Part 24

But before leaving, he wished to see the master of the establishment and offered him some congratulations.

Then the young man, to be alone, alleged that he had business to attend to.

— Ah! I shall escort you! said Homais.

And, while descending the streets with him, he spoke of his wife, his children, their future, and his pharmacy, telling how it had once been in decline and the point of perfection to which he had raised it.

Upon arriving in front of the Hôtel de Boulogne, Léon abruptly left him, climbed the stairs, and found his mistress in great agitation.

At the name of the pharmacist, she flew into a rage. However, he piled up good reasons; it was not his fault, did she not know M. Homais? could she believe he preferred his company? But she turned away; he held her back, and, sinking to his knees, he encircled her waist with both arms, in a languorous posture full of concupiscence and supplication.

She stood upright; her large inflamed eyes looked at him seriously and almost terribly. Then tears dimmed them, her pink eyelids lowered, she abandoned her hands, and Léon was raising them to his lips when a servant appeared, announcing that Monsieur was being asked for.

— You will come back? she said.

— Yes.

— But when?

— Right away.

— That's a trick, said the pharmacist on catching sight of Léon. I wanted to interrupt this visit, which seemed to annoy you. Let us go to Bridoux's for a glass of garus.

Léon swore that he must return to his office. Then the apothecary made jokes about the papers, the procedure.

— Leave Cujas and Bartolus alone, the devil! Who is stopping you? Be a good fellow! Let us go to Bridoux's; you will see his dog. It is most curious!

And as the clerk still persisted:

— I am going too. I shall read a newspaper while waiting for you, or leaf through a Code.

Léon, dizzy from Emma's anger, Homais's chatter, and perhaps the heaviness of the luncheon, remained undecided and as if under the fascination of the pharmacist, who kept repeating:

— Let us go to Bridoux's! It is just a step away, on Rue Malpalu.

Then, out of cowardice, out of stupidity, out of that unnameable feeling which drags us into the most antipathetic actions, he let himself be led to Bridoux's; and they found him in his small courtyard, supervising three boys who were panting as they turned the great wheel of a machine for making seltzer water... Homais gave them advice; he embraced Bridoux; they took the garus. Twenty times Léon wanted to leave; but the other held him by the arm, saying:

— In a moment! I am coming out. We will go to the Fanal de Rouen, to see those gentlemen. I will introduce you to Thomassin.

He did get rid of him, however, and ran with a bound to the hotel. Emma was no longer there.

She had just left, exasperated. She now detested him. This failure to keep their appointment seemed to her an outrage, and she sought still other reasons to detach herself from him: he was incapable of heroism, weak, commonplace, softer than a woman, and moreover stingy and pusillanimous.

Then, calming down, she ended by discovering that she had no doubt calumniated him. But the disparagement of those we love always detaches us from them somewhat. One must not touch idols: the gilding remains on one's hands.

They came to speak more often of things indifferent to their love; and, in the letters Emma sent him, there was talk of flowers, of verse, of the moon and the stars, naïve resources of a weakened passion, which tried to revive itself with all external aids. She continually promised herself, for her next visit, a profound felicity; then she admitted she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly faded under a new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager. She undressed brutally, tearing the thin lace of her corset, which hissed around her hips like a gliding adder. She went on tiptoe to look once more whether the door was closed, then with a single gesture let all her clothes fall together; — and, pale, silent, serious, she collapsed against his chest, with a long shudder.

Meanwhile, upon that brow covered with cold drops, upon those stammering lips, in those bewildered pupils, in the clasp of those arms, there was something extreme, vague and lugubrious, which seemed to Léon to slip between them, subtly, as if to separate them.

He did not dare question her; but, perceiving her so experienced, she must have passed, he told himself, through all the trials of suffering and pleasure. What once charmed him now frightened him a little. Besides, he rebelled against the absorption, daily greater, of his personality. He bore Emma a grudge for this permanent victory. He even strove not to cherish her; then, at the creaking of her boots, he felt himself cowardly, like drunkards at the sight of strong liquors.

She did not fail, it is true, to lavish upon him every sort of attention, from recherché dinners to the coquetry of dress and the languor of glances. She brought roses from Yonville in her bosom, which she threw in his face, showed anxieties for his health, gave him advice on his conduct; and, in order to hold him the more, hoping that heaven perhaps would meddle in it, she hung a medal of the Virgin around his neck. She inquired, like a virtuous mother, about his companions. She said to him:

— Do not see them, do not go out, think only of us; love me!

She would have liked to watch over his life, and the idea came to her of having him followed in the streets. There was always, near the hotel, a sort of vagabond who accosted travelers and who would not refuse... But her pride rebelled.

— Well, too bad! let him deceive me, what do I care? do I care about it?

One day when they had parted early, and she was coming back alone along the boulevard, she caught sight of the walls of her convent; then she sat on a bench, in the shade of the elms. What calm in those days! how she envied the ineffable sentiments of love that she tried, from books, to imagine!

The first months of her marriage, her rides on horseback in the forest, the Vicomte who waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all passed again before her eyes... And Léon suddenly seemed to her at the same distance as the others.

— I love him, though! she said to herself.

No matter! she was not happy, had never been. Whence then came this insufficiency of life, this instant rottenness of the things she leaned upon?... But, if somewhere there were a being strong and beautiful, a valorous nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart beneath an angel's form, a lyre with brass strings, sounding toward heaven elegiac epithalamia, why, by chance, should she not find him? Oh! what impossibility! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of a search; everything lied! Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, every pleasure its disgust, and the best kisses left upon the lip only an unrealizable longing for a higher voluptuousness.

A metallic rattle dragged through the air and four strokes sounded from the convent bell. Four o'clock! and it seemed to her that she had been there, on that bench, since eternity. But an infinity of passions can hold in a minute, as a crowd in a small space.

Emma lived wholly occupied with her own, and worried no more about money than an archduchess.

Once, however, a man of frail bearing, ruddy and bald, entered her rooms, declaring himself sent by M. Vinçart, of Rouen. He pulled out the pins that closed the side pocket of his long green redingote, stuck them on his sleeve, and politely handed over a paper.

It was a bill of seven hundred francs, drawn by her, and which Lheureux, despite all her protests, had transferred to the order of Vinçart.

She sent her servant to him in haste. He could not come.

Then, the stranger, who had remained standing, casting curious glances right and left that his thick blond eyebrows disguised, asked in a naïve air:

— What answer shall I take to M. Vinçart?

— Well, replied Emma, tell him... that I have none... It will be next week... Let him wait... yes, next week.

And the old fellow went off without a word.

But, the next day at noon, she received a protest; and the sight of the stamped paper, where there appeared several times in large characters: 'Maître Hareng, bailiff at Buchy', frightened her so much that she ran in all haste to the cloth merchant.

She found him in his shop, busy tying a parcel.

— Your servant! said he. I am at your service.

Lheureux nevertheless continued his work, aided by a girl of about thirteen, somewhat hunchbacked, who served him at once as clerk and cook.

Then, making his wooden shoes clatter on the boards of the shop, he went up before Madame to the first floor, and introduced her into a narrow cabinet, where a large desk of fir wood supported some registers, defended transversely by a barred and padlocked iron rod. Against the wall, under some calico remnants, one could glimpse a strongbox, but of such dimensions that it must contain something other than notes and money. M. Lheureux, indeed, lent on pledges, and it was there that he had put the gold chain of Madame Bovary, with the earrings of poor father Tellier, who, finally constrained to sell, had bought at Quincampoix a meager grocery, where he was dying of his catarrh, amid candles less yellow than his face.

Lheureux sat down in his wide straw armchair, saying:

— What's new?

— Here.

And she showed him the paper.

— Well, what can I do about it?

Then she flared up, recalling the word he had given not to circulate her bills; he admitted it.

— But I was forced myself, I had the knife at my throat.

— And what will happen now? she went on.

— Oh! it is quite simple: a judgment of the court, and then seizure...; nothing doing!

Emma restrained herself so as not to strike him. She asked him gently whether there was no way to calm M. Vinçart.

— Ah! certainly, calm Vinçart; you don't know him well; he is fiercer than an Arab.

Yet M. Lheureux had to interfere.

— Listen though! it seems to me that, until now, I have been good enough to you.

And, unrolling one of his registers:

— See here!

Then, running his finger up the page:

— Let us see... let us see... On August 3, two hundred francs... On June 17, a hundred and fifty... March 23, forty-six... In April...

He stopped, as if afraid of making some blunder.

— And I say nothing of the bills drawn by Monsieur, one of seven hundred francs, another of three hundred! As for your little installments, the interest, it never ends, one gets all tangled up. I am mixing in no more!

She wept, she even called him 'her good M. Lheureux'. But he always threw it back on that 'rascal Vinçart'. Besides, he had not a centime, no one paid him now, they were eating the wool off his back, a poor shopkeeper like him could not advance anything.

Emma was silent; and M. Lheureux, who was nibbling the barbs of a pen, no doubt grew uneasy at her silence, for he resumed:

— At least, if some of these days I had some receipts... I could...

— Besides, said she, as soon as the Barneville arrears...

— How?

And, on learning that Langlois had not yet paid, he appeared much surprised. Then, in a honeyed voice:

— And we agree, you say...

— Oh! to whatever you wish!

Then he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote some figures, and, declaring he would have great trouble, that the matter was ticklish and that he was bleeding himself, he dictated four bills of two hundred fifty francs each, spaced one month apart in maturity.

— Provided Vinçart will listen to me! Besides it is agreed, I don't dawdle, I am round as an apple.

Next he showed her negligently several new goods, but of which not one, in his opinion, was worthy of Madame.

— When I think that here is a dress at seven sous the meter, and certified fast dye! Yet they swallow that, you can well believe, not telling them what it is, wanting by this admission of knavery toward others to convince her fully of his probity.

Then he called her back, to show her three ells of guipure that he had found lately 'at a sale'.

— Is it beautiful! said Lheureux; one uses it a great deal now, for chair backs, it is the style.

And, quicker than a juggler, he wrapped the guipure in blue paper and put it into Emma's hands.

— At least, let me know...

— Ah! later, he replied, turning on his heels.

That very evening she pressed Bovary to write to his mother so that she would send them quickly all the arrears of the inheritance. The mother-in-law replied that she had nothing left; the liquidation was closed, and there remained to them, besides Barneville, six hundred pounds of income, which she would pay them exactly.

Then Madame sent bills to two or three clients, and soon made large use of this method, which succeeded for her. She always took care to add in postscript: 'Do not speak of this to my husband, you know how proud he is... Excuse me... Your servant...' There were some complaints; she intercepted them.

To make money, she set about selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old iron; and she bargained rapaciously, — her peasant's blood driving her toward gain. Then, on her trips to the city, she would haggle over trifles, which M. Lheureux, for want of others, would certainly take from her. She bought herself ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain and chests; she borrowed from Félicité, from Madame Lefrançois, from the innkeeper of the Croix Rouge, from everyone, anywhere. With the money she finally received from Barneville, she paid two bills; the other fifteen hundred francs slipped away. She engaged herself anew, and so on always.

Sometimes, it is true, she tried to do sums; but she discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them. Then she began again, soon got muddled, dropped it all there and thought no more of it.

The house was indeed sad, now! One saw suppliers leave it with furious faces. There were handkerchiefs trailing on the stoves; and little Berthe, to the great scandal of Madame Homais, wore torn stockings. If Charles, timidly, ventured a remark, she answered with brutality that it was not her fault!

Why these fits? He explained everything by her old nervous illness; and, reproaching himself for having taken for faults what were her infirmities, he accused himself of selfishness, felt like running to embrace her.

— Oh! no, he said to himself, I would bore her!

And he remained.

After dinner, he walked alone in the garden; he took little Berthe on his knees, and, unfolding his medical journal, tried to teach her to read. The child, who never studied, soon opened sad large eyes and began to cry. Then he consoled her; he went to fetch water in the watering can to make rivers on the sand, or broke branches of the privet to plant trees in the flower beds, which spoiled little the garden; all encumbered with long grasses; so many days owed to Lestiboudois! Then the child was cold and asked for her mother.

— Call your nurse, said Charles. You know well, my little one, that your mama does not wish to be disturbed.

Autumn was beginning and already the leaves were falling, — as two years ago, when she was ill! — When would all this end?... And he continued to walk, his two hands behind his back.

Madame was in her room. One did not go up there. She remained there all day long, numb, barely dressed, and, from time to time, burning pastilles from the seraglio that she had bought in Rouen, in an Algerian's shop. So as not to have near her at night that man stretched out who slept, she ended, by dint of grimaces, by relegating him to the second floor; and she read until morning extravagant books where there were orgiastic pictures with bloody situations. Often a terror seized her, she uttered a cry, Charles ran up.

— Ah! go away! she said.

Or, at other times, burned more strongly by that inward flame which adultery kept alive, panting, moved, all in desire, she opened her window, breathed the cold air, scattered to the wind her too-heavy hair, and, gazing at the stars, wished for loves of a prince. She thought of him, of Léon. She would then have given all for a single one of those rendezvous, which satiated her.

They were her gala days. She wanted them splendid! and, when he could not pay the expense alone, she completed the surplus liberally, which happened almost every time. He tried to make her understand that they would be just as well elsewhere, in some more modest hotel; but she found objections.

One day, she drew from her bag six little vermeil spoons (it was old Rouault's wedding gift), begging him to go immediately and pawn that, for her, at the mont-de-piété; and Léon obeyed, though this step displeased him. He was afraid of compromising himself.

Then, on reflection, he found that his mistress was taking strange airs, and that one was perhaps not wrong to want to detach him from her.

Indeed, someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter, to warn her that he was ruining himself with a married woman; and at once the good lady, foreseeing the eternal scarecrow of families, that is to say the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who inhabits fantastically the depths of love, wrote to Maître Dubocage his employer, who was perfect in this affair. He held him for three quarters of an hour, wishing to open his eyes, warn him of the gulf. Such an intrigue would later harm his establishment. He begged him to break it off, and, if he did not make this sacrifice in his own interest, let him at least do it for him, Dubocage!

Léon at last had sworn not to see Emma again; and he reproached himself for not having kept his word, considering all that this woman could still bring him of embarrassment and of talk, not to mention the jokes of his comrades, which were retailed in the morning around the stove. Besides, he was about to become head clerk: it was time to be serious. So he renounced the flute, exalted sentiments, imagination; — for every bourgeois, in the heat of his youth, were it but a day, a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of high enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.

He was bored now when Emma, all at once, sobbed on his chest; and his heart, like people who can endure only a certain dose of music, grew drowsy with indifference at the clamor of a love whose delicacies he no longer distinguished.

They knew each other too well to have those astonishments of possession which redouble joy. She was as disgusted with him as he was weary of her. Emma found in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.

But how to get rid of it? Then, though she might feel humiliated by the baseness of such happiness, she clung to it by habit or by corruption; and, each day, she grew more attached to it, draining all felicity in wishing it too great. She accused Léon of her disappointed hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and even she wished for a catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to decide it herself.

She nevertheless continued to write him amorous letters, by virtue of that idea, that a woman must always write to her lover.

But, in writing, she perceived another man, a phantom made of her most ardent memories, of her finest readings, of her strongest covetings; and he became at last so real, and accessible, that she palpitated with wonder, without however being able to imagine him clearly, so much did he lose himself, like a god, under the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in the bluish region where silken ladders sway from balconies, beneath the breath of flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her, he was going to come, and carry her off entirely in a kiss. Then she fell back flat, broken; for these flights of vague love wearied her more than great debauches.

She felt now an incessant and universal lameness. Often, even, Emma received summonses, stamped paper that she scarcely looked at. She would have liked no longer to live, or continually to sleep.

The day of Mid-Lent, she did not return to Yonville; she went in the evening to the masked ball. She put on velvet breeches and red stockings, with a catogan wig and a lantern on her ear. She jumped all night to the furious sound of the trombones; they formed a circle around her; and she found herself in the morning on the peristyle of the theater among five or six masks, fishwives and sailors, comrades of Léon, who spoke of going to supper.

The cafés around were full. They noticed on the port a most mediocre restaurant, whose master opened to them, on the fourth floor, a small room.

The men whispered in a corner, no doubt consulting on the expense. There was a clerk, two medical students and a shopboy: what company for her! As for the women Emma quickly perceived, by the tone of their voices, that they must be, almost all, of the lowest rank. She was afraid then, drew back her chair and lowered her eyes.

The others began to eat. She did not eat; she had her brow on fire, pricklings in her eyelids and a cold of ice on her skin. She felt in her head the ballroom floor, still rebounding under the rhythmic pulsation of the thousand feet that danced. Then, the smell of punch with the smoke of cigars dizzy her. She was fainting; they carried her before the window.

Day was beginning to break, and a great spot of purple color was spreading in the pale sky, toward Sainte-Catherine. The livid river shivered in the wind; there was no one on the bridges; the streetlamps were going out.

She revived however, and came to think of Berthe, who was sleeping yonder, in her nurse's room. But a cart full of long iron ribbons passed, casting against the walls of the houses a deafening metallic vibration.

She slipped away abruptly, got rid of her costume, told Léon that she must go back, and at last remained alone at the Hôtel de Boulogne. Everything and herself were intolerable to her. She would have liked, escaping like a bird, to go rejuvenate herself somewhere, far away, in the immaculate spaces.

She went out, she crossed the boulevard, the Place Cauchoise and the faubourg, to an open street which overlooked gardens. She walked fast, the open air calmed her; and little by little the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the chandeliers, the supper, those women, all disappeared like mists borne away. Then, returned to the Croix Rouge, she threw herself on her bed, in the small room on the second floor, where there were the images of the Tour de Nesle. At four o'clock in the afternoon, Hivert woke her.

On entering her home, Félicité showed her, behind the clock, a gray paper. She read:

'By virtue of the principal, in executory form of a judgment...'

What judgment? The day before, indeed, they had brought another paper she did not know; so she was stupefied by these words:

'Commandment by the king, the law and justice, to Madame Bovary...'

Then, skipping several lines, she perceived:

“Stories of the world, in your language.”