Part 27

— Oh! how big your eyes are, mama! how pale you are! how you are sweating!...

Her mother was looking at her.

— I'm afraid! said the little girl, drawing back.

Emma took her hand to kiss it; she struggled.

— Enough! take her away! cried Charles, who was sobbing in the alcove.

Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and, at every insignificant word, at every breath of her somewhat calmer chest, he took hope again. At last, when Canivet came in, he threw himself into his arms, weeping.

— Ah! it is you! thank you! you are good! But everything is better. See, look at her...

The colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, not beating about the bush, as he himself put it, prescribed emetic, in order to clear the stomach completely.

She soon vomited blood. Her lips tightened further. Her limbs were cramped, her body covered with brown spots, and her pulse slipped beneath the fingers like a taut thread, like a harp string about to break.

Then she began to scream, horribly. She cursed the poison, reviled it, begged it to make haste, and pushed away with her stiffened arms whatever Charles, more dying than she, strove to make her drink. He stood, his handkerchief to his lips, rattling, weeping, and suffocated by sobs that shook him to the heels; Félicité ran to and fro about the room; Homais, motionless, heaved great sighs, and M. Canivet, keeping his composure still, nevertheless began to feel troubled.

— The devil!... and yet... she is purged, and, from the moment the cause ceases...

— The effect must cease, said Homais; it is evident.

— But save her! exclaimed Bovary.

So, without listening to the chemist, who was hazarding this hypothesis again: "It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm," Canivet was about to administer theriac, when the crack of a whip was heard; all the panes trembled, and a post-chaise, drawn at full breast by three horses muddy to the ears, bounded into view at the corner of the market. It was Doctor Larivière.

The appearance of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary raised his hands, Canivet stopped short, and Homais doffed his Greek cap well before the doctor had entered.

He belonged to the great surgical school that came from Bichat's apron, to that generation, now vanished, of philosopher-practitioners who, cherishing their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with exaltation and sagacity! Everything trembled in his hospital when he grew angry, and his pupils venerated him so well that, barely established, they strove to imitate him as much as possible; so that one found upon them, in the surrounding towns, his long merino lounging-jacket and his wide black coat, whose unbuttoned cuffs covered a little his fleshy hands, very fine hands, which never wore gloves, as if to be readier to plunge into miseries. Scornful of crosses, titles, and academies, hospitable, liberal, paternal with the poor and practicing virtue without believing in it, he might almost have passed for a saint, had the fineness of his mind not made him feared like a demon. His gaze, keener than his scalpels, went straight down into the soul and disjointed all falsehood through allegations and shame. And he went thus, full of that gentle majesty given by the consciousness of a great talent, of fortune, and forty years of a laborious and irreproachable existence.

He frowned from the door, on perceiving the cadaverous face of Emma, stretched on her back, mouth open. Then, while seeming to listen to Canivet, he passed his forefinger under his nostrils and repeated:

— That's well, that's well.

But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary observed him: they looked at each other; and this man, so accustomed though he was to the sight of sufferings, could not hold back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill.

He wished to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed him.

— She is very ill, is she not? If one were to apply sinapisms? I know not what! Find something, you who have saved so many!

Charles encircled his body with both arms, and contemplated him with a bewildered, supplicating look, half-fainting against his chest.

— Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be done.

And Doctor Larivière turned away.

— You are leaving?

— I shall come back.

He went out as if to give an order to the postilion, with Mr. Canivet, who likewise had no wish to see Emma die in his hands.

The chemist joined them on the square. He could not, by temperament, separate himself from celebrated people. So he entreated M. Larivière to do him the signal honor of accepting luncheon.

They sent in haste to fetch pigeons at the Lion d'Or, all the cutlets at the butcher's, cream at Tuvache's, eggs at Lestiboudois's, and the apothecary helped himself with the preparations, while Madame Homais said, pulling the strings of her bodice:

— You will excuse us, sir; for in our unhappy country, from the moment one is not warned the evening before...

— The stemmed glasses!!! whispered Homais.

— At least, if we were in the city, we should have the resource of stuffed feet.

— Be quiet!... To table, doctor!

He judged it good, after the first mouthfuls, to furnish some details on the catastrophe:

— We had first a feeling of dryness in the pharynx, then intolerable pains in the epigastrium, superpurgation, coma.

— How then did she poison herself?

— I do not know, doctor, and indeed I do not quite know where she could have procured that arsenic.

Justin, who was then bringing a pile of plates, was seized with a trembling.

— What ails you? said the chemist.

The young man, at this question, let everything fall to the ground, with a great crash.

— Imbecile! cried Homais, clumsy! dullard! cursed ass!

But, suddenly mastering himself:

— I wished, doctor, to attempt an analysis, and primo, I delicately introduced into a tube...

— You would have done better, said the surgeon, to introduce your fingers into her throat.

His colleague was silent, having just now received a confidential strong rebuke about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and wordy at the time of the clubfoot, was very modest today; he smiled without ceasing, in an approving manner.

Homais expanded in his pride as host, and the afflicted idea of Bovary contributed vaguely to his pleasure, by an egoistic return he made upon himself. Then the presence of the Doctor transported him. He displayed his erudition, he cited pell-mell the cantharides, the upas, the manchineel, the viper.

— And even I have read that various persons were found intoxicated, doctor, and as if struck by lightning by sausages that had undergone too vehement a smoking! At least, it was in a very fine report, composed by one of our pharmaceutical summits, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de Gassicourt!

Madame Homais reappeared, bearing one of those wavering machines that are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais insisted on making his coffee at the table, having moreover roasted it himself, pulverized it himself, mixed it himself.

— Saccharum, doctor, said he, offering sugar.

Then he brought down all his children, curious to have the surgeon's opinion on their constitution.

At last, M. Larivière was about to leave, when Madame Homais asked him for a consultation about her husband. His blood thickened to fall asleep each evening after dinner.

— Oh! it is not the sense that troubles him.

And, smiling a little at this unnoticed pun, the doctor opened the door. But the pharmacy was overflowing with people; and he had great difficulty to rid himself of Mr. Tuvache, who feared for his wife a chest inflammation, because she had the habit of spitting in the ashes; then of M. Binet, who experienced sometimes sudden hungers, and of Madame Caron, who had pricklings; of Lheureux, who had vertigoes; of Lestiboudois, who had rheumatism; of Madame Lefrançois, who had heartburn. Finally the three horses darted off, and it was generally found that he had shown little complaisance.

Public attention was distracted by the appearance of M. Bournisien, who was passing under the market with the holy oils.

Homais, as he owed to his principles, compared the priests to crows attracted by the smell of the dead; the sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him dream of the shroud, and he execrated the one a little through dread of the other.

Nevertheless, not recoiling before what he called his mission, he returned to Bovary's in company with Canivet, whom M. Larivière, before leaving, had strongly urged to this step; and even, without the representations of his wife, he would have taken his two sons with him, in order to accustom them to solemn circumstances, that it might be a lesson, an example, a solemn picture that would remain later in their heads.

The room, when they entered, was quite full of a lugubrious solemnity. There was on the work-table, covered with a white napkin, five or six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix, between two candlesticks that were burning. Emma, chin against her chest, opened her eyelids immoderately; and her poor hands dragged upon the sheets, with that hideous and sweet gesture of the dying which seem already to wish to cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue, and her eyes red like coals, Charles, without weeping, stood facing her, at the foot of the bed, while the priest, leaning on one knee, mumbled low words.

She turned her face slowly, and seemed seized with joy at suddenly seeing the violet stole, no doubt finding again, amid an extraordinary calm, the lost voluptuousness of her first mystical leapings, with visions of eternal beatitude that were beginning.

The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched out her neck like one who is thirsty, and, pressing her lips on the body of the Man-God, she there deposited with all her expiring force the greatest kiss of love she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil and began the anointings: first on the eyes, which had so coveted all earthly sumptuousness; then on the nostrils, fond of warm breezes and amorous scents; then on the mouth, which had opened for falsehood, which had moaned with pride and cried in lust; then on the hands, which delighted in soft contacts, and finally on the soles of the feet, so rapid formerly when she ran to the fulfillment of her desires, and which now would walk no more.

The curate wiped his fingers, threw into the fire the bits of cotton soaked with oil, and came back to sit near the dying woman to tell her that she must now join her sufferings to those of Jesus Christ and abandon herself to divine mercy.

On finishing his exhortations, he tried to put into her hand a blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glories with which she was shortly to be surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the candle, but for M. Bournisien, would have fallen to the ground.

However, she was no longer so pale, and her face had an expression of serenity, as if the sacrament had cured her.

The priest did not fail to make this observation; he explained, even to Bovary, that the Lord, sometimes, prolongs the existence of persons when He judges it fitting for their salvation; and Charles recalled a day when, thus near to dying, she had received communion.

— Perhaps one should not have despaired, he thought.

Indeed, she looked all around her, slowly, like one who awakens from a dream; then, in a distinct voice, she asked for her mirror, and she remained bent over it for some time, until great tears flowed from her eyes. Then she threw back her head with a sigh and fell back on the pillow.

Her chest immediately began to pant rapidly. Her whole tongue came out of her mouth; her eyes, rolling, grew pale like two lamp-globes that go out, so that one would have thought her already dead, but for the frightful acceleration of her ribs, shaken by a furious breath, as if the soul had made leaps to detach itself. Félicité knelt before the crucifix, and the chemist himself bent his knees a little, while M. Canivet looked vaguely upon the square. Bournisien had resumed praying, his face inclined toward the edge of the bed, with his long black cassock trailing behind him in the apartment. Charles was on the other side, on his knees, arms extended toward Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, starting at each beat of her heart, as at the recoil of a falling ruin. As the rattling became louder, the ecclesiastic hurried his prayers; they mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes all seemed to disappear in the dull murmur of the Latin syllables, which rang like a passing-bell.

Suddenly was heard upon the pavement a noise of heavy clogs, with the brushing of a stick; and a voice rose, a raucous voice, which sang:

Often the heat of a fair day Makes a young girl dream of love.

Emma raised herself like a galvanized corpse, her hair unbound, her pupils fixed, gaping.

To diligently gather The ears the sickle reaps, My Nanette bends down Toward the furrow that gives them.

— The Blind Man! she cried.

And Emma began to laugh, with a laugh atrocious, frenetic, desperate, believing she saw the hideous face of the wretch, who reared himself in the eternal shadows like a terror.

It blew very hard that day, And the short petticoat flew up!

A convulsion threw her back upon the mattress. All drew near. She existed no more.

IX

There is always, after someone's death, a kind of stupor that is released, so difficult is it to comprehend this arrival of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it. But, when he nevertheless perceived her immobility, Charles threw himself upon her crying:

— Farewell! farewell!

Homais and Canivet drew him out of the room.

— Control yourself!

— Yes, said he, struggling; I shall be reasonable, I shall do no harm. But leave me! I want to see her! she is my wife!

And he wept.

— Weep, replied the chemist, give way to nature, that will relieve you!

Become weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs, into the parlor, and M. Homais soon returned home.

He was on the Square accosted by the Blind Man, who, having dragged himself to Yonville in hope of the antiphlogistic ointment, asked every passerby where the apothecary lived.

— Come now, as if I had no other dogs to whip! Ah! too bad, come back later!

And he entered precipitately into the pharmacy.

He had to write two letters, to make a calming potion for Bovary, to find a lie that might hide the poisoning and set it forth in an article for the Fanal, not to mention the persons who awaited him, in order to have information; and, when the Yonvillais had all heard his story of arsenic that she had taken for sugar, in making a vanilla cream, Homais, once again, returned to Bovary.

He found him alone (M. Canivet had just left), seated in the armchair, near the window, contemplating with an idiotic gaze the flags of the parlor.

— It would be needful now, said the chemist, for you yourself to fix the hour of the ceremony.

— Why? what ceremony?

Then in a stammering and frightened voice:

— Oh! no, is it not? no, I want to keep her.

Homais, for appearance' sake, took a carafe from the shelf to water the geraniums.

— Ah! thank you, said Charles, you are good!

And he did not finish, suffocating under an abundance of memories that this gesture of the chemist recalled to him.

Then, to distract him, Homais judged it fitting to talk a little horticulture; the plants needed moisture. Charles lowered his head in sign of assent.

— Besides, the fine days will soon return now.

— Ah! said Bovary.

The apothecary, at end of ideas, began to part gently the small curtains of the casement.

— Look, there is M. Tuvache passing.

Charles repeated like a machine:

— M. Tuvache passing.

Homais dared not speak to him again of the funeral arrangements; it was the ecclesiastic who succeeded in resolving him to it.

He shut himself in his study, took a pen, and, after having sobbed some time, wrote:

"I wish her to be buried in her wedding dress, with white shoes, a crown. Her hair shall be spread upon her shoulders; three coffins, one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no one speak to me, I shall have strength. Over all shall be placed a large piece of green velvet. I will it. Do it."

These gentlemen were much astonished at the romantic ideas of Bovary, and immediately the chemist went to tell him:

— This velvet seems to me a superfluity. The expense, moreover...

— Does that concern you? cried Charles. Leave me! you did not love her! Go away!

The ecclesiastic took him under the arm to make him take a walk in the garden. He discoursed on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great, very good; one must without murmuring submit to His decrees, even thank Him.

Charles burst into blasphemies.

— I execrate your God!

— The spirit of revolt is still in you, sighed the ecclesiastic.

Bovary was far off. He walked with great steps, along the wall, near the espalier, and he gnashed his teeth, he lifted to heaven glances of malediction; but not a single leaf even stirred.

A light rain fell. Charles, who was bare-chested, ended by shivering; he went in to sit in the kitchen.

At six o'clock, a clashing of iron was heard on the Square: it was the Swallow arriving; and he remained forehead against the panes, to see descend one after another all the travelers. Félicité spread a mattress for him in the salon; he threw himself upon it and fell asleep.

Although a philosopher, M. Homais respected the dead. So, without bearing a grudge to poor Charles, he came back in the evening to keep the wake of the corpse, bringing with him three volumes, and a portfolio in order to take notes.

M. Bournisien was there, and two large tapers burned at the head of the bed, which had been drawn out of the alcove.

The apothecary, to whom silence was heavy, soon formulated some complaints about this "unfortunate young woman"; and the priest answered that there now remained nothing but to pray for her.

— However, resumed Homais, of two things one: either she died in a state of grace (as the Church expresses it), and then she has no need of our prayers; or else she deceased impenitent (that is, I believe, the ecclesiastical expression), and then...

Bournisien interrupted him, replying in a surly tone that nevertheless one must pray.

— But, objected the chemist, since God knows all our needs, what can prayer serve?

— What! said the ecclesiastic, prayer! Are you then not a Christian?

— Pardon me! said Homais. I admire Christianity. It first freed the slaves, introduced into the world a morality...

— It is not a question of that! All the texts...

— Oh! oh! as for the texts, open history; one knows they were falsified by the Jesuits.

Charles entered, and, advancing toward the bed, he slowly drew the curtains.

Emma had her head bent on the right shoulder. The corner of her mouth, which remained open, made like a black hole at the bottom of her face; the two thumbs remained bent in the palms of the hands; a sort of white dust speckled her eyelashes, and her eyes began to disappear in a viscous paleness that resembled a thin web, as if spiders had spun upon them. The sheet hollowed from her breasts to her knees, rising again at the tips of the toes; and it seemed to Charles that infinite masses, that an enormous weight, pressed upon her.

The church clock struck two. One heard the heavy murmur of the river that flowed in the darkness, at the foot of the terrace. M. Bournisien, from time to time, blew his nose loudly, and Homais made his pen grate upon the paper.

— Come, my good friend, said he, withdraw, this sight tears you!

Charles once gone, the chemist and the curate resumed their discussion.

— Read Voltaire! said the one; read d'Holbach, read the Encyclopedia!

— Read the Letters of some Portuguese Jews! said the other; read the Reason of Christianity, by Nicolas, former magistrate!

They grew warm, they were red, they spoke at once without listening to each other; Bournisien was scandalized at such boldness; Homais marveled at such stupidity; and they were not far from exchanging insults, when Charles, suddenly, reappeared. A fascination drew him. He continually remounted the stairs.

He placed himself facing her to see her better, and he lost himself in this contemplation, which was no longer painful from being so deep.

He recalled stories of catalepsy, the miracles of magnetism; and he told himself that, by willing it extremely, he might perhaps resuscitate her. Once even he bent toward her, and cried softly: "Emma! Emma!" His breath, strongly pushed, made the flame of the tapers tremble against the wall.

At daybreak, Madame Bovary mother arrived; Charles, in embracing her, had a new overflow of tears. She tried, as the chemist had, to make him some observations on the expenses of the burial. He grew so angry that she was silent, and even charged her to go immediately to the town to buy what was needful.

Charles remained alone all the afternoon: they had taken Berthe to Madame Homais's; Félicité stayed upstairs, in the room, with Mother Lefrançois.

In the evening, he received visits. He rose, shook your hands without being able to speak, then one sat near the others, who made before the chimney a large half-circle. Head low and calf on knee, they dandled their leg, while pushing from time to time a great sigh; and each was bored in a measureless fashion; yet it was who should not leave.

Homais, when he came back at nine o'clock (one saw only him on the Square for two days), was charged with a provision of camphor, benzoin and aromatic herbs. He also carried a vase full of chlorine, to banish the miasmas. At this moment, the servant, Madame Lefrançois and Mother Bovary turned about Emma, finishing her dressing; and they lowered the stiff long veil, which covered her to her satin shoes.

Félicité sobbed:

— Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!

— Look at her, said the innkeeper sighing, how pretty she still is! One would not swear she will not get up presently.

Then they bent down, to put her crown on.

They had to lift the head a little, and then a flood of black liquids came out, like a vomiting, from her mouth.

— Ah! my God! the dress, take care! cried Madame Lefrançois.

— Help us, then! said she to the chemist. Are you afraid, perchance?

— Me, afraid? replied he, shrugging his shoulders. Ah! indeed! I have seen others at the Hôtel-Dieu, when I studied pharmacy! We made punch in the amphitheater at the dissections! Nothingness does not frighten a philosopher; and even, I say often, I intend to bequeath my body to the hospitals, in order to serve later the Science.

On arriving, the Curate asked how Monsieur was; and, on the apothecary's answer, he resumed:

— The blow, you understand, is still too recent!

Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like everyone, to lose a cherished companion; whence followed a discussion on the celibacy of priests.

— For, said the chemist, it is not natural that a man should do without women! One has seen crimes...

— But, wooden sabre! cried the ecclesiastic, how do you wish an individual taken in marriage to keep, for example, the secret of confession?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”