Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  Thus the impediments to pleasure, glimpsed in the distance, made him think, by pure contrast, of his mistress. She was a Rouen actress, whom he maintained; and, when he had fastened on this image, whose very recollection left him sated:

  “Ah, Madame Bovary,” he thought, “is a deal prettier than her, and certainly fresher. Virginie is becoming decidedly too fat. She’s so tiresome with those pleasures of hers. And, besides, what a mania for pink prawns!”

  The countryside was deserted, and all Rodolphe heard around him was the regular flap of the grasses as they lashed his boots, and the crickets crouched far off beneath the oats; he saw Emma in the room again, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.

  “Oh, I will have her!” he cried out, crushing a clod of earth in front of him with one blow of his stick.

  And straightaway he examined the politic part of the enterprise. He asked himself:

  “Where to meet each other? By what means? We shall always have the brat on our backs, and the maid, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of significant botheration. Bah!” he said, “too much time lost there!”

  Then he started up again:

  “But her eyes, they penetrate your heart like gimlets. And that pale complexion … I, who adore pale women!”

  On the crest of Argueil hill, he came to a resolution.

  “All I have to do is look for opportunities. Well, I shall pass by sometimes, I’ll send them game birds, fowl; I’ll get myself bled, if needs be; we’ll become friends, I’ll invite them home … Zounds!” he added, “there’s the agricultural show soon; she’ll be there, I’ll see her. We’ll begin, and boldly, for that is the soundest way.”

  VIII

  It did indeed arrive, this famous Agricultural Show! From the morning of the official solemnities, all the inhabitants, on their doorsteps, talked of the preparations; the town hall’s pediment had been garlanded with ivy; a pavilion in a field had been erected for the banquet, and, in the middle of the Square, in front of the church, a type of bombard was to signal the arrival of Monsieur le Préfet and the announcement of the prizewinning farmers. The national guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville) had come to join with the fire corps, of which Binet was the captain. He was wearing a collar that day that was even higher than usual; and, strapped into his tunic as he was, his chest was so stiff and motionless, that all the vital parts of his person seemed to have descended into his legs, which rose, in time and with a pronounced step, in a single movement. As a rivalry subsisted between the tax-gatherer and the colonel, each of them, to prove his abilities, drilled his men separately. Red epaulettes and black breastplates were seen passing back and forth in turn. It was never-ending and always began anew! There had never been such a splendid display! Several citizens had washed their houses the day before; tricolors hung from half-open windows; all the tap houses were full; and, in the fine weather they were having, the starched bonnets, the gold crosses and the colored neckerchiefs appeared whiter than snow, shimmered in the bright sun, and heightened with their scattered motley the somber monotony of the frock coats and blue smocks. Dismounting from their horses, the local farmers’ wives removed the stout pin that held their dress, tucked up for fear of mud spots, tight around the body; and the husbands, by contrast, in order to spare their hats, kept pocket handkerchiefs spread over them, a corner gripped between the teeth.

  The crowd arrived in the main street from both ends of the village. They disgorged from lanes, alleyways, houses, and from time to time you caught the return fall of door knockers behind good women in cotton gloves, venturing out to view the entertainment. Admired most of all, were two tall pyramidal stands covered in lamps flanking a stage where the officials were to sit; and in addition, against the four pillars of the town hall, there were four long types of pole, each carrying a little standard of greenish canvas, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters. On one could be read: “to Commerce”; on another: “to Agriculture”; on the third: “to Industry”; and on the fourth: “to the Arts.”

  But the jubilation broadening every face appeared to fill Madame Lefrançois, the inn’s landlady, with gloom. Standing on her kitchen steps, she murmured into her chin:

  “What nonsense! What nonsense with their canvas hut! Do they believe that the prefect will be truly comfortable dining over there, under a tent, like a buffoon? They call these embarrassments doing good by the area! Not worth going all the way to Neufchâtel to find a rotten cook, in that case! And all for who? For cowmen! Tramps!”

  The apothecary passed by. He wore a black coat, nankeen breeches, beaverskin shoes and, on this rare occasion, a hat—a hat with a low crown.

  “Your servant!” he said. “Do excuse me, I’m in a hurry.”

  And as the fat widow asked him where he was off to:

  “That seems queer to you, doesn’t it? I who always stay more shut up in my laboratory than the gentleman’s rat in his cheese.”

  “What cheese?” inquired the landlady.

  “Oh, nothing, nothing!” Homais continued. “I wished merely to convey to you, Madame Lefrançois, that I usually remain entirely a recluse at home. Today, however, given the circumstances, I must obviously …”

  “Oh, you’re off over there, are you?” she said with an air of disdain.

  “Yes, I’m off,” retorted the astonished apothecary; “am I not part of the Advisory Committee?”

  Mère Lefrançois studied him for a few minutes, and finished by replying with a smile:

  “So you are, truly! But what have you to do with farming? You know something about it, then?”

  “I most certainly do know about it, as I’m a pharmacist, that’s to say a chemist! And chemistry, Madame Lefrançois, having as its object the knowledge of the mutual and molecular action of the entire body of Nature, it follows that agriculture is included in its domain! And, indeed, the composition of compost, the fermentation of liquids, the analysis of gases and the influence of miasmas, what is all that, I ask you, if it is not chemistry pure and simple?”

  The landlady did not reply. Homais continued:

  “Do you believe it necessary, in order to become an agriculturalist, to have worked the land or fattened poultry oneself? One has sooner to know the constitution of the substances in question, the geological deposits, atmospheric actions, the quality of the ground, the minerals, the water, the density of different bodies and their capillarity, and so forth! And one has to be thoroughly acquainted with all its principles of hygiene, to manage, to reflect upon the construction of buildings, the diet of animals, the feeding of servants! Furthermore, Madame Lefrançois, one has to be a master of botany; be able to discriminate between plants, d’you see—which are the beneficial and which the deleterious, which the unproductive and which the nourishing, whether it is good to dig them up here and sow them again there, to propagate one, and destroy the other; in short, one has to keep abreast of the science through pamphlets and public papers, to be always attentive, in order to point out improvements …”

  The landlady’s eyes never left the door of the Café Français, and the apothecary carried on:

  “Would to God our farmers were chemists, or at least listen more to the counsel of science! I, for one, have recently written a strongly worded tract, a dissertation of more than seventy-two pages, entitled: On Cider, its Manufacture and Effects; Followed by Several New Thoughts On this Subject, which I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen; this even procured me the honor of being received among its members, agricultural section, pomology class; well, if my work had been published …”

  But the apothecary stopped, so preoccupied did Madame Lefrançois appear.

  “Just look at them!” she said, “It’s beyond belief! A cook shop like that!”

  And, with a shrugging of the shoulders that stretched the stitches of her knitted bodice over her breasts, she thrust both hands toward her rival’s tap house, from which songs were then emerging.

  “Anyway, it’s not there for long,” sh
e added; “within eight days, it’ll all be up.”

  Homais stepped back in astonishment. She came down her three steps, and, speaking into his ear:

  “What? You didn’t know? It’s going to be seized this week. It’s Lheureux making him sell up. He’s plagued him with bills.”

  “What an appalling catastrophe!” cried the apothecary, who could always come up with the appropriate expression for every imaginable circumstance.

  Then the landlady began to tell him this story, that she had got from Théodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, and, although she cursed Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was a wheedler, a groveler.

  “Ah, look,” she said, “there he is under the market house; he’s bowing to Madame Bovary, in a green hat. She’s even on the arm of Monsieur Boulanger.”

  “Madame Bovary!” said Homais. “I must hurry over and offer my respects. She might be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure, under the colonnade.”

  And, without listening to Mère Lefrançois, who was calling him back to tell him at greater length, the pharmacist hurried away, bouncing on his toes, a smile on his lips, distributing a host of greetings to right and left and taking up lots of space with the great skirts of his black coat, that fluttered behind him in the wind.

  Rodolphe, having spotted him from afar, had set off at a quick pace; but Madame Bovary grew out of breath; so he slowed down and said to her smilingly, in a brutal tone:

  “It’s to avoid that fat fellow: you know, the apothecary.”

  She jabbed him with her elbow.

  “What was all that about?” he asked himself.

  And he considered her out of the corner of his eye, as he carried on walking.

  Her profile was so calm, that nothing could be conjectured from it. It came fully into the light, within the oval of her close bonnet with its pale ribbons like the leaves of reeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes gazed in front of her, and, although opened wide, they seemed as though kept in check by the cheeks, for the blood throbbed gently under her fine skin. A rosy tint passed through the thin partition between her nostrils. She tipped her head to one side, and the pearly edge of her white teeth could be glimpsed between her lips.

  “Is she making fun of me?” he wondered.

  This gesture of Emma’s had been only a warning, however; for Monsieur Lheureux was alongside them, and from time to time he would talk, as if to enter into conversation.

  “What a splendid day! Everyone is out! The winds are easterly.”

  And Madame Bovary, like Rodolphe, would scarcely respond to him, while at the slightest movement on their part, he drew closer saying, “I beg your pardon?” and brought his hand to his hat.

  When they were in front of the farrier’s house, instead of following the road up to the gate, Rodolphe abruptly dived down a path, hurrying Madame Bovary away; he cried:

  “Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! Until the next time!”

  “What a way to get rid of him!” she said, laughing.

  “Why,” he resumed, “let oneself be intruded on by others? And seeing as, today, I’m lucky enough to be with you …”

  Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the beautiful weather and of the pleasure of walking on grass. A few daisies were springing up again.

  “Look at these pretty Easter daisies,” he said, “plenty to keep the local love-maidens well supplied with oracles.”

  He added:

  “Supposing I were to pick one. What do you think?”

  “Are you in love?” she asked, coughing a little.

  “Ah ha, who knows?” replied Rodolphe.

  The field began to fill up, and the housewives would knock against you with their big umbrellas, their baskets and their babies. Many a time you had to step out of the way of a long line of countrywomen, maidservants in blue stockings, with flat shoes and silver rings, smelling of milk when you passed near them. They walked holding hands, and so were spread out along the entire length of the field, from the line of aspens to the banquet tent. But the moment had come for the judging, and the farmers, one after the other, entered a sort of racecourse formed by a long cord strung between posts.

  The animals were there, muzzles turned toward the twine, and confusedly lining up their uneven rumps. Drowsy pigs buried their snouts in the soil; calves bellowed; sheep bleated; the cows, one leg bent inward, spread their bellies on the turf, and, chewing slowly, blinked their heavy lids, under the gnats that hummed around them. The carters, arms bared, held on to the halters of rearing stallions, which whinnied with nostrils flared beside the mares. These last remained peaceful, stretching out heads and draped manes, while their foals rested in their shade or came to suckle now and again; and, over the long undulation of all these packed bodies, you could see, like a billow lifted in the wind, a white mane, or else sharp horns jutting, and the heads of running men. Set apart, outside the enclosures, a hundred paces off, was a great black muzzled bull, which sported an iron ring in one nostril and stirred no more than might a beast of bronze. A child in rags held it by a rope.

  Meanwhile, between the two rows, gentlemen moved forward heavy-paced, examining each animal, then consulting with each other in a low voice. One of them, who appeared more eminent, was taking a few notes in a book as he walked along. It was the president of the jury: Monsieur Derozerays of La Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe, he rushed up, and said, smiling in a friendly manner:

  “What, Monsieur Boulanger, you’re abandoning us?”

  Rodolphe protested that he was on his way. But when the president had disappeared:

  “My word, no,” he went on, “I won’t go; your company is better than his.”

  And, continuing to pour scorn on the agricultural show, Rodolphe, in order to circulate with more ease, showed the gendarme his blue ticket, and even stopped occasionally before some handsome subject that barely drew Madame Bovary’s attention. He noticed this, and so began to joke about the ladies of Yonville, with regard to their dress; then he excused himself for neglecting his own: it was an incongruous mix of the ordinary and the refined, in which, as a rule, the common herd thinks it can glimpse signs of an eccentric existence, dissolute feelings, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, which it finds either seductive or exasperating. Thus his cambric shirt with its pleated sleeves swelled at every random gust blowing through his open gray-drill waistcoat, while his broad-striped trousers revealed at the ankles nankeen half-boots, with their uppers of patent leather. So highly polished were they that they reflected the grass. He trampled the horse droppings with them, hand in his jacket pocket and straw hat tipped to one side.

  “Besides,” he added, “when you live in the countryside …”

  “Everything’s a waste of effort,” said Emma.

  “That’s true,” replied Rodolphe. “To imagine that not one of these good folk is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat.”

  Then they spoke of provincial mediocrity, of the lives it stifled, of the illusions lost therein.

  “I too,” said Rodolphe, “am plunging into a dreariness …”

  “You!” she said, astonished. “But I thought you very light-hearted?”

  “Ah, yes, on the surface, because in the midst of people I know to place a jesting mask over my face; and yet at times, when I see a cemetery, by moonlight, I have asked myself if I would not do better to join those who are sleeping …”

  “Oh! And your friends?” she said. “You do not think of them.”

  “My friends? Which ones, then? Have I any? Who cares for me?”

  And he accompanied these last words with a sort of hiss between his lips.

  But they were obliged to swerve away from each other, on account of a great scaffolding of chairs that a man behind them was carrying. So overloaded was he, that you could only see the tips of his wooden clogs, with the end of each arm thrust out straight. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carting the church cha
irs through the multitude. Full of imagination when it came to anything concerning his own interests, he had discovered this means of turning the agricultural show to account; and his idea succeeded, because he could no longer satisfy everyone’s needs. Indeed, the villagers, who were hot, contended with one another for these chairs whose straw seats smelled of incense, and would lean on the heavy backs sullied by candlewax, with a certain veneration.

  Madame Bovary took Rodolphe’s arm again; he continued as if talking to himself:

  “Yes, I lack so many things. Always alone. Ah! If I had had a purpose in life, if I had met with love, if I had found someone … Oh, I should have used all my strength to the last drop, I should have overcome everything, smashed everything!”

  “It yet seems to me,” said Emma, “that you have little to complain about.”

  “Ah you think so?” said Rodolphe.

  “Because in the end …” she went on, “you are free.”

  She hesitated:

  “Wealthy.”

  “Do not mock me,” he replied.

  And she swore that she was not mocking him, when the boom of a cannon resounded; immediately everyone pushed forward, pell-mell, toward the village.

  It was a false alarm. Monsieur le Préfet did not arrive; and the members of the jury were most embarrassed, not knowing whether to begin the session or else wait longer.

  At last, at the far end of the Square, there appeared a large hired landau, pulled by two lean horses, whipped with all his might by a white-hatted coachman. Binet only had time to shout: “to arms!” and the colonel to echo him. The men ran toward the pile of muskets. They dashed forward. Several even forgot their collar. But the prefectorial carriage seemed to sense this confusion, and the two paired nags, ambling in their lead chains, arrived at a gentle trot in front of the town-hall arches, at the very moment when the national guard and the firemen were deploying themselves, drum beating to determine the step.