Part 23

Often, as they were on the road, his hat, with a sudden jerk, would come in through the little window of the diligence, while with the other arm he clung to the step, between the splashing of the wheels. His voice, faint at first and wailing, became shrill. It trailed through the night like the indistinct lament of some vague distress; and, amid the jingling of the bells, the murmur of the trees, and the rumbling of the hollow box, it had something remote about it that overwhelmed Emma. It sank into the depths of her soul like a whirlwind into an abyss, and bore her away into spaces of boundless melancholy. But Hivert, who felt the counterweight, blindly dealt out great blows with his whip. The lash cut him across his sores, and he fell into the mud with a howl.

Then the travellers of the Swallow ended by falling asleep, some with open mouths, others with dropped chins, leaning on their neighbour's shoulder, or with arm passed through the strap, all regularly swaying with the motion of the coach; and the glow of the lantern, swinging outside on the cruppers of the leaders, penetrating within through the chocolate calico curtains, cast blood-red shadows on all those motionless individuals. Emma, drunk with sadness, shivered under her clothes; and felt colder and colder at her feet, with death in her soul.

Charles, at home, was waiting for her; the Swallow was always late on Thursdays. Madame arrived at last! She scarcely kissed the little one. Dinner was not ready, no matter! she excused the cook. Everything now seemed permitted to that girl.

Often her husband, noticing her paleness, asked her if she were not feeling unwell.

— No, said Emma.

— But, he replied, you are quite strange this evening?

— Oh! it is nothing! it is nothing!

There were even days when, scarcely returned, she went up to her room; and Justin, who happened to be there, moved about with silent steps, more clever at waiting on her than an excellent lady's maid. He placed the matches, the candlestick, a book, arranged her chemise, turned down the sheets.

— There, she said, that will do, go away!

For he remained standing, hands hanging and eyes open, as if caught in the numberless threads of a sudden daydream.

The next day was dreadful, and the following ones yet more intolerable by the impatience Emma felt to seize her happiness again, — a keen craving, inflamed by familiar images, and which, on the seventh day, burst forth at ease in Léon's caresses. His ardours, for him, hid beneath outpourings of wonder and gratitude. Emma tasted this love in a discreet and absorbed fashion, sustained it by all the artifices of her tenderness, and trembled a little lest he should be lost to her later.

Often she said to him, with melancholy softness of voice:

— Ah! you will leave me, you... you will marry!... you will be like the others.

He asked:

— What others?

— Why, men, at last, she answered.

Then she added, pushing him away with a languid gesture:

— You are all scoundrels!

One day when they were talking philosophically of earthly disillusions, she came to say (to test his jealousy or yielding perhaps to too strong a need of outpouring) that formerly, before him, she had loved someone, — "not like you!" she quickly resumed, protesting on her daughter's head that nothing had happened.

The young man believed her, yet nevertheless questioned her as to what he did.

— He was a ship's captain, my friend.

Was not this to forestall all inquiry, and at the same time to place herself very high, by this pretended fascination exercised over a man who must be of a warlike nature and accustomed to homage?

The clerk then felt the weakness of his position; he envied epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that must please her: he suspected it from her extravagant habits.

But Emma concealed a quantity of her whims, such as the wish to have, to bring her to Rouen, a blue tilbury, harnessed to an English horse, and driven by a groom in turn-down boots. It was Justin who had inspired the caprice in her, by begging her to take him into her service as valet de chambre; and if this deprivation did not lessen, at each meeting, the pleasure of arrival, it certainly increased the bitterness of the return.

Often when they spoke together of Paris, she ended by murmuring:

— Ah! how well we should be there to live!

— Are we not happy? the young man gently replied, passing his hand over her locks.

— Yes, it is true, she said, I am mad; kiss me!

She was for her husband more charming than ever, made him pistachio creams and played waltzes after dinner. He therefore considered himself the most fortunate of mortals, and Emma lived without uneasiness, when one evening, all at once:

— It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, is it not, who gives you lessons?

— Yes.

— Well, I saw her just now, Charles resumed, at Madame Liégeard's. I spoke to her of you; she does not know you.

It was like a thunderbolt. However, she replied with a natural air:

— Ah! no doubt she will have forgotten my name?

— But there are perhaps, said the doctor, several Mademoiselles Lempereur at Rouen who are music teachers?

— That is possible!

Then, quickly:

— Yet I have her receipts, here! look!

And she went to the desk, rummaged all the drawers, mixed up the papers and ended so well by losing her head, that Charles urged her not to give herself so much trouble for those wretched receipts.

— Oh! I shall find them, she said.

Indeed, on the following Friday, Charles, while putting on one of his boots in the dark closet where his clothes were kept, felt a sheet of paper between the leather and his sock; he took it and read:

"Received, for three months of lessons, plus sundry supplies, the sum of sixty-five francs. FELICIE LEMPEREUR, music teacher."

— How the devil is this in my boots?

— It will be, no doubt, answered she, fallen from the old box of bills, which is on the edge of the shelf.

From that moment her existence was no longer but an assemblage of lies, wherein she enveloped her love as in veils, to hide it.

It was a need, a mania, a pleasure, to such a point that, if she said she had passed, yesterday, by the right side of a street, one must believe she had taken the left.

One morning when she had set out, according to her custom, rather lightly clad, snow suddenly began to fall; and as Charles was looking at the weather from the window, he caught sight of M. Bournisien in the trap of Monsieur Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. Then he went down to entrust the ecclesiastic with a large shawl, that he might give it to Madame as soon as he arrived at the Red Cross. Scarcely was he at the inn when Bournisien asked where the doctor's wife of Yonville was. The hostess answered that she very seldom frequented her establishment. So, in the evening, on recognising Madame Bovary in the Swallow, the curate told her of his embarrassment, without seeming, moreover, to attach any importance to it; for he launched into the praise of a preacher who was then doing wonders at the cathedral, and whom all the ladies ran to hear.

No matter that he had not asked for explanations, others later might prove less discreet. So she judged it wise to alight each time at the Red Cross, so that the good people of her village who saw her on the stairs suspected nothing.

One day, however, M. Lheureux met her coming out of the Hôtel de Boulogne on Léon's arm; and she was afraid, imagining he would gossip. He was not so foolish.

But three days afterwards, he came into her room, shut the door and said:

— I should be in need of money.

She declared she could not give him any. Lheureux broke into lamentations, and recalled all the complaisance he had shown.

Indeed, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma up to now had paid but one alone. As for the second, the tradesman, at her request, had consented to replace it by two others, which had even been renewed at a very long date. Then he drew from his pocket a list of unsettled supplies, to wit: the curtains, the carpet, the stuff for the armchairs, several dresses and divers articles of toilet, whose value amounted to the sum of about two thousand francs.

She lowered her head; he resumed:

— But, if you have not cash, you have property.

And he pointed out a wretched hovel situated at Barneville, near Aumale, which brought in very little. That formerly belonged to a small farm sold by old Monsieur Bovary, for Lheureux knew everything, even to the acreage, with the names of the neighbours.

— I, in your place, said he, would free myself, and should still have the surplus of the money.

She objected the difficulty of a buyer; he held out hope of finding one; but she asked how she was to manage so that she might sell.

— Have you not the power of attorney? he answered.

This word came to her like a breath of fresh air.

— Leave me the bill, said Emma.

— Oh! it is not worth while! Lheureux resumed.

He came back the following week, and boasted that, after many steps, he had ended by discovering a certain Langlois who, for a long time, had had his eye on the property without making known his price.

— No matter the price! she cried.

On the contrary, they must wait, sound that fellow. The thing was worth a journey, and, as she could not make the journey, he offered to go on the spot, to meet with Langlois. Once returned, he announced that the buyer proposed four thousand francs.

Emma brightened at the news.

— Frankly, he added, it is well paid.

She touched half the sum immediately, and, when she was about to settle her account, the tradesman said to her:

— It grieves me, upon my word, to see you part all at once with so considerable a sum as that.

Then, she looked at the banknotes; and, dreaming of the unlimited number of meetings that those two thousand francs represented:

— How! how! she stammered.

— Oh! he resumed, laughing with a good-natured air, one puts whatever one likes on the bills. Do I not know households?

And he regarded her fixedly, holding in his hand two long papers which he made glide between his nails. Finally, opening his wallet, he spread upon the table four bills of exchange, of a thousand francs each.

— Sign me that, he said, and keep it all.

She protested, scandalised.

— But, if I give you the surplus, replied Monsieur Lheureux shamelessly, is it not doing you a service, you?

And, taking a pen, he wrote at the bottom of the account: "Received from Madame Bovary four thousand francs."

— What troubles you, since you will receive in six months the arrears of your hovel, and I place the due date of the last bill after the payment?

Emma was a little entangled in her calculations, and her ears rang as if bags of gold, bursting open, had clinked all around her upon the floor. At last Lheureux explained that he had a friend of his, Vinçart, banker at Rouen, who was going to discount those four bills, then he himself would hand to Madame the surplus of the real debt.

But instead of two thousand francs, he brought only eighteen hundred, for the friend Vinçart (as was right) had deducted two hundred, for commission and discount charges.

Then he carelessly asked for a receipt.

— You understand..., in business..., sometimes... And with the date, if you please, the date.

A horizon of realisable fancies then opened before Emma. She had prudence enough to put in reserve a thousand crowns, with which were paid, when they fell due, the three first bills; but the fourth, by chance, fell in the house on a Thursday, and Charles, upset, patiently awaited his wife's return for explanations.

If she had not informed him of this bill, it was in order to spare him domestic worry; she sat upon his knees, caressed him, cooed, made a long enumeration of all the indispensable things taken on credit.

— Finally, you will agree that, given the quantity, it is not too dear.

Charles, at the end of his wits, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux, who swore to smooth things over, if Monsieur would sign two bills, one of them for seven hundred francs, payable in three months. To put himself in funds, he wrote to his mother a pathetic letter. Instead of sending the answer, she came herself; and, when Emma wished to know if he had got anything out of her:

— Yes, he answered. But she asks to see the bill.

The next day, at break of day, Emma ran to Monsieur Lheureux to beg him to make out another account, which should not exceed a thousand francs; for to show the one for four thousand, it would have been necessary to say she had paid two thirds of it, consequently confess the sale of the property, a negotiation well conducted by the tradesman, and which was not in fact known until later.

Despite the very low price of each article, Madame Bovary mother did not fail to find the expense exaggerated.

— Could one not do without a carpet? Why renew the stuff of the armchairs? In my time one had but a single armchair in a house, for elderly persons, — at least, that is how it was at my mother's, who was an honest woman, I assure you.

— Not everyone can be rich! No fortune holds against waste! I should blush to pamper myself as you do! and yet, I am old, I need care... There now! there now, finery! trumpery! What! silk for lining, at two francs!... whereas one finds jaconet at ten sous, and even at eight sous which does the business perfectly.

Emma, thrown back upon the sofa, replied as tranquilly as possible:

— Eh! madame, enough! enough!...

The other continued to lecture her, predicting they would end in the workhouse. Besides, it was Bovary's fault. Happily he had promised to destroy that power of attorney...

— How so?

— Ah! he swore it to me, the good woman resumed.

Emma opened the window, called Charles, and the poor fellow was constrained to avow the word wrung from him by his mother.

Emma disappeared, then came back quickly, holding out to him majestically a large sheet of paper.

— I thank you, said the old lady.

And she threw the power of attorney into the fire.

Emma began to laugh with a shrill, loud, continuous laugh: she was having a nervous attack.

— Ah, my God! cried Charles. Why, you are wrong too, you! you come and make scenes with her!

His mother, shrugging her shoulders, pretended all that was mere play-acting.

But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took his wife's part, so well that Madame Bovary mother wished to leave. She departed the next day, and, on the threshold, as he tried to detain her, she replied:

— No, no! You love her better than me, and you are right, it is natural. Besides, so much the worse! you will see!... Good health!... for I am not, as you say, about to come and make scenes with her.

Charles nevertheless remained much abashed before Emma, she not hiding the resentment she bore him for having lacked confidence; many prayers were needed before she consented to take back her power of attorney, and even he accompanied her to Monsieur Guillaumin to have a second made out, exactly like the first.

— I understand that, said the notary; a man of science cannot burden himself with the practical details of life.

And Charles felt relieved by this smooth reflection, which gave to his weakness the flattering appearances of a superior preoccupation.

What an outburst, the Thursday after, at the hotel, in their room, with Léon! She laughed, wept, sang, danced, had sherbets sent up, wished to smoke cigarettes, seemed to him extravagant, but adorable, superb.

He did not know what reaction of her whole being drove her further to fling herself upon the enjoyments of life. She became irritable, greedy, and voluptuous; and she walked with him in the streets, head high, without fear, she said, of compromising herself. At times, however, Emma shuddered at the sudden thought of meeting Rodolphe; for it seemed to her, though they were separated forever, that she was not completely freed from her dependence.

One evening, she did not return to Yonville. Charles was losing his head, and little Berthe, not wishing to go to bed without her mamma, sobbed till she broke her heart. Justin had set out at random on the road. Monsieur Homais had left his pharmacy.

At last, at eleven o'clock, unable to bear it longer, Charles harnessed his trap, jumped in, whipped his beast and arrived towards two in the morning at the Red Cross. Nobody. He thought the clerk perhaps had seen her; but where did he live? Charles, luckily, remembered his employer's address. He ran thither.

Day was beginning to show. He distinguished signboards above a door; he knocked. Someone, without opening, shouted him the information asked, adding a flood of abuse against those who disturbed people in the night.

The house the clerk lived in had neither bell, nor knocker, nor porter. Charles gave great blows with his fist against the shutters. A policeman happened to pass; then he grew afraid and went away.

— I am a fool, he said to himself; no doubt they will have kept her to dinner at Monsieur Lormeaux's.

The Lormeaux family no longer lived at Rouen.

— She will have stayed to nurse Madame Dubreuil. Eh! Madame Dubreuil has been dead these ten months!

Where can she be, then?

An idea came to him. He asked, in a café, for the Directory; and quickly sought the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived in the Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers, No. 74.

As he entered this street, Emma appeared herself at the other end; he threw himself upon her rather than kissed her, crying:

— Who kept you yesterday?

— I have been ill.

— And of what?... Where?... How?

She passed her hand over her brow, and answered:

— At Mademoiselle Lempereur's.

— I was sure of it! I was going there.

— Oh! it is not worth while, said Emma. She has just gone out; but, for the future, be easy. I am not free, you understand, if I know that the least delay upsets you thus.

It was a kind of permission she gave herself not to restrain herself in her escapades. So she profited by it at her ease, largely. When the wish took her to see Léon, she set out under any pretext whatever, and, as he did not expect her that day, she went to fetch him at his office.

It was a great happiness the first few times; but soon he no longer hid the truth, namely: that his principal complained much of these interruptions.

— Ah bah! come along, said she.

And he slipped away.

She wished him to dress all in black and let a point grow at his chin, to resemble the portraits of Louis XIII. She desired to know his lodgings, found them mean; he blushed at it, she took no notice, then advised him to buy curtains like hers, and as he objected the expense:

— Ah! ah! you are careful of your little crowns! she said laughing.

He must, each time, tell Emma all his doings, since the last meeting. She asked for verses, verses for her, a love piece in her honour; never could he manage to find the rhyme of the second line, and he ended by copying a sonnet from a keepsake.

It was less through vanity than with the sole aim of pleasing her. He did not dispute her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he became her master rather than she was his. She had tender words with kisses that carried his soul away. Where then had she learned that corruption, almost immaterial by force of being deep and disguised?

VI

In the journeys he made to see her, Léon had often dined at the chemist's, and had felt constrained, out of politeness, to invite him in return.

— Willingly! Monsieur Homais had answered; besides, I must refresh myself a little, for I am getting rusty here. We will go to the play, to the restaurant, we will cut up capers.

— Ah! good friend! murmured Madame Homais tenderly, alarmed at the vague perils he was disposing himself to run.

— Well, what? you find I do not ruin my health enough by living amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy! That, moreover, is the character of women: they are jealous of Science, then oppose the most legitimate distractions. No matter, count on me; one of these days I drop in at Rouen and we will toss off monacos together.

The apothecary, formerly, would have been careful of such an expression; but he was now giving into a playful and Parisian style which he found in the best taste; and, like Madame Bovary, his neighbour, he curiously questioned the clerk about the manners of the capital, even spoke slang in order to dazzle... the bourgeoisie, saying _turne, bazar, chicard, chicandard, Breda-street,_ and _Je me la casse,_ for: I am off.

So, one Thursday, Emma was surprised to meet, in the kitchen of the Lion d'Or, Monsieur Homais in travelling dress, that is to say covered with an old overcoat unknown to her, while he carried in one hand a valise, and, in the other, the foot-warmer of his establishment. He had confided his plan to no one, for fear of alarming the public by his absence.

The idea of seeing again the places where his youth had passed no doubt exhilarated him, for all along the road he never stopped discoursing; then, scarcely arrived, he nimbly jumped from the coach to seek out Léon; and the clerk struggled in vain, Monsieur Homais dragged him towards the great café of Normandy, where he entered majestically without removing his hat, deeming it very provincial to uncover in a public place.

Emma awaited Léon three quarters of an hour. Finally she ran to his office, and, lost in every sort of conjecture, accusing him of indifference and reproaching herself with her weakness, she spent the afternoon with her forehead pressed against the panes.

They were still, at two o'clock, seated opposite each other at table. The large room was emptying; the pipe of the stove, in the shape of a palm, rounded at the white ceiling its gilded sheaf; and near them, behind the glass, in full sunlight, a little jet of water gurgled in a marble basin where, among cress and asparagus, three numbed lobsters stretched towards some quails, all laid in a pile, on their side, within.

Homais delighted himself. Though he was getting drunk on luxury even more than on good cheer, the Pomard wine, however, excited his faculties a little, and, when the rum omelette appeared, he expounded immoral theories on women. What seduced him above all was style. He adored an elegant toilet in a well-furnished apartment, and, as to bodily qualities, did not detest a fine piece.

Léon contemplated the clock with despair. The apothecary drank, ate, spoke.

— You must be, he said suddenly, much deprived at Rouen. Besides, your sweethearts are not far.

And, as the other blushed:

— Come, be frank! Will you deny that at Yonville...?

The young man stammered.

— At Madame Bovary's, you were not paying court...?

— And to whom, then?

— To the maid!

He was not joking; but, vanity carrying the day over all prudence, Léon, in spite of himself, protested. Besides, he loved only dark women.

— I approve of you, said the chemist; they have more temperament. And leaning to his friend's ear, he indicated the symptoms by which one recognises that a woman has temperament. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: the German was vapoury, the Frenchwoman libertine, the Italian passionate.

— And the negroes? asked the clerk.

— That is an artist's taste, said Homais. — Waiter! two half-cups!

— Are we leaving? Léon at last impatiently resumed.

— _Yes_.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”