Part 26

They saw her walking up and down, examining against the walls the towel rings, the candlesticks, the banister knobs, while Binet stroked his beard with satisfaction.

— Would she be coming to order something from him? said Madame Tuvache.

— But he sells nothing! objected her neighbor.

The tax collector looked as though he were listening, all the while widening his eyes, as if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, pleading manner. She drew nearer; her breast was heaving; they no longer spoke.

— Is she making advances to him? said Madame Tuvache.

Binet was red to the ears. She took his hands.

— Ah! this is too much!

And no doubt she was proposing an abomination; for the tax collector — brave though he was, he had fought at Bautzen and Lutzen, campaigned in France, and had even been put up for the cross — suddenly, as at the sight of a snake, drew back far away, crying:

— Madam! are you out of your mind?...

— Those women ought to be whipped! said Madame Tuvache.

— Where is she then? resumed Madame Caron.

For she had vanished during these words; then, catching sight of her going up the Grande-Rue and turning to the right as if to reach the cemetery, they lost themselves in conjectures.

— Mother Rolet, she said on arriving at the nurse's, I'm suffocating!... unlace me.

She fell upon the bed; she was sobbing. Mother Rolet covered her with a petticoat and remained standing beside her. Then, as she did not answer, the good woman moved away, took up her spinning wheel and began to spin flax.

— Oh! stop! she murmured, thinking she heard Binet's turning.

— Who is troubling her? wondered the nurse. Why does she come here?

She had run there, driven by a sort of terror that chased her from her house.

Lying on her back, motionless, her eyes fixed, she vaguely made out objects, though she applied her attention to them with an idiotic persistence. She contemplated the scaling of the wall, two embers smoking end to end, and a long spider walking above her head, in the crack of the beam. At last she gathered her thoughts. She remembered... One day, with Léon... Oh! how far off it was! The sun shone on the river and the clematis were fragrant... Then, carried away in her memories as in a boiling torrent, she soon came to recall the day before.

— What time is it? she asked.

Mother Rolet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand on the side where the sky was clearest, and came back in slowly saying:

— Three o'clock, soon.

— Ah! thank you! thank you!

For he was going to come. It was certain! He would have found the money. But perhaps he would go there, without suspecting she was there; and she ordered the nurse to run to her house and bring him.

— Make haste!

— But, my dear lady, I'm going! I'm going!

She was astonished, now, at not having thought of him at first; yesterday he had given his word, he would not fail; and she already saw herself at Lheureux's, laying the three banknotes on his desk. Then they would have to invent a story that would explain things to Bovary. Which one?

Meanwhile the nurse was very long in returning. But, as there was no clock in the cottage, Emma feared perhaps exaggerating the length of the time. She began to walk up and down in the garden, step by step; she went along the path by the hedge, and turned back quickly, hoping the good woman had come in by another road. At last, tired of waiting, assailed by suspicions she pushed away, no longer knowing if she had been there a century or a minute, she sat in a corner and closed her eyes, stopped her ears. The gate creaked: she gave a start; before she had spoken, Mother Rolet had said to her:

— There's no one at your house!

— How so?

— Oh! no one! And monsieur is crying. He's calling for you. They're looking for you.

Emma answered nothing. She gasped, rolling her eyes around her, while the peasant woman, frightened by her face, drew back instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her forehead, gave a cry, for the memory of Rodolphe, like a great flash of lightning in a dark night, had passed through her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so generous! And, besides, if he hesitated to render her this service, she would know well how to compel him by recalling with a single blink their lost love. So she set off toward La Huchette, without noticing that she was running to offer herself to what had so greatly exasperated her just now, nor suspecting in the least this prostitution.

VIII

She asked herself as she walked: What shall I say? Where shall I begin? And as she advanced, she recognized the bushes, the trees, the sea rushes on the hill, the château down there. She found herself again in the sensations of her first tenderness, and her poor compressed heart dilated amorously. A mild wind blew in her face; the snow, melting, fell drop by drop from the buds upon the grass.

She entered, as in former days, by the little gate of the park, then arrived at the court of honor, bordered by a double row of thick lindens. They whistled, swaying their long branches. The dogs in the kennel all barked, and the sound of their voices rang out without anyone appearing.

She climbed the wide straight staircase, with wooden balusters, which led to the corridor paved with dusty flagstones where several rooms opened in a row, like in monasteries or inns. Hers was at the end, farthest back, to the left. When she came to place her fingers on the latch, her strength suddenly abandoned her. She was afraid he might not be there, almost wished it, and yet it was her only hope, the last chance of salvation. She collected herself a moment, and, steeping her courage in the sense of present necessity, she went in.

He was before the fire, both feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe.

— Well! it's you! he said, rising abruptly.

— Yes, it's me... I would like, Rodolphe, to ask you for advice.

And despite all her efforts it was impossible for her to unclose her mouth.

— You haven't changed, you are still charming!

— Oh! she replied bitterly, they are sorry charms, my friend, since you have disdained them.

Then he began an explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in vague terms, for lack of being able to invent better.

She let herself be taken in by his words, still more by his voice and by the sight of his person; so well that she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed, in the pretext of their breakup; it was a secret on which depended the honor and even the life of a third person.

— No matter! she said, looking at him sadly, I have suffered greatly!

He answered in a philosophical tone:

— Life is like that!

— Has it at least, she resumed, been good to you since our separation?

— Oh! neither good... nor bad.

— It would perhaps have been better never to leave each other.

— Yes... perhaps!

— You think so? she said, drawing nearer.

And she sighed.

— O Rodolphe! if you knew... I loved you so much!

Then she took his hand, and they remained some time with fingers interlaced — as on the first day, at the Agricultural Show! By a gesture of pride, he struggled against the tenderness. But, sinking against his chest, she said to him:

— How did you expect me to live without you? One cannot unlearn happiness! I was in despair; I thought I would die. I'll tell you all that, you'll see. And you... you fled from me!...

For, during three years, he had carefully avoided her owing to that natural cowardice which characterizes the stronger sex; and Emma went on with pretty head gestures, more coaxing than a loving cat:

— You love others, admit it. Oh! I understand them, go on! I excuse them; you will have seduced them, as you had seduced me. You are a man, you! you have all that is needed to be cherished! But we shall begin again, shan't we? we shall love each other! See, I laugh, I am happy!... do speak!

And she was ravishing to see, with her gaze where a tear trembled, like the water of a storm in a blue calyx.

He drew her onto his knees, and he caressed with the back of his hand her smooth locks, where, in the light of dusk, a last ray of sun shimmered like a golden arrow. She bent her brow; he ended by kissing her on the eyelids, very gently, with the tip of his lips.

— But you have cried! he said. Why?

She burst into sobs. Rodolphe thought it was the explosion of her love; as she was silent, he took this silence for a last modesty, and then he cried:

— Ah! forgive me! you are the only one who pleases me. I have been stupid and wicked! I love you, I shall always love you!... What is it? do tell!

He knelt.

— Well then... I am ruined, Rodolphe! You are going to lend me three thousand francs!

— But..., but..., he said, rising little by little, while his face took on a grave expression.

— You know, she went on quickly, that my husband had placed all his fortune with a notary; he has fled. We have borrowed; the clients did not pay. Besides, the liquidation is not finished; we shall have more later. But, today, for lack of three thousand francs, they are going to seize our goods; it is now, this very instant; and, counting on your friendship, I have come.

— Ah! thought Rodolphe, who turned very pale all at once, that is why she has come!

At last he said in a calm voice:

— I do not have them, dear madam.

He was not lying. He would have had them, he would no doubt have given them, though it is generally unpleasant to perform such fine actions: a pecuniary request, of all the squalls that fall upon love, being the coldest and the most uprooting.

She remained at first some minutes looking at him.

— You do not have them!

She repeated several times:

— You do not have them!... I should have spared myself this last shame. You have never loved me! you are no better than the others!

She was betraying herself, she was losing herself.

Rodolphe interrupted her, asserting that he was himself "strapped."

— Ah! I pity you! said Emma. Yes, considerably!...

And, resting her eyes on a damascened carbine that shone in the armory:

— But, when one is so poor, one does not put money on the stock of one's gun! One does not buy a clock with tortoise-shell inlays! she continued, showing the Boulle clock; nor silver whistles for one's whips — she touched them! — nor trinkets for one's watch! Oh! nothing is lacking to him! Even a liqueur stand in his room; for you love yourself, you live well, you have a château, farms, woods; you hunt with the pack, you travel to Paris... Why, if it were only this, she cried, taking from the mantelpiece his cufflinks, the least of these trifles can be turned into money!... Oh! I do not want them! keep them!

And she flung the two cufflinks far off, whose gold chain broke against the wall.

— But, I would have given you everything, I would have sold everything, I would have worked with my hands, I would have begged on the roads, for a smile, for a look, to hear you say: "Thank you!" And you stay there quietly in your armchair, as if already you had not made me suffer enough! Without you, do you know well, I could have lived happy! Who forced you to? Was it a wager? You loved me though, you said so... And just now again... Ah! it would have been better to chase me away! I have my hands warm from your kisses, and there is the place, on the carpet, where you swore at my knees an eternity of love. You made me believe it: you dragged me for two years in the most magnificent and sweetest dream!... Eh! our travel plans, do you remember? Oh! your letter, your letter! it tore my heart!... And then, when I come back to him, to him, who is rich, happy, free! to implore a help that the first comer would render, suppliant and bringing him all my tenderness, he repulses me, because it would cost him three thousand francs!

— I do not have them! answered Rodolphe with that perfect calm wherewith resigned angers cover themselves like a shield.

She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling crushed her; and she passed again through the long avenue, stumbling over the heaps of dead leaves that the wind scattered. At last she arrived at the ha-ha before the gate; she broke her nails against the lock, so hastily did she open it. Then, a hundred steps farther, out of breath, near falling, she stopped. And then, turning away, she perceived once more the impassive château, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the facade.

She remained lost in stupor, and having no longer consciousness of herself except by the beating of her arteries, which she thought she heard escaping like a deafening music that filled the countryside. The ground beneath her feet was softer than a wave, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves, breaking. All that she had in her head of reminiscences, of ideas, escaped at once, in a single bound, like the thousand pieces of a firework. She saw her father, Lheureux's office, their room over there, another landscape. Madness seized her, she was afraid, and managed to recover herself, in a confused manner, it is true; for she did not recall the cause of her horrible state, that is to say the money question. She suffered only from her love, and felt her soul abandoning her by this memory, as the wounded, in agony, feel the life going from them by their bleeding wound.

Night was falling, crows were flying.

It seemed to her all at once that fire-colored globes burst in the air like fulminating balls, flattening, and turned, turned, to go melt on the snow, between the branches of the trees. In the middle of each of them, Rodolphe's face appeared. They multiplied, and they drew near, penetrated her; all disappeared. She recognized the lights of the houses, which shone from afar in the fog.

Then her situation, like an abyss, presented itself. She gasped to bursting her chest. Then, in a transport of heroism that made her almost joyful, she ran down the slope, crossed the cow plank, the path, the avenue, the market halls, and arrived before the druggist's shop.

There was no one. She was going to enter; but, at the sound of the bell, someone might come; and, slipping through the gate, holding her breath, feeling the walls, she advanced to the threshold of the kitchen, where a candle burned on the stove. Justin, in shirt sleeves, was carrying away a dish.

— Ah! they are dining. Let us wait.

He came back. She knocked on the pane. He went out.

— The key! the one upstairs, where...

— How so?

And he looked at her, all astonished by the pallor of her face, which stood out white against the black background of the night. She appeared to him extraordinarily beautiful, and majestic as a phantom; without understanding what she wanted, he foresaw something terrible.

But she resumed quickly, in a low voice, a sweet, dissolving voice:

— I want it! give it to me.

As the partition was thin, one heard the clinking of forks on plates in the dining room.

She pretended she needed to kill the rats that kept her from sleeping.

— I should have to warn monsieur.

— No! stay!

Then, in an indifferent air:

— Eh! it's not worth it, I'll tell him later. Come, light me!

She entered the corridor where the laboratory door opened. Against the wall there was a key labeled catch-all.

— Justin! cried the apothecary, who was growing impatient.

— Let us go up!

And he followed her.

The key turned in the lock, and she went straight to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue jar, tore off the stopper, plunged her hand in, and, withdrawing it full of a white powder, she began to eat it straight.

— Stop! he cried, throwing himself on her.

Be quiet! someone would come...

He was in despair, wanted to call.

— Say nothing of it, it would all fall back on your master!

Then she went back suddenly appeased, and almost in the serenity of a duty accomplished.

When Charles, upset by the news of the seizure, had come home, Emma had just gone out. He cried, wept, fainted, but she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Félicité to Homais's, to M. Tuvache's, to Lheureux's, to the Lion d'Or, everywhere; and, in the intervals of his anguish, he saw his standing annihilated, their fortune lost, Berthe's future broken! By what cause?... not a word! He waited until six o'clock in the evening. At last, unable to bear it, and imagining she had left for Rouen, he went onto the high road, went half a league, met no one, waited again and came back.

She had come home.

— What was it?... Why?... Explain to me!

She sat at her desk, and wrote a letter which she sealed slowly, adding the date of the day and the hour.

Then she said in a solemn tone:

— You will read it tomorrow; until then, I beg you, do not address a single question to me!... No, not one!

— But...

— Oh! leave me!

And she lay down full length on her bed.

An acrid taste that she felt in her mouth woke her. She caught sight of Charles and closed her eyes again.

She watched herself curiously, to discern if she were not suffering. But no! nothing yet. She heard the ticking of the clock, the noise of the fire, and Charles, standing near her bed, who breathed.

— Ah! death is a very small thing! she thought; I am going to fall asleep, and all will be finished!

She drank a sip of water and turned toward the wall.

That horrible ink taste continued.

— I am thirsty!... oh! I am so thirsty! she sighed.

— What is the matter with you? said Charles, who held out a glass to her.

— It is nothing!... Open the window..., I'm suffocating!

And she was seized with a nausea so sudden that she barely had time to grasp her handkerchief under the pillow.

— Take it away! she said quickly; throw it away!

He questioned her; she did not answer. She kept still, for fear that the least emotion would make her vomit. However, she felt an icy cold that rose from her feet to her heart.

— Ah! there it begins! she murmured.

— What do you say?

She rolled her head with a gentle gesture full of anguish, and all the while continually opening her jaws, as if she had on her tongue something very heavy. At eight o'clock, the vomitings reappeared.

Charles observed that there was at the bottom of the basin a kind of white gravel, attached to the walls of the porcelain.

— It is extraordinary! it is singular! he repeated.

But she said in a loud voice:

— No, you are mistaken!

Then, delicately and almost caressing her, he passed his hand over her stomach. She gave a sharp cry. He drew back, frightened.

Then she began to moan, weakly at first. A great shiver shook her shoulders, and she grew paler than the sheet where her clenched fingers sank. Her uneven pulse was almost imperceptible now.

Drops oozed on her bluish face, which seemed as if frozen in the exhalation of a metallic vapor. Her teeth chattered, her enlarged eyes looked vaguely around her, and to all questions she answered only by shaking her head; even she smiled two or three times. Little by little, her groans grew stronger. A dull roar escaped her; she claimed she was better and that she would get up in a moment. But the convulsions seized her; she cried:

— Ah! it is atrocious, my God!

He threw himself on his knees by her bed.

— Speak! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven's sake!

And he looked at her with eyes of a tenderness such as she had never seen.

— Well, there..., there!... she said in a failing voice.

He sprang to the desk, broke the seal and read aloud: Let no one be accused... He stopped, passed his hand over his eyes, and read again.

— How!... Help! to me!

And he could only repeat these words: "Poisoned! poisoned!" Félicité ran to Homais's, who exclaimed it in the square; Madame Lefrançois heard it at the Lion d'Or; some got up to tell their neighbors, and all night the village was awake.

Distraught, stammering, near falling, Charles turned in the room. He bumped into the furniture, tore his hair, and never had the druggist believed there could be so frightful a sight.

He went home to write to M. Canivet and to Doctor Larivière. He was losing his head; he made more than fifteen drafts. Hippolyte set off for Neufchâtel, and Justin spurred so hard Bovary's horse that he left it on the slope of the Bois-Guillaume, foundered and three-quarters dead.

Charles wanted to leaf through his medical dictionary; he could not see, the lines danced.

— Calm yourself! said the druggist. It is only a matter of administering some powerful antidote. What is the poison?

Charles showed the letter. It was arsenic.

— Well, resumed Homais, an analysis would have to be made.

For he knew that, in all poisonings, an analysis must be made; and the other, who did not understand, answered:

— Ah! do it! do it! save her...

Then, back near her, he sank to the floor on the carpet, and he remained with his head against the edge of her bed, sobbing.

— Don't cry! she said to him. Soon I shall trouble you no more!

— Why? Who forced you?

She replied:

— It had to be, my friend.

— Were you not happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could though!

— Yes..., it's true..., you are good, you!

And she passed her hand through his hair, slowly. The sweetness of this sensation overcharged his sadness; he felt his whole being collapse with despair at the thought that he must lose her, when, on the contrary, she confessed for him more love than ever; and he found nothing; he did not know, he dared not, the urgency of an immediate resolution finishing to overturn him.

She was done with, she thought, all treacheries, basenesses and innumerable covetousnesses that tortured her. She hated no one now; a confusion of twilight fell in her thought, and of all the noises of the earth Emma heard no longer but the intermittent lamentation of that poor heart, sweet and indistinct, like the last echo of a symphony that withdraws.

— Bring me the little one, she said, raising herself on her elbow.

— You are no worse, are you? asked Charles.

— No! no!

The child arrived in her nurse's arms, in her long nightgown, from which her bare feet stuck out, serious and almost still dreaming. She looked with astonishment at the room all in disorder, and blinked her eyes, dazzled by the torches burning on the furniture. They reminded her no doubt of the mornings of New Year's day or mid-Lent, when, thus awakened early in the light of the candles, she came into her mother's bed to receive her presents, for she began to say:

— Where is it then, mamma?

And as everyone was silent:

— But I do not see my little shoe!

Félicité leaned her toward the bed, while she still looked toward the fireplace.

— Is it nurse who would have taken it? she asked.

And, at that name, which brought her back into the memory of her adulteries and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned her head away, as at the disgust of another poison stronger still which rose to her mouth. Berthe, however, remained posed on the bed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”