Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  “Come along, Emma,” he said, “it’s time.”

  “Yes, I am coming,” she answered.

  However, as the candles dazzled him, he would turn around to face the wall and nod off. She would make her escape with held breath, smilingly, quiveringly, in dishabille.

  Rodolphe had a large coat; he wrapped her up in it completely, and, putting his arm around her waist, he hurried her away without a word down to the end of the garden.

  It was under the arbor, on that same seat of rotten sticks where in times past Léon would gaze upon her so lovingly, through the summer evenings. She scarcely thought of him now.

  The stars glittered through the leafless jasmine branches. They heard the river slipping past behind them, and, from time to time, on the bank, the clapping of dry reeds. Here and there, massed shadows swelled up in the darkness, and sometimes, all shuddering with the same motion, they towered and leaned over like huge black waves advancing to conceal them. The night’s cold made them clasp each other the more; the sighs from their lips seemed louder to them; their eyes, though they could barely make them out, appeared to them larger, and, in the midst of the silence, there were words spoken very low that fell on their soul with a crystalline resonance and reverberated there in repeated vibrations.

  When the night was wet, they would go and take shelter in the consulting room, between the cart shed and the stable. She lit one of the kitchen candles, hidden by her behind the books. Rodolphe would make himself at home in there. The sight of the bookcase and the desk, in short of the whole room, fired his high spirits; and he could not stop himself cracking numerous jokes about Charles that troubled Emma. She longed to see him more serious, and even more dramatic on occasion, like that time she thought she could hear the sound of approaching footsteps on the garden path.

  “Someone’s coming!” she said.

  He blew the light out.

  “Do you have your pistols?”

  “Why?”

  “Well … to defend yourself,” answered Emma.

  “Is it your husband? Ah, the poor fellow!”

  And Rodolphe completed his sentence with a gesture that signified: “I’ll crush him with a flick of the nail.”

  She was amazed at his courage, although she sensed a kind of indelicacy and natural boorishness which shocked her deeply.

  Rodolphe pondered on this pistols business a great deal. If she had spoken seriously, then that was truly ridiculous, he thought, even obnoxious, as he for one had no reason to detest this good Charles, not being consumed, as they say, by jealousy; and, while on the subject, Emma had sworn him a solemn oath that he likewise did not consider to be in the best taste.

  Moreover, she was becoming frightfully sentimental. Miniatures had had to be exchanged, handfuls of hair cut off and now she was asking for a ring, a real wedding ring, as a token of eternal union. She would often speak to him of evening bells or the voices of nature; then chat about her mother and his mother respectively. Rodolphe had lost his twenty years ago. Nevertheless, Emma consoled him with the kind of insipid language you would use on an abandoned little boy, and even said to him sometimes, while gazing at the moon:

  “I’m quite certain that together, in Heaven, they approve of our love.”

  But she was so pretty! He had possessed so few with such candor! This undebauched love was a new thing for him, and, prising him from his easy ways, it pampered both his pride and his sensuality. Emma’s rapturous elation, which his bourgeois common sense disdained, seemed charming to him in his heart of hearts, since it was directed at himself. So, confident of being loved, he did not bother himself unduly, and his attentions imperceptibly changed.

  He no longer had, as in times past, those so very sweet words that would make her weep, nor any of those fervent caresses that would drive her wild; so much so that their great love, in which her life was plunged, appeared to diminish beneath her, like the water of a river soaking away into its bed; and she perceived the oozing mud. She did not want to believe it; she was doubly loving; and less and less did Rodolphe conceal his indifference.

  She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or desired, on the contrary, to cherish him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak became a rancor soothed by voluptuousness. It was not affection, it was a sort of permanent seduction. He subdued her. She was almost frightened.

  On the surface, however, things were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having successfully steered the adultery according to his own caprice; and, at the end of six months, when spring came, they found themselves, in relation to one another, like a newly married couple keeping the domestic flame alight.

  It was the time of year when Père Rouault would send his turkey, in memory of his mended leg. The gift always came with a letter. Emma cut the string securing it to the basket, and read the following lines:

  My dear children,

  I hope that the present letter finds you in good health and that this one is as good as the others; as it seems to me a little softer to the touch, if I may be so bold, and heavier. But the next time, for a change, I’ll give you a rooster, unless you prefer ganny cocks; and send me back the basket, if you please, with the two ones previous. I’ve had a misfortune with the cart shed, whose covering flew off into the trees when the wind was blowing hard one night. The harvest has not been too famous, neither. In a word, I do not know when I shall be coming to see you. It’s so hard for me to leave the house now, since I’ve been on my own, my poor Emma!

  And here there was an interval between the lines, as if the good fellow had let his pen fall in order to dream for a while.

  As for me, I’m well, save for a cold caught the other day at the Yvetot fair, where I went off to hire a shepherd, having thrown mine out, as a result of his ticklish belly. How we are to be pitied with all those robbers! Besides he was also dishonest.

  I learned from a peddler, who had a tooth pulled when traveling through your country this winter, that Bovary still works hard. That don’t surprise me, and he showed me his tooth; we partook of a coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, he said no, but he had seen two animals in the stable, from which I conclude that the business bowls along. So much the better, my dear children, and may the good Lord send you all imaginable happiness.

  It grieves me that I don’t yet know my beloved granddaughter Berthe Bovary. I have planted a wild plum tree for her, in the garden, under your window, and I don’t want anyone touching it, unless it be to make her fruit stews later on, that I shall keep in the cupboard for her, when she comes.

  Farewell, my dear children. With love and kisses, my daughter; you too, my son-in-law, and for the little one, on both cheeks.

  I am, with my sincere regards,

  Your loving father,

  THÉODORE ROUAULT

  She stayed several minutes holding that coarse sheet of paper between her fingers. The misspellings twined themselves about each other, and Emma pursued the gentle thought that cackled all the way through like a hen half-concealed in a thorny hedge. The writing had been dried with ashes from the fireplace, for a touch of gray powder slid from the letter onto her dress, and she believed she could almost see her father stooping to the hearth to take up the tongs. What a long time since she had last been there beside him, on the stool, by the great fireplace, burning the end of a stick in the fierce blaze of the sparkling sea rushes!… She recalled the summer evenings chock full of sunlight. The foals would whinny when you passed, and gallop about, gallop about … Under her window was a beehive, and sometimes the bees, whirling in the light, would tap on the panes like bouncing balls of gold. What happiness in those days! What freedom! What hope! What abundance of illusions! There were none left now. At every venture of her soul she had spent them, through every successive state, in maidenhood, in marriage and in love—shedding them thus continually throughout her life, like a traveler who leaves something of his wealth at each of the inns along the way.

  But who then was making her so unhap
py? Wherein lay the uncommon disaster that had thrown her into turmoil? And she lifted her head, looking all about her, as if seeking out her suffering’s cause.

  An April sunbeam played its colors over the porcelain figures on the shelves; the fire blazed; she felt the rug’s softness under her slippers; the daylight was pale, the air tepid, and she heard her child bursting into laughter.

  In fact, the little girl was rolling on the lawn at that point, amid the grass that was being turned. She lay flat on her stomach, on the top of a mown heap. Her nursemaid was restraining her by her petticoat. Lestiboudois was raking nearby, and, each time he approached, she would lean down and beat the air with her arms.

  “Bring her to me!” said her mother as she rushed up to kiss her. “How I love you, my poor child! How I love you!”

  Then, noticing that the tips of her ears were a little dirty, she rang speedily for some hot water, and cleaned her, changed her linen, stockings, shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as though back from a journey, and at last, kissing her again and crying a little, she restored her to the hands of the maid, who was left decidedly amazed before this surfeit of tender love.

  Rodolphe, that evening, found her more serious than usual.

  “That will pass,” he judged, “it’s a whim.”

  And he missed three assignations in succession. When he came back, she appeared cold and almost disdainful.

  “Ah! You’re wasting your time, my darling …”

  And he seemed not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she would draw out.

  It was then that Emma repented!

  She even wondered why she detested Charles so, and whether it would not have been better to be able to love him. But he did not offer much of a hold for this recurrence of feeling, with the result that her wavering desire for sacrifice was decidedly stalled, until the apothecary came pat to provide her with an opportunity.

  XI

  He had recently read an article praising a new method of curing clubfoot, and, as he was a devotee of progress, he entertained the patriotic idea that Yonville, so as to put itself on a par, should have strephopodic operations.

  “For,” he said to Emma, “what do we risk? Consider …” (and he enumerated, on his fingers, the benefits of the endeavor): “success all but certain, relief and improved looks for the invalid, celebrity speedily attained for the operating surgeon. Why should your husband, for example, not wish to unburden this poor Hippolyte, of the Lion d’Or? Observe that he would not fail to recount the story of his cure to every traveler, and then” (Homais lowered his voice and looked about him), “what is to stop me sending a little note about it to the newspaper? Heh? Good Lord! An article circulates … it is talked about … and finally it’s a rolling snowball! And who knows, who knows?”

  Indeed, Bovary might succeed; Emma had no evidence that he was not skilled, and how satisfying for her to have committed him to a step by which his reputation and his fortune would find themselves enhanced. All she was asking for was something to lean on that was more substantial than love.

  Charles, entreated by her and the apothecary, let himself be convinced. He sent to Rouen for Doctor Duval’s volume, and, every evening, taking his head in his hands, he plunged into his reading.

  While he was studying the equinus, the varus and the valgus, that’s to say the strephocatopodia, the strephendopodia and the strephexopodia (or, to put it more plainly, the different deviations of the foot, either downward, inward or outward), with the strephypopodia and the strephanopodia (in other words, twisting under and stretching upward), Monsieur Homais, using all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the inn’s stable lad to have himself operated on.

  “You might just feel, perhaps, a slight pain; it’s a simple puncture like a small bleeding, less than the rooting out of little corns.”

  Hippolyte, pondering, rolled his stupid eyes.

  “Yet,” the pharmacist continued, “it’s no concern of mine. It’s for your own sake. Out of pure humanity! I would like to see you, my friend, unburdened of your dreadful lameness, with this swaying of the lumbar region, which, whatever you say, must be of a considerable disadvantage to you in the exercise of your occupation.”

  Then Homais described how much more lively and brisk he would feel afterward, and even gave him to believe that he would be better off in terms of pleasing the women; and the ostler began to smile dully. Then he assailed him through vanity:

  “Good grief, where’s the man in you? How would it be, then, if you’d had to serve, going off and fighting under the flag? Oh, Hippolyte!”

  And Homais went away, declaring that he could not understand this stubbornness, this blindness in denying himself the benefits of science.

  The poor wretch yielded, because it was a sort of conspiracy. Binet, who never troubled his head over another’s affairs, Madame Lefrançois, Artémise, the neighbors, and right up to the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache, everyone induced him, lectured him, made him feel ashamed; but what really decided him, was that this would cost him nothing. Bovary even took it upon himself to supply the machine for the operation. This act of generosity was Emma’s idea, and Charles agreed to it, saying to himself in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel.

  To the promptings of the apothecary, and with three false starts, he had the joiner, helped by the locksmith, put together a kind of box weighing about eight pounds, and for which there was no stinting on iron, wood, canvas, metal plate, leather, screws and nuts.

  However, in order to know which of Hippolyte’s tendons to cut, they had first of all to establish what type of clubfoot he had.

  He had a foot that along with the leg described an almost straight line, which did not prevent it from being turned inward, so that was an equinus mixed with a dash of varus, or else a light varus strongly marked by equinus. But, on this equinus, as broad indeed as a horse’s hoof, with a roughened skin, dry tendons, big toes, and where the black nails formed a horseshoe’s studs, the strephopode himself, from morn till night, galloped about like a stag. You saw him constantly in the square, hopping all around the carts, throwing his uneven prop out in front. He seemed even more vigorous on that leg than on the other. By dint of seeing service, it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy, and when he was given some weighty task, he would shore himself up on it, favoring that side.

  Now, since it was an equinus, the Achilles tendon would have to be cut, even if it meant getting to work later on the interior tibial muscle to correct the varus; for the doctor did not dare risk two operations in one go, and he was actually trembling already, for fear of stumbling upon any essential area about which he knew nothing.

  Surely neither Ambroise Paré, applying a ligature directly to an artery for the first time since Celsus, after an interval of fifteen hundred years; nor Dupuytren proceeding to open an abscess through a thick layer of encephalitic matter; nor Gensoul, when he carried out the first ablation of the upper maxillary, had such a pounding heart, so trembling a hand, so strained an understanding as Monsieur Bovary when he approached Hippolyte, clutching his tenotome between his fingers. And you could see, on a nearby table, as in a hospital, a heap of lint, waxed threads, a lot of bandages, a pyramid of bandages, all that could be had in the way of bandages from the pharmacy. It was Monsieur Homais who, from first thing that morning, had got all these things ready, as much to dazzle the multitude as to delude himself. Charles punctured the skin; a sharp crack was heard. The tendon was cut, the operation was over. Hippolyte could not get over his astonishment; he bent over Bovary’s hands and covered them with kisses.

  “Come now, calm down,” said the apothecary, “you may show your gratitude to your benefactor later on!”

  And he went down to relate the outcome to five or six onlookers who were standing in the yard, and who imagined that Hippolyte would emerge walking soundly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the mechanical apparatus, went back home, where Emma, all anxiousness, was wa
iting for him at the door. She flew into his arms; they sat down to table; he ate a great deal, and he even desired a cup of coffee with dessert, a debauch he only permitted himself on a Sunday when there was company.

  The evening was delightful, full of prattle, of dreams in common. They talked of their future wealth, changes for the better in their household economy; he saw his esteem expanding, his well-being enlarging, his wife loving him forever; and she was happy to revive herself on a new, more wholesome, finer feeling, to experience at last some tenderness for this poor boy who cherished her so. The thought of Rodolphe crossed her mind for a moment; but her eyes turned back to Charles; she even observed with surprise that his teeth were not ugly.

  They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, despite the best efforts of the cook-maid, burst into their room, holding in his hand a freshly inscribed sheet of paper. It was the announcement he intended for the Rouen Beacon. He had brought it for them to read.

  “You read it,” said Bovary.

  He read:

  “ ‘Despite the prejudices that still cover the face of Europe like a net, enlightenment nevertheless begins to penetrate our country places. So it is that, on Tuesday, our little town of Yonville saw itself the theater of a surgical experiment that is at the same time an act of lofty philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners …’ ”

  “Oh, that’s too much, too much!” said Charles, choking with emotion.

  “But no, not at all! How so? ‘… operated on a victim of clubfoot …’ I didn’t put the scientific term, because, you know, in a newspaper … maybe not everyone would understand; the masses have to …”

  “Indeed,” said Bovary. “Go on.”

  “I’ll resume,” said the pharmacist. “ ‘Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, operated on a victim of clubfoot by the name of Hippolyte Tautain, stable hand for twenty-five years at the Lion d’Or hotel, kept by Madame the widow Lefrançois, on the Place d’Armes. The novelty of the attempt and the interest attendant on the subject had attracted such a throng of the populace, that there was a veritable congestion on the establishment’s threshold. The operation, however, was carried out as if by magic, and scarce four drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though confirming that the obstinate tendon had just yielded at last under the exertions of great skill. The patient, oddly enough (we vouch for it de visu), did not complain of pain. His state, up until time of writing, leaves nothing to be desired. Everything leads us to believe that the convalescence will be short; and who knows whether, at the next village festival, we will not be seeing our valiant Hippolyte stepping out in the bacchanalian dances, amidst a chorus of jocund fellows, and thus proving to all eyes, through his verve and his capering leaps, his complete recovery? Honor therefore to the noble savants! Honor to these untiring spirits who dedicate their night labors to the betterment or rather the relief of their species! Honor! Thrice honor! Should we not now be crying out that the blind shall see, the deaf shall hear and the lame shall walk? But that which zealotry in times of old promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all mankind! We will keep our readers informed of the successive phases of this truly remarkable cure.’ ”