in-law is dead!

Indeed, old man Bovary had just deceased the day before yesterday, suddenly, of an apoplectic stroke, on leaving the table; and, out of excess of precaution for Emma's sensibility, Charles had asked M. Homais to break this horrible news to her with gentleness.

He had meditated his phrase, he had rounded it, polished it, rhythmized it; it was a masterpiece of prudence and of transitions, of fine turns and of delicacy; but anger had carried off the rhetoric.

Emma, renouncing any detail, therefore left the pharmacy; for M. Homais had resumed the course of his vituperations. He was calming himself however, and, now, he grumbled in a paternal tone, while fanning himself with his Greek cap:

—It is not that I entirely disapprove the work! The author was a physician. There is in it certain scientific aspects that it is not ill for a man to know, and I would dare say, that a man must know. But later, later! Wait at least until you are a man yourself and your temperament is formed.

At Emma's knock, Charles, who was expecting her, advanced with open arms and said to her, with tears in his voice:

—Ah! my dear friend...

And he inclined gently to kiss her. But, at the contact of her lips, the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her face, shivering.

However she answered:

—Yes, I know... I know...

He showed her the letter where his mother narrated the event, without any sentimental hypocrisy. Only, she regretted that her husband had not received the succors of religion, having died at Doudeville, in the street, on the threshold of a café, after a patriotic dinner with former officers.

Emma gave back the letter; then, at dinner, out of good breeding, she affected some repugnance. But as he pressed her, she resolutely began to eat, while Charles, opposite her, remained motionless, in an overwhelmed posture.

From time to time, raising his head, he sent her a long look full of distress. Once he sighed:

—I should have liked to see him again!

She was silent. Finally, understanding that she must speak:

—How old was your father?

—Fifty-eight years!

—Ah!

And that was all.

A quarter of an hour later, he added:

—My poor mother?... what is she going to do, now?

She made a gesture of ignorance.

At seeing her so taciturn, Charles supposed her afflicted and constrained himself to say nothing, so as not to revive a grief that moved him. However, shaking off his own:

—Did you amuse yourself well yesterday? he asked.

—Yes.

When the cloth was removed, Bovary did not rise, nor Emma; and, as she looked at him, the monotony of this spectacle little by little banished all pity from her heart. He seemed to her puny, weak, null, in short a poor man, in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like an opium vapor benumbed her.

They heard in the vestibule the dry sound of a stick on the boards. It was Hippolyte who brought Madame's luggage. To set it down, he painfully described a quarter-circle with his stump.

—He does not even think of it! she said to herself, looking at the poor devil, whose thick red hair dripped with sweat.

Bovary sought a sou at the bottom of his purse; and, without seeming to understand all there was for him of humiliation in the mere presence of that man who stood there, like the personified reproach of his incurable ineptitude:

—See! you have a pretty bouquet! said he, noticing on the mantelpiece Léon's violets.

—Yes, said she with indifference; it is a bouquet that I bought just now... from a beggar woman.

Charles took the violets, and, refreshing his eyes, all red with tears, upon them, he smelled them delicately. She snatched them quickly from his hand, and went to put them in a glass of water.

The next day, Madame Bovary mother arrived. She and her son wept much. Emma, under pretext of orders to give, disappeared.

The day after, it was necessary to consult together about the mourning affairs. They went to sit, with the workboxes, at the edge of the water, under the arbor.

Charles thought of his father, and he wondered at feeling so much affection for a man whom he had believed until then to love only very moderately. Madame Bovary mother thought of her husband. The worst days of former times reappeared to her as enviable. Everything faded under the instinctive regret of so long a habit; and, from time to time, while she pushed her needle, a great tear descended along her nose and hung there a moment suspended. Emma thought that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since they were together, far from the world, all in rapture, and not having eyes enough to contemplate one another. She tried to recapture the most imperceptible details of that vanished day. But the presence of the mother-in-law and of the husband embarrassed her. She would have liked to hear nothing, see nothing, so as not to disturb the recollection of her love which was being lost, whatever she did, under outward sensations.

She was unstitching the lining of a dress, whose shreds scattered around her; mother Bovary, without raising her eyes, made her scissors creak, and Charles, in his list slippers and his old brown redingote which served him as a dressing-gown, remained, his two hands in his pockets and speaking not either; near them, Berthe, in a little white apron, was scraping with her spade the sand of the walks.

Suddenly, they saw enter by the gate M. Lheureux, the draper.

He came to offer his services, in view of the fatal circumstance. Emma answered that she believed she could do without them. The merchant did not consider himself beaten.

—A thousand pardons, said he; I should like to have a private word.

Then, in a low voice:

—It is relative to that affair..., you know?

Charles became crimson to the ears.

—Ah! yes..., indeed.

And, in his embarrassment, turning toward his wife:

—Could you not..., my dear...

She seemed to understand him, for she rose, and Charles said to his mother:

—It is nothing! No doubt some household trifle.

He did not wish her to know the story of the note, dreading her remarks.

As soon as they were alone, M. Lheureux began, in fairly clear terms, to congratulate Emma on the inheritance, then to talk of indifferent things, the espaliers, the harvest and his own health, which always went so-so, between the zist and the zest. Indeed, he gave himself the devil of a time, although he did not, despite the world's gossip, make enough even to have butter on his bread.

Emma let him talk. She was so prodigiously bored since two days!

—And here you are quite recovered? continued he. My word, I saw your poor husband in fine states! He is a good fellow, although we have had difficulties together.

She asked which. For Charles had hidden from her the dispute over the supplies.

—But you know well! said Lheureux. It was for your little fancies, the traveling boxes.

He had lowered his hat over his eyes, and, the two hands behind the back, smiling and whistling, he looked her in the face, in an unbearable manner. Did he suspect something? She remained lost in all sorts of apprehensions. At last however he resumed:

—We made it up, and I come again to propose him an arrangement.

It was to renew the note signed by Bovary. Monsieur, besides, would act as he pleased; he should not worry, now especially that he was going to have a host of troubles.

—And even he would do better to discharge himself of it onto someone, onto you, for example; with a power of attorney, it would be convenient, and then we should have together little affairs...

She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade, Lheureux declared that Madame could not dispense with taking something of him. He would send her a black barège, twelve meters, enough to make a dress.

—The one you have there is good for the house. You need another for visits. I saw that, myself, at first glance on entering. I have the American eye.

He did not send the stuff, he brought it. Then he came back for the measuring; he came back under other pretexts, trying each time, to make himself agreeable, helpful, attaching himself, as Homais would have said, and always slipping Emma some advice about the power of attorney. He did not speak of the note. She did not think of it; Charles, at the beginning of his convalescence, had indeed told her something of it; but so many agitations had passed through her head, that she no longer remembered it. Besides, she took care to open no discussion of interest; the mother Bovary was surprised at it, and attributed her change of humor to the religious sentiments she had contracted during her illness.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”