She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux and had said to him:
“I shall need a cloak, a big cloak, lined, with a long cape.”
“You’re going traveling?”
“No! But … no matter, I can rely on you, can’t I? And quickly!”
He bowed.
“I will also need,” she went on, “a chest … not too heavy … suitable.”
“Yes, yes, I understand, roughly ninety-two by fifty centimeters, like what they make them nowadays.”
“With a carpetbag.”
“Decidedly,” mused Lheureux to himself, “there’s a rumpus at the back of this.”
“And here,” said Madame Bovary, drawing her watch from her belt, “take this; pay yourself out of it.”
But the dealer exclaimed that she was mistaken; they knew each other; did he doubt her? What childishness! She insisted however that he take the chain at least, and already Lheureux had put it in his pocket and was going out, when she called him back.
“You will leave everything at your house. As for the cloak”—she seemed to be reflecting—“don’t bring that either; only, give me the workman’s address and let me know when they have it at my disposal.”
It was the next month that they were to elope. She would leave from Yonville as though to run errands in Rouen. Rodolphe would have reserved seats, taken the passports, and even written to Paris, so as to have the mail coach to themselves until Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage and, from there, continue by the Genoa road, without stopping. She would have taken care to send her baggage to Lheureux’s house, to be carried straight to the Hirondelle, in such a way that no one might suspect; and there was never any question of her child, in all of this. Rodolphe avoided mentioning the subject; perhaps she did not give it a thought.
He wanted to have two more weeks ahead of him, to complete a few arrangements; then, at the end of a week, he asked for another two; then he claimed he was ill; after that he made a trip; the month of August went by, and, after all these delays, they determined that it would be set irrevocably for the fourth of September, a Monday.
At last the Saturday, two days before, came around.
Rodolphe came in the evening, earlier than usual.
“Is everything ready?” she asked him.
“Yes.”
Then they made a tour of a flower bed, and went to sit down near the terrace, on the curb of the wall.
“You’re sad,” said Emma.
“No, why?”
And yet he looked at her peculiarly, in a loving fashion.
“Is it because you’re going away?” she pursued, “leaving what you’re fond of, leaving your life? Ah, I understand … But I, I have nothing in the world. You’re everything to me. Likewise I shall be everything to you, I shall be a family to you, a country; I will look after you, I’ll love you.”
“How delightful you are!” he said, clasping her in his arms.
“True?” she said with a voluptuous laugh. “Do you love me? Swear it then!”
“Indeed I love you. Indeed I love you. Why, I adore you, my sweet!”
The moon, quite round and purple-colored, rose up level with the ground, at the far end of the field. She climbed swiftly between the poplars’ branches that hid her here and there, like a black curtain full of holes. Then she appeared, blazing with whiteness, in the empty sky she had illuminated; and so, slowing on her course, she let fall upon the river a great stain, that made an infinity of stars; and this silvery glimmering seemed to writhe there, down to the depths, as if it were a headless snake covered in luminous scales. And it was not unlike some monstrous candelabra too, from whose whole length streamed drops of melting diamonds. The warm night spread out around them; sheets of shadow filled the foliage. From time to time, he half-opened her dressing gown and revealed just the upper part of her breast, which was whiter still than the moon’s wanness. Emma, eyes half-shut, sighed deeply, sucking into her lungs the freshness of the blowing wind. There were no words between them, too lost as they were and overrun by their daydream. The tenderness of the old days crept back into their hearts, abundant and silent like the flowing river, with the same indolence as the scent of the lilacs brought to them, and that cast across their memory shadows more immeasurable and melancholic than those of the still willows, lengthening on the grass. Often some night animal, a hedgehog or a weasel, beginning to hunt, disturbed the leaves, or else they heard at moments a ripe peach falling all by itself from the espalier.
“Ah, beautiful night,” said Rodolphe.
“We’ll have others,” responded Emma.
And, as if talking to herself:
“Yes, it will be good to travel … Yet why is my heart so sad? Is it the fear of the unknown … the reality of ways forsaken … or rather …? No, it’s a surfeit of happiness! How weak I am, don’t you think? Forgive me!”
“There’s still time!” he cried out. “Reflect on it, you’ll rue the day, perhaps.”
“Never!” she returned, vehemently.
And, drawing nearer to him:
“Well, what misfortune might come upon me? There’s no desert, no precipice, no ocean that I would not cross in your company. As long as we’re living together, it will be like an embrace, each day tighter and more perfect. We will have nothing to trouble us, no worries, no hindrances! We shall be alone, entirely together, for eternity … Speak then, answer me.”
He replied at measured intervals: “Yes … Yes!…” She had run her hands through his hair, and she kept repeating in a childish voice, despite the fat tears trickling down:
“Rodolphe! Rodolphe!… Ah, Rodolphe, dear little Rodolphe!”
Midnight struck.
“Midnight!” she said. “Come, it’s tomorrow. Another day!”
He rose to leave; and, as if this movement of his had been the signal for their elopement, Emma, all of a sudden, adopting a cheerful air:
“You have the passports?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve not forgotten anything?”
“No.”
“You are sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“You will be waiting for me at the Hôtel de Provence, isn’t that right? At midday?”
He nodded.
“Until tomorrow, then!” said Emma through a last caress.
And she watched him move off.
He did not turn around. She ran after him, and, stooping at the water’s edge between the brush wood:
“Until tomorrow!” she shouted out.
He was already on the other side of the river and walking quickly over the field.
A few minutes later, Rodolphe stopped; and, when he saw her with her white garment fade away little by little into the shadows like a ghost, he was taken by such a thumping of the heart, that he leaned against a tree to stop himself falling.
“What a fool I am!” he said, cursing tremendously. “No matter, she was a pretty mistress!”
And Emma’s beauty, with all the pleasures of this affair, appeared to him again on the instant. At first he felt moved to pity, then grew indignant against her.
“After all,” he exclaimed, gesticulating, “I cannot leave my own country, or have a child on my hands.”
He said all this in order to harden himself further.
“And, besides, the fuss, the expense … Ah no, no—a thousand times no! That would have been too stupid!”
XIII
As soon as he was back home, Rodolphe sat down brusquely at his desk, under the stag’s head set boastfully on the wall. But, when he had the pen in his hand, he could not find a thing to say, so much so that, leaning on his elbows, he began to ponder. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a long-ago past, as if his sworn resolution had just placed between them, all of a sudden, an immense distance.
In order to recapture something of her, he went searching in the cupboard, next to his bed, for an old biscuit tin from Rheims in which he habitually locked away his mistress’s letters, and from it the
re slipped an odor of damp dust and withered roses. At once he spied a pocket handkerchief, covered in pale droplets. It was her own handkerchief, from when she had a nosebleed one day, on a walk; he remembered nothing more. Near it lay the miniature that Emma had given him, bumping against the corners; her dress struck him as pretentious and her soft-eyed sideways look achieved the most pitiful effect; then, by dint of considering this image and evoking the memory of the model, little by little Emma’s features grew muddled in his recollection, as if the living face and the painted face, rubbing against each other, had been mutually erased. Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, as brief, technical and urgent as business notes. He wanted to look again at the lengthy ones, those of earlier days; to find them at the bottom of the tin, Rodolphe disturbed all the others; and mechanically he began to dig about in this heap of papers and stuff, finding there a jumble of nosegays, a garter, a black mask, pins and locks of hair—hair! Dark hair, fair hair; catching in the hinge of the box, several even broke apart when it was opened.
Thus idling among his keepsakes, he examined the handwriting and the style of the letters, as varied as their spelling. They were fond or joyful, facetious, melancholic; there were some that demanded love and others that demanded money. A single word could bring to mind faces, certain gestures, the ring of a voice; yet sometimes he remembered nothing.
Indeed, these women, hastening all at once through his thoughts, got in each other’s way and grew smaller there, as if the leveling of love rendered them equal. So taking fistfuls of mixed-up letters, he amused himself for several minutes letting them fall in cascades, from his right hand to his left hand. At length, bored, drowsy, Rodolphe carried the tin back to the cupboard, saying to himself:
“What a heap of humbug!…”
Which summed up his opinion: for pleasures, like schoolboys in the school yard, had so trampled on his heart, that nothing green grew there, and what passed across, giddier than children, would not even do as they would, and leave a name engraved on the wall.
“Come,” he said to himself, “let’s begin!”
He wrote:
“Courage, Emma! Courage! I do not wish to bring unhappiness into your life …”
“After all, that’s true,” thought Rodolphe; “I’m working in her interest; I’m being honest.”
“Have you considered your decision in a mature way? Are you aware of the abyss into which I was tempting you, my poor angel? You aren’t, are you? You were carrying on fond and trusting, believing in happiness, in the future … Ah wretches that we are! Fools!”
Rodolphe paused here to think of some good excuse.
“If I were to say to her that my fortune is lost?… Ah no! And besides, that would make no difference. It would simply start up again later. Is it possible to make such women hear reason!”
He thought about it, then added:
“I shall never forget you, believe it truly, and will constantly feel deeply devoted to you; but, one day, sooner or later, this ardor (that being the lot of human affairs) will diminish, without a doubt! Weariness will come upon us, and who knows if I might even have the excruciating pain of being present at your scenes of remorse and of taking part in them myself, because I would have been the cause. The mere idea of the sorrows that will come to you tortures me, Emma! Forget about me! Why did I have to know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? Oh my God! No, no, blame only fate!”
“Now there’s a word that always produces an effect,” he said to himself.
“Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous-hearted women whom we see about, I might have been able, certainly, out of pure selfishness, to risk the experience without danger to you. But this delightful elation, which is both your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falsity of your future position. I too failed to reflect at first, and lay down in the shade of this ideal happiness, as if under the venomous shadow of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences.”
“She might perhaps think that I’m giving her up through stinginess … Ah, no matter. Too bad. It has to be terminated.”
“The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have been, it would have persecuted us. You would have had to endure indiscreet questions, slander, scorn, maybe dishonor. Dishonor to you! Oh!… And I who wished but to seat you upon a throne! I who carry away the thought of you like a talisman! For I am punishing myself with exile for all the evil I have done to you. I am leaving. Where? I have no idea, I am mad! Adieu! Be always good! Treasure the memory of the wretch who lost you. Teach your child my name, that she might repeat it in her prayers.”
The two candlewicks shivered. Rodolphe got up to close the window, and, when he had sat down again:
“That’s everything, it seems to me. Ah, just one more thing, lest she come round to badger me.”
“I will be far away when you read these sad lines; for I wanted to flee as quickly as possible so as to avoid the temptation to see you again. No weakness, mind! I shall come back; and perhaps, later on, we shall chat together very coolly about our old amours. Adieu!”
And there was a final adieu, separated into two words, A Dieu, which he judged to be in excellent taste.
“How shall I sign, now?” he said to himself. “Your entirely devoted?… No. Your friend?… Yes, that’s it.”
“Your friend.”
He read over his letter again. He reckoned it a good one.
“Poor little woman!” he thought with some tenderness. “She will reckon me more insensitive than a rock; it needed a few tears on here; but, for my part, I cannot cry; it’s not my fault.”
Then, having poured himself some water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger in it and let a big drop fall from above, which made a pale blot on the ink; then, seeking to seal the letter, he came across the Amor nel cor seal.
“That will scarcely do in the circumstances … Oh, nonsense! No matter!”
After which, he smoked three pipes and went off to bed.
The next day, when he was up (around two o’clock, having gone to sleep late), Rodolphe had a basketful of apricots picked. He arranged the letter in the bottom, under some vine leaves, and straightaway ordered Girard, his plowman, to carry this with all delicacy to Madame Bovary’s house. He was in the habit of using this means to correspond with her, sending her either fruit or game, depending on the season.
“If she asks you for news of me,” he said, “your reply is that I have gone traveling. You must deliver the basket to her personally, and into her own hands … Be off, and take care!”
Girard put on his new smock, knotted his handkerchief around the apricots, and taking heavy strides in his big iron-studded overshoes, he quietly took the path to Yonville.
Madame Bovary, when he arrived at her house, was arranging a parcel of linen on the kitchen table, with Félicité.
“See here,” said the servant, “what our master has sent you.”
She was seized with fear, and, while hunting for some change in her pocket, she gazed at the peasant with a wild look, whereas he for his part gazed at her with amazement, not conceiving how such a gift could stir someone up so much. At length he left. Félicité stayed. She could bear it no longer, she ran into the parlor as if to convey the apricots there, turned the basket over, tore away the vine leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if a dreadful fire had broken out behind her, Emma fled to her room, utterly appalled.
Charles was there, she noticed him; he spoke to her, she heard nothing, and she continued hurriedly up the stairs, panting, desperate, frenzied, and still holding this horrible sheet of paper, slapping in her fingers like a plate of sheet iron. On the second floor, she stopped in front of the attic door, which was closed.
She needed to compose herself, then; she remembered the letter; she had to finish it, she did not dare to. Besides, where, how? They would see her.
“Ah no,” she thought,
“here I’ll be safe.”
Emma pushed the door open and went in.
A heavy heat beat straight down from the roof slates, squeezing her temples and suffocating her; she dragged herself over to the closed garret window, drawing its bolt, and the dazzling light gushed through in one surge.
Opposite, over the roofs, the open fields stretched away as far as the eye could see. Below, directly beneath her, the village square was empty; the pavement’s flints glittered, the weathercocks were stilled; at the corner of the street, a sort of humming emanated from a lower floor in screaking variations of key. It was Binet turning his lathe.
She had supported herself on the window’s embrasure, and she was reading the letter again with snickers of rage. But the more she fixed her mind on it, the more confused her thoughts became. She saw him again, she heard him, she wrapped him in her arms; and the drumming of her heart, beating at her under the breast like a battering ram’s heavy blows, came faster and faster, at irregular intervals. She cast her eyes all about, wanting the world to collapse. Why not be finished with it? So what was holding her back? She was free. And she stepped forward, looked at the paving stones, and said to herself:
“Go on! Go on!”
The luminous beam that came up directly from below tugged her body’s weight toward the abyss. It seemed to her that the square’s rocking ground was rising up along the walls, and that the floor was tilting at one end, in the way a ship pitches. She held on right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by a great space. The blue of the sky overran her, the air flowed around inside her hollow head, she had but to give in, to allow herself to be taken; and the lathe’s humming did not let up, like a mad voice calling her.
“Wife! Wife!” cried Charles.
She stopped.
“Where are you then? Come along!”
The idea that she had just escaped death made her all but faint in terror; she closed her eyes; then she started at the touch of a hand on her sleeve: it was Félicité.
Madame Bovary (Modern Library) Page 23
