Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half past six, during dinner.
“Well,” he said as he sat down, “so we have just now seen off our young man?”
“It seems so,” replied the doctor.
Then, turning around in his chair:
“And what’s new with you?”
“Not a great deal. Only that, this afternoon, my wife was a little excitable. You know how it is, with women, stirred by a mere trifle. Mine above all! And it would be a mistake to be indignant about it, since their nervous system is a lot more susceptible than our own.”
“That poor Léon!” said Charles. “How will he live in Paris? Will he get used to it?”
Madame Bovary sighed.
“Nonsense!” said the pharmacist, clicking his tongue; “Secret pleasure parties in the chophouse! Masked balls! Champagne! ’Tis all going to be fine, I assure you.”
“I don’t think he will go astray,” Bovary objected.
“Me neither!” Monsieur Homais resumed sharply, “although he’ll still have to go along with the others, at the risk of passing for a Jesuit. And you’ve no notion of the life those fellows lead there, in the Latin quarter, with the actresses. Yet students are very well regarded in Paris. If they have the least talent for being agreeable, they’re received into the best society, and ladies there are in the faubourg Saint-Germain who even fall in love with them, providing them, subsequently, with opportunities to make a very handsome match.”
“But,” said the doctor, “I’m fearful that he … over there …”
“You’re right,” the apothecary interrupted, “that’s the dark side of the picture. And one has to keep a hand over one’s purse all the time! So, I am imagining you’re in a public garden; a certain person appears, well turned out, dignified even, and whom you take for a diplomat; he accosts you; you chat together; he worms himself in, offers you a pinch of snuff or picks up your hat. Then you become more intimate; he takes you to a café, invites you to his house in the country, gets you acquainted, half-seas-over, with all kinds of types, and three-quarters of the time it’s only to swindle you out of your purse or tempt you into taking highly pernicious steps.”
“That’s true,” Charles replied; “but I was thinking mainly of diseases, of typhoid fever, for instance, which attacks students from the provinces.”
Emma gave a start.
“Because of the change of diet,” continued the apothecary, “and of the resulting disturbance to the general economy. And besides, you see, the Paris water! The chophouse dishes, all those spicy foods end up overheating your blood and aren’t a patch, whatever is claimed for them, on a good meat stew. I have always, speaking for myself, liked plain home cooking better: it’s healthier! Likewise, when I was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boardinghouse; I ate with the lecturers.”
And he then continued to reveal his general opinions and his personal sympathies, right up to the moment when Justin came to fetch him for the preparation of a mulled egg.
“Not a moment of respite,” he cried, “always in the traces! I cannot go out for a minute. Like a plow horse, I have to sweat blood and tears! What drudgery!”
Then, when he was at the door:
“Talking of which,” he said, “have you heard the news?”
“What’s that?”
“It seems most likely,” Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and adopting his most serious expression, “that the Lower Seine’s agricultural show is to be held this year at Yonville-l’Abbaye. At least that’s the rumor. This morning’s paper touched on it a little. That would be of the utmost importance for our area. But we’ll discuss it later. I can see my way, thank you; Justin has the lantern.”
VII
The next day was, for Emma, a mournful one. Everything seemed to her muffled in a gloom which wavered confusedly over the exterior of things, and the heartache sank into her soul with soft howls, such as the winter wind makes in abandoned castles. It was that type of waking dream you experience when something is gone forever, the lassitude that grips you after each fait accompli, in short the suffering that the interruption of any habitual motion, the abrupt ceasing of a prolonged vibration, brings.
As with the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles whirled in her head, she felt a dull melancholy, a torpid despair. Léon reappeared as taller, more handsome, more pleasant, more vague; although he was separated from her, he had not left her, he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to preserve his shadow. She could not tear her eyes from this rug he had walked on, from those empty pieces of furniture he had sat in. The river still flowed, and slowly drove its little swells along the slippery bank. They had walked there many times, to this same murmur of the waves, on pebbles coated in moss. What lovely sunny days they had had! What lovely afternoons, alone, in the shade, at the bottom of the garden! He would read aloud, bareheaded, seated on a stool made from dry sticks; the cool wind from the meadows trembled the pages of his book and the arbor’s nasturtiums … Ah he was gone, the sole delight of her life, the sole possible hope of any bliss. Why had she not seized that happiness, while it offered itself? Why had she not held it back with both hands, on both knees, when it wished to flee? And she cursed herself for not having loved Léon; she thirsted for his lips. She longed to run and join him, to throw herself in his arms, to say to him: “I am here, I am yours!” But Emma fretted beforehand over the difficulties of the undertaking, and her desires, augmented by regret, became still more potent.
Thenceforth, the memory of Léon lay at the center of her ennui; it crackled there more fiercely than a traveler’s fire on a Russian steppe, abandoned in the snow. She hastened toward him, she huddled up against him, she delicately stirred this hearth that had all but died away, she went searching all around her for what might revive it further; and the remotest reminiscences as well as the most recent encounters, her actual experiences along with her imaginings, her scattered cravings for voluptuousness, her plans for happiness that creaked in the wind like dead boughs, her barren virtue, her tumbled hopes, the straw litter of domesticity, she gathered all, seized all, and let it all serve to rekindle her sadness.
Nevertheless the flames subsided, either because the fuel itself was spent, or its pile too considerable. Bit by bit, love died away through absence, regret was stifled by habit; and that fiery glimmer that empurpled her pale sky was further clouded by shadow and gradually blotted out. In the slumbering state of her conscience, she even took husband-hatred for lover-longing, the scorch of spite for the rekindling of tender love; but, as the storm was still blowing, and her passion burned to ashes, and since no help came, no sun appeared, utter night fell on every side, and she remained lost in a terrible cold that penetrated her through and through.
Then the bad days of Tostes began once more. She reckoned herself as far unhappier now; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty that it would not end.
A woman who had imposed such great sacrifices upon herself could well be forgiven whims. She bought herself a Gothic prayer desk, and laid out fourteen francs on lemons in one month for cleaning her nails; she wrote to Rouen, to have a blue cashmere dress; from Lheureux she chose the loveliest of his scarves; she fastened it at the waist over her dressing gown; and with the shutters closed, a book in her hand, she lay stretched on a sofa in this apparel.
She would often vary her coiffure: she adopted a Chinese style, soft curls, tressed plaits; she affected a parting on the side of her head and rolled her hair below it, like a man.
She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar book, a stock of white paper. She tried some serious reading, of history and philosophy. At night, sometimes, Charles woke up with a start, believing that they had come to fetch him out for a patient:
“I’m going,” he mumbled.
And it was the noise of a match that Emma was striking to light the lamp again. But her reading shared something of her needlework, cluttering her wardrobe with its unfinished pie
ces; she took one up, abandoned it, passed on to another.
She had fits, when she would be easily prompted into wild follies. One day she maintained, in opposition to her husband, that she would definitely drink a large half-glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid enough to dare her to do so, she swallowed the brandy to the dregs.
Despite her giddy airs (this was how the good women of Yonville put it), Emma still did not look cheerful, and the corners of her mouth would retain that permanent tenseness which creases the faces of old maids and ambitious failures. She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn down toward the nostrils, her eyes would look at you in a vague way. Having discovered three gray hairs at her temples, she talked a great deal about her old age.
She would frequently feel a strange weakness come over her. One day, she even spat blood, and, as Charles rushed to help, his anxiety noticeable:
“Oh, nonsense!” she replied, “what does it matter?”
Charles took refuge in his consulting room; and he wept, elbows on the table, seated in his office chair, under the phrenological head.
Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they had long conferences together on the subject of Emma.
How to resolve it? What to do, since she rejected all treatment?
“Do you know what your wife needs?” Mère Bovary went on. “Hard work, manual labor! If, like so many others, she was forced to earn her bread, she wouldn’t have these vapors, which come to her from a heap of ideas she stuffs her head with, and from her life of idleness.”
“Yet she keeps herself busy,” said Charles.
“Hah! Keeps herself busy! With what? Reading books, bad books, works that are against religion and where they make fun of priests with speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that has repercussions, my poor child, and someone who has no religion always ends up by turning bad.”
So, it was decided that Emma would be kept from reading novels. The task did not seem an easy one. The good lady took charge of it: when she next passed through Rouen, she would go in person to the book lender and impress on him that Emma should stop her subscription. Would they not have the right to alert the police, if the bookseller persisted all the same with his poisoner’s trade?
The farewells of the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law were cold. During the three weeks that they had been together, they had not exchanged four words, apart from the usual inquiries and compliments when they met at table, and during the evening before they went to bed.
Mère Bovary left on a Wednesday, Yonville’s market day.
The Square, from morning onward, was encumbered with a line of wagons, each tipped up and shafts on high, stretching the length of the houses from the church to the inn. On the other side, there were canvas booths where they were selling cotton cloths, bedclothes and woolen stockings, with halters for horses and bundles of blue ribbons, their ends soaring in the wind. Heavy ironmongery was strewn on the ground, between pyramids of eggs and small hampers of cheese, from which emerged sticky tufts of straw; near the threshing machines, hens clucking in flat cages were putting their necks through the bars. The crowd, all jammed into one place yet not wanting to move, threatened at times to break the front of the pharmacy. On Wednesdays, it never emptied and people pushed their way in, less to buy medicines than to seek a consultation, so renowned was Monsieur Homais’s reputation in the neighboring villages. His robust self-possession had captivated the country folk. They looked upon him as the greatest doctor of all.
Emma was leaning on her elbows at her window (she would often be there: the window, in the provinces, replaces theaters and promenades), and was amusing herself contemplating the crowd of rustics, when she caught sight of a gentleman dressed in a green velvet frock coat. He was gloved in yellow, although got up in stout gaiters; and he was making for the doctor’s house, followed by a peasant walking with his head lowered in a most ruminative manner.
“May I see the master of the house?” he asked Justin, who was chatting on the threshold with Félicité.
And, taking him for the house servant:
“Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger de la Huchette is here.”
It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival had added the nobiliary particle to his name, but with the aim of identifying himself the better. La Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, whose chateau he had just purchased, along with two farms he was working himself, yet without too much personal bother. He lived as a bachelor, and was reputed to have a private income of at least fifteen thousand pounds!
Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his servant, who wished to be bled because he was feeling ants all down his body.
“That’ll cleanse me,” he objected, to counter all their arguments.
So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin to be brought, and requested Justin to hold it. Then, addressing the cotter, who was already pale:
“Don’t be afraid, my brave man.”
“No, no,” replied the other, “you keep on!”
And, in a blustering manner, he held out his thick arm. Under the lancet’s puncture, the blood spurted out to splash against the mirror.
“Bring the vessel!” Charles exclaimed.
“Look’ee!” said the peasant, “you’d swear it were a tiny fountain as is running! How red my blood be! That’s a good sign, no?”
“Sometimes,” went on the medical officer, “you feel nothing to start with, then the fainting fit declares itself, and more particularly with people of a strong constitution, like this fellow.”
The rustic, at these words, let go of the small box that he was turning in his fingers. A jerk of his shoulders made the chair back crack. His hat fell.
“I suspected as much,” said Bovary as he put his finger on the vein.
The basin began to tremble in Justin’s hands; his knees wavered, he grew pale.
“Wife! Wife!” Charles called out.
She came down the stairs at a bound.
“Some vinegar!” he cried. “Oh dear God, two at once!”
And, in his excitement, he had trouble in placing the compress.
“It’s nothing,” Monsieur Boulanger said quite calmly, as he took Justin in his arms.
And he sat him down on the table, letting the boy’s back rest against the wall.
Madame Bovary began to remove his neck cloth. There was a knot in the shirt’s strings; she spent a few minutes moving her slender fingers over the young man’s neck; then she poured vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she dabbed at his temples to wet them and blew there, delicately.
The plowman woke up; but Justin’s swoon continued, and his eyes disappeared into their pale sclera, like blue flowers into milk.
“We must,” said Charles, “hide that from him.”
Madame Bovary took the basin. In the movement she made leaning down to put it under the table, her dress (it was a four-flounced summer dress, yellow, long in the waist, broad in the skirt), her dress spread about her on the floor tiles—and when Emma, bent forward as she was, teetered a little as she spread her arms, the fullness of the cloth was crushed in places, following the curves of her bodice. Afterward she went to fetch a jug of water, and she was dissolving sugar lumps when the pharmacist arrived. The maid had gone to look for him during the explosion; on seeing that his pupil’s eyes were open, he recovered his breath. Then, circling the youth, he looked him up and down.
“Fool!” he said; “little fool, truly. In a word, fool! After all, a phlebotomy’s a big thing. And a big fellow like you who’s afraid of nothing. A sort of squirrel, you see before you, who climbs up to loosen nuts at dizzying heights. Ah yes! Tell them, brag of it! So here we have a glorious natural aptitude for practicing pharmacy later on; because you might find yourself being called up in grave circumstances, before the bench, in order to set the magistrates’ minds at rest; and yet you have to keep your temper, answer your superiors, show yourself a man, or else pass for
an idiot.”
Justin did not reply. The apothecary continued:
“Who asked you to come? You’re forever bothering Monsieur and Madame. Besides, I can spare you even less on Wednesdays. There are now twenty people at the house. I dropped everything in my concern for you. Come on, be off! Run! Wait for me there, and watch the jars!”
When Justin, who was dressing again, had gone, they chatted a little about fainting fits. Madame Bovary had never suffered them.
“That’s extraordinary for a lady,” said Monsieur Boulanger. “Yet certain people are very delicate. Indeed, I once saw, during a duel, a witness lose consciousness over nothing more than the sound of the pistols being loaded.”
“As for me,” said the apothecary, “the sight of others’ blood has no effect; but the mere thought of mine running would be enough to make me faint, if I thought about it too much.”
Meanwhile Monsieur Boulanger dispatched his servant, urging him to calm down, since his generous whim had worn off.
“It brought me the benefit of your acquaintance,” he added.
And he stared at Emma as he said this.
Then he put three francs down on the corner of the table, gave a nonchalant bow and left.
He was soon on the other side of the river (it was his route back to La Huchette); and Emma observed him in the meadow, as he walked under the poplars, slowing down from time to time, like someone reflecting.
“She’s exceedingly fine!” he was saying to himself; “She’s exceedingly fine, this doctor’s wife! Lovely teeth, black eyes, coquettish foot, and a figure like a Parisienne. Where the devil did she spring from? Where did he find her, then, that coarse fellow?”
Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four years old; he was of a brutal temperament and quick-sighted intelligence, having moreover frequented women a great deal, and knowing them well. This one had struck him as pretty; so he mused on her, and on her husband.
“I think he’s very stupid. No doubt she’s tired of him. He has dirty nails and a three-day beard. While he jog-trots off to his patients, she stays darning socks. And we’re bored of it. We want to live in town, dance the polka every night. Poor little woman! Gasping for love, like a carp for water on a kitchen table. With three gallant words, that type would adore you, I’m certain. It would be delicate! Charming!… Yes, but how to get rid of her afterward?”
Madame Bovary (Modern Library) Page 15
