Part 9

After enduring his thanks, Madame Bovary took her leave; and she had advanced some way along the path when, at the sound of hoofbeats, she turned her head: it was the nurse!

— What is it?

Then the peasant woman, drawing her aside behind an elm, began to speak to her of her husband, who, with his trade and the six francs a year that the captain...

— Make haste and finish, said Emma.

— Well, resumed the nurse, sighing between each word, I'm afraid he'll take it hard to see me drinking coffee all alone; you know, men...

— Since you'll have some, repeated Emma, I'll give you some!... You're annoying me!

— Alas, my poor dear lady, it's that he has, from his wounds, terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him.

— But hurry up, Mother Rolet!

— So, resumed the latter, making a curtsy, if it weren't asking too much of you..., — she curtsied again, — whenever you like, — and her glance entreated, — a jug of brandy, said she at last, and I'll rub your little one's feet with it, hers are tender as a tongue.

Rid of the nurse, Emma took Monsieur Léon's arm. She walked rapidly for a while; then she slowed down, and her glance, roving before her, met the young man's shoulder, whose redingote had a black velvet collar. His chestnut hair fell upon it, flat and well-combed. She noticed his nails, which were longer than was worn at Yonville. One of the clerk's great occupations was tending them; and he kept, for that purpose, a very special penknife in his writing-case. They returned to Yonville along the edge of the water. In the warm season, the broader bank laid bare, to their foundations, the walls of the gardens, which had a flight of a few steps descending to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift and cold to the eye; long slender grasses bent together in it, according to the current that pushed them, and like green tresses abandoned spread out in its limpidity. Sometimes, at the tip of a rush or on the leaf of a water-lily, a fine-legged insect walked or alighted. The sun pierced with a ray the small blue globules of the waves that followed one another bursting; the old branchless willows mirrored their grey bark in the water; beyond, all around, the meadow seemed empty. It was dinner-time in the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard, as they walked, only the cadence of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they said to each other, and the rustle of Emma's dress that whispered all about her.

The garden walls, capped with pieces of bottle, were hot as the glass of a greenhouse. In the bricks, wallflowers had sprung up; and, from the edge of her open parasol, Madame Bovary, as she passed, made a little of their faded flowers crumble into yellow dust, or else some branch of honeysuckle or clematis hanging outside would trail a moment on the silk, catching in the fringe.

They spoke of a troupe of Spanish dancers, expected soon at the Rouen theatre.

— Will you go? she asked.

— If I can, he answered.

Had they nothing else to say to each other? Their eyes, however, were full of a more serious discourse; and, while they strove to find banal phrases, they felt the same languor invade them both; it was like a murmur of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of the voices. Astonished at this new sweetness, they thought not to tell each other the sensation or discover its cause. Future joys, like the shores of the tropics, cast upon the immensity that precedes them their native softnesses, a perfumed breeze, and one dozes in this intoxication without even troubling about the horizon one does not see.

The ground, in one place, had caved in from the cattle's tread; they had to walk on large green stones, spaced in the mud. Often she stopped a minute to see where to set her boot, — and, swaying on the trembling stone, elbows in the air, waist bent, eye uncertain, she then laughed, for fear of falling into the pools of water.

When they arrived before her garden Madame Bovary pushed the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.

Léon went back to his office. The principal was away; he glanced over the files, then cut himself a pen, finally took his hat and went out.

He went to the Pâture, at the top of the Argueil slope, at the edge of the forest; he lay down on the ground under the firs and looked at the sky through his fingers.

— How bored I am! he said to himself, how bored I am!

He found it pitiable to live in this village, with Homais for friend and Monsieur Guillaumin for master.

The latter, wholly taken up with business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red side-whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of the delicacies of the mind, though he affected a stiff English manner that had dazzled the clerk at first. As for the pharmacist's wife, she was the best spouse in Normandy, gentle as a lamb, cherishing her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping at others' ills, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; — but so slow to move, so tedious to listen to, of so common an appearance and so limited a conversation, that he had never thought, though she was thirty, he twenty, that they slept door to door, and that he spoke to her every day, that she could be a woman to anyone, nor that she possessed of her sex anything but the gown.

And then, what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three tavern-keepers, the curate, and finally Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, well-to-do folk, surly, obtuse, farming their lands themselves, feasting en famille, devout besides, and of quite insufferable company.

But, against the common background of all these human faces, Emma's figure stood out isolated and yet more distant; for he felt between her and him like vague abysses.

At first he had come to her house several times in the pharmacist's company; Charles had not appeared exceedingly curious to receive him; and Léon knew not how to proceed between fear of being indiscreet and desire for an intimacy he deemed almost impossible.

IV

At the first colds, Emma left her room to live in the parlour, a long room with a low ceiling where, on the mantelpiece, a bushy coral spread against the mirror. Seated in her armchair near the window, she watched the villagers pass on the pavement.

Léon, twice a day, went from his office to the Lion d'or. Emma, from afar, heard him come; she leaned to listen, and the young man glided behind the curtain, always dressed in the same way and without turning his head. But at dusk, when, chin in her left hand, she had abandoned on her knees her begun tapestry, often she started at the appearance of that shadow gliding suddenly. She rose and ordered the table laid.

Monsieur Homais arrived during dinner. Greek cap in hand, he entered with noiseless steps so as to disturb no one and always repeating the same phrase: 'Good evening, company!' Then, when he had settled in his place, against the table, between the two spouses, he asked the doctor for news of his patients, and the latter consulted him on the likelihood of fees. Then they talked of what was in the paper. Homais, at that hour, knew it almost by heart; and he reported it in full, with the journalist's reflections and all the stories of individual catastrophes happening in France or abroad. But, the subject drying up, he soon launched some observations on the dishes he saw. Sometimes even, half rising, he delicately indicated to Madame the tenderest morsel, or, turning to the maid, addressed her advice on the manipulation of ragouts and the hygiene of seasonings; he spoke of aroma, osmazome, juices and gelatine in a way to dazzle. His head, moreover, more full of recipes than his pharmacy was of jars, Homais excelled at making quantities of jams, vinegars and sweet liqueurs, and he also knew all the new inventions of economical heaters, with the art of preserving cheeses and tending sick wines.

At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to close the pharmacy. Then Monsieur Homais looked at him with a mocking eye, especially if Félicité was there, having noticed that his pupil was fond of the doctor's house.

— My lad, he said, is beginning to have ideas, and I believe, the devil take me, he's in love with your maid!

But a graver fault, and one he reproached him with, was that he continually listened to conversations. On Sundays, for example, he could not be made to leave the parlour, where Madame Homais had called him to take the children, who fell asleep in the armchairs, pulling with their backs the calico covers, too large.

Not many people came to these pharmacist's evenings, his tale-bearing and political opinions having successively driven away various respectable persons. The clerk never failed to be there. As soon as he heard the bell, he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took her shawl, and set aside, under the pharmacy desk, the large list-slipper shoes she wore over her footwear when there was snow.

They first played a few games of thirty-one; then Monsieur Homais played écarté with Emma; Léon, behind her, gave her advice. Standing with his hands on the back of her chair, he looked at the teeth of her comb biting into her chignon. At every movement she made to throw the cards, her dress on the right side rode up. From her hair drawn back, a brown colour descended on her back, which, growing paler gradually, little by little was lost in the shadow. Her garment, then, fell on both sides of the seat, puffing, full of folds, and spread to the floor. When Léon sometimes felt the sole of his boot rest upon it, he drew back, as if he had stepped on someone.

When the card game was done, the apothecary and the doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing place, leaned on the table to leaf through the Illustration. She had brought her fashion paper. Léon placed himself near her; they looked together at the engravings and waited for each other at the foot of the pages. Often she asked him to read her some verse; Léon declaimed them in a drawling voice that he carefully let expire on the passages of love. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him; Monsieur Homais was strong at it, he beat Charles by full double-six. Then, the three hundred finished, they both stretched before the hearth and soon fell asleep. The fire was dying in the ashes; the teapot was empty; Léon still read. Emma listened, mechanically turning the lamp's shade, where on the gauze were painted pierrots in carriages and rope-dancers, with their balancing-poles. Léon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they spoke in low voices, and the conversation they had seemed sweeter to them, because it was not overheard.

Thus was established between them a sort of association, a continual commerce of books and romances; Monsieur Bovary, little jealous, wondered not at it.

He received for his feast-day a fine phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue. It was a thought of the clerk. He had many others, even to doing his errands for him at Rouen; and a novelist's book having brought into fashion the craze for succulent plants, Léon bought some for Madame, which he brought back on his knees in the Hirondelle, all the while pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.

She had fixed, against her casement, a balustraded shelf to hold her pots. The clerk had also his hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers at their window.

Among the village windows, there was one still more often occupied; for, on Sundays, from morning till night, and every afternoon if the weather was clear, one saw at the garret dormer the thin profile of Monsieur Binet bent over his lathe, whose monotonous humming was heard as far as the Lion d'or.

One evening, on returning, Léon found in his room a carpet of velvet and wool with leafwork on a pale ground; he called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook, he spoke of it to his principal; everyone wished to see this carpet; why did the doctor's wife make such generosities to the clerk? It seemed funny, and one finally thought that she must be his good friend.

He gave it to be believed, so constantly did he entertain you with her charms and wit, so that Binet answered him once very brutally:

— What is it to me, since I am not of her company!

He tormented himself to discover by what means to make his declaration to her; and, ever hesitating between fear of displeasing her and shame at being so pusillanimous, he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions; he wrote letters that he tore up; put himself off to times that he postponed. Often he set out, with the plan to dare all; but this resolution soon left him in Emma's presence, and, when Charles, coming up, invited him to mount his gig to go together see some patient in the neighbourhood, he accepted at once, saluted Madame and went. Her husband, was he not something of her?

As for Emma, she questioned herself not as to whether she loved him. Love, she believed, must come all at once, with great clamours and fulgurations, — hurricane of the skies falling on life, overturning it, tearing wills like leaves and sweeping the whole heart into the abyss. She knew not that, on the terraces of houses, rain makes pools when the gutters are stopped, and she would thus have remained in her security, when she suddenly discovered a crack in the wall.

V

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when it was snowing.

They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais and Monsieur Léon, gone to see, half a league from Yonville, in the valley, a flax-spinning mill that was being established. The apothecary had taken with him Napoléon and Athalie, to give them exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying umbrellas on his shoulder.

Nothing, however, was less curious than this curiosity. A large space of empty ground, where were pell-mell, among heaps of sand and pebbles, some gear-wheels already rusty, surrounded a long quadrangular building pierced with many small windows. It was not finished being built, and one saw the sky through the roof-beams. Attached to the tie-beam of the gable, a bunch of straw intermingled with ears made its tricoloured ribbons clap in the wind.

Homais spoke. He explained to the company the future importance of this establishment, calculated the strength of the floors, the thickness of the walls, and much regretted not having a measuring-rod, as Monsieur Binet possessed one for his particular use.

Emma, who gave him her arm, leaned a little on his shoulder, and she looked at the disc of the sun radiating afar, in the mist, its dazzling pallor; but she turned her head: Charles was there. He had his cap pulled down on his brows, and his two thick lips trembled, which added to his face something stupid; his back even, his tranquil back was irritating to see, and she found displayed on the redingote all the flatness of the personage.

While she considered him, thus tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved voluptuousness, Léon advanced a step. The cold that paled him seemed to deposit on his face a softer languor; between his cravat and his neck, the collar of the shirt, somewhat loose, let the skin be seen; a bit of ear showed under a lock of hair, and his large blue eye, raised to the clouds, appeared to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain lakes where the sky is mirrored.

— Unfortunate! suddenly cried the apothecary.

And he ran to his son, who had just thrown himself into a heap of lime to paint his shoes white. Amid the reproaches with which they overwhelmed him, Napoléon began to howl, while Justin wiped his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was needed; Charles offered his.

— Ah! she said to herself, he carries a knife in his pocket, like a peasant!

The hoarfrost was falling; and they returned toward Yonville.

Madame Bovary, in the evening, did not go to her neighbours', and, when Charles was gone, when she felt alone, the parallel recommenced in the clarity of an almost immediate sensation and with that lengthening of perspective that memory gives objects. Looking from her bed at the bright fire burning, she still saw, as there, Léon standing, bending a walking-stick in one hand and holding in the other Athalie, who quietly sucked a piece of ice. She found him charming; she could not detach herself from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, phrases he had said, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, advancing her lips as for a kiss:

— Yes, charming! charming!... Does he not love? she asked herself. Who then?... but it is I!

All the proofs at once displayed themselves, her heart bounded. The flame of the chimney made tremble on the ceiling a joyful light; she turned on her back stretching her arms.

Then began the eternal lamentation: 'Oh! if heaven had willed it! Why is it not? Who then prevented?...'

When Charles, at midnight, came in, she seemed to wake, and, as he made noise undressing, she complained of the migraine; then asked languidly what had passed in the evening.

— Monsieur Léon, said he, went up early.

She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep with her soul full of a new enchantment.

The next day, at nightfall, she received the visit of the sieur Lheureux, dealer in novelties. He was a clever man, this shopkeeper.

Born Gascon, but become Norman, he doubled his meridional loquacity with Cauchois cunning. His fat, soft, beardless face seemed tinted by a decoction of pale liquorice, and his white hair made yet more vivid the harsh brightness of his small black eyes. One knew not what he had been formerly: pedlar, said some, banker at Routot, according to others. What is sure is that he made, in his head, complicated calculations to frighten Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always held his loins half-bent, in the posture of one who salutes or invites.

After leaving at the door his hat trimmed with crape, he set a green box on the table, and began by complaining to Madame, with much civility, of having till that day obtained no confidence from her. A poor shop like his was not made to attract an elegant lady; he stressed the word. She had, however, only to order, and he would undertake to supply her with what she wished, in haberdashery as in linen, hosiery or novelties; for he went to the city four times a month, regularly. He was in relation with the strongest houses. One might speak of him to the Three Brothers, the Golden Beard or the Great Savage, all those gentlemen knew him as their pocket. Today, then, he came to show Madame, in passing, different articles he happened to have, thanks to a most rare opportunity. And he drew from the box half a dozen embroidered collars.

Madame Bovary examined them.

— I need nothing, said she.

Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and, finally, four egg-cups in coconut, openwork chased by convicts. Then, both hands on the table, neck stretched, waist bent, he followed, mouth agape, Emma's glance, which wandered undecided among these wares. From time to time, as to chase the dust, he gave a flick of the nail on the silk of the scarves, unfolded to their full length; and they trembled with a light noise, making, in the greenish light of dusk, scintillate, like little stars, the gold spangles of their weave.

— How much are they?

— A trifle, he answered, a trifle; but nothing presses; when you like; we are not Jews!

She reflected some moments, and finally, again, thanked Monsieur Lheureux, who replied unruffled.

— Well; we shall understand each other later; with ladies I have always arranged, if not with my own, however!

Emma smiled.

— It was to tell you, resumed he with a homely air after his jest, that it is not money that troubles me... I would give you some, if need were.

She made a gesture of surprise.

— Ah! said he quickly and in a low voice, I should not need to go far to find you some; rely on it!

And he began to ask news of father Tellier, the master of the Café Français, whom Monsieur Bovary was then treating.

— What ails him then, father Tellier?... He coughs as if he would shake his whole house, and I much fear that soon he'll need a fir overcoat rather than a flannel waistcoat? He made so many sprees when young! Those people, madame, had not the least order! he has calcined himself with brandy! But it is vexing all the same to see an acquaintance go.

And, while he re-buckled his box, he discoursed thus on the doctor's clientele.

— It is the weather, no doubt, said he looking at the panes with a sulky face, that is the cause of those illnesses! I myself am not quite myself; I shall even, one of these days, have to come consult Monsieur, for a pain I have in the back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary; at your service; your humble servant!

And he closed the door softly.

Emma had dinner served in her room, by the fire, on a tray; she was long at eating; all seemed good to her.

— How good I was! she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.

She heard steps on the stair: it was Léon. She rose, and took from the commode, among some cloths to hem, the top one of the pile. She seemed very busy when he appeared.

The conversation was languid, Madame Bovary abandoning it every minute, while he remained himself as quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair, near the fireplace, he turned in his fingers the ivory case; she pushed her needle, or, from time to time, with her nail, pleated the folds of the cloth. She spoke not; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her words.

— Poor boy! she thought.

— How do I displease him? he wondered.

Léon, however, finally said that he must, one of these days, go to Rouen, for a matter of his office...

— Your music subscription is ended, shall I renew it?

— No, she answered.

— Why?

— Because...

And, pinching her lips, she slowly drew a long grey thread.

This work irritated Léon. Emma's fingers seemed to scratch themselves on it at the tip; there came to him a gallant phrase, but he risked it not.

— You abandon it then? he resumed.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”