Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  “Monsieur’s waiting for you, Madame; the soup is served.”

  And she had to go down! She had to sit at table!

  She tried to eat. The morsels choked her. So she unfolded her napkin as if to inspect the darning and truly wished to apply her mind to this work, to count the linen threads. Suddenly, the memory of the letter came back to her. Had she then lost it? Where to find it again? But she felt such a weariness of spirit, that she could never dream up a pretext for leaving the table. She had become cowardly; she was frightened of Charles; he knew everything, for certain! Indeed, he uttered these words, extraordinarily enough:

  “We are not, so it appears, about to see Monsieur Rodolphe.”

  “Who told you that?” she said, trembling.

  “Who told me that?” he repeated, a little surprised at her brusque tone; “it was Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Café Français. He has left on a trip, or is about to leave.”

  She gave a sob.

  “Why so amazed? He goes off like that from time to time to amuse himself, and, i’faith, I approve. When you’re wealthy and a bachelor!… Besides, he entertains himself nicely, does our friend! He’s a droll fellow, Monsieur Langlois told me how …”

  He held his tongue out of decency, for the sake of the maid who was coming in.

  The latter put the apricots scattered over the shelf back into the basket; Charles, without noticing his wife’s blush, had them brought to him, took one out and bit into it.

  “Oh, perfect!” he said. “Here, have a taste.”

  And he held out the basket, which she gently pushed away.

  “Have a smell, then: what a fragrance!” he said, waving it under her nose several times.

  “I’m choking!” she cried, leaping to her feet.

  But, by an effort of will, this spasm passed; then:

  “It’s nothing!” she said, “it’s nothing! Nerves! Sit down, eat!”

  For she dreaded them questioning her, nursing her, never leaving her side.

  Charles sat down again obediently, and was spitting out the apricot stones into his hand, depositing them afterward on his plate.

  Suddenly, a blue tilbury went by at full trot on the square. Emma let out a shriek and fell backward to the floor.

  In fact, Rodolphe, after much reflection, had decided to set off for Rouen. Now, as the only road between Huchette to Buchy was the Yonville one, he was forced to pass through the village, and Emma had recognized him by the glimmer of the lanterns that cut the twilight like a lightning flash.

  The pharmacist, in response to the uproar taking place in the house, hurried over. The table, with all the plates, was overturned; sauce, meat, the knives, the salt cellar and the oil cruet were strewn about the room; Charles was calling for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and Félicité, with trembling hands, was unlacing Madame, who was having convulsions all down her body.

  “I’ll run to fetch a drop of aromatic vinegar from my laboratory,” said the apothecary.

  Then, as she opened her eyes again after inhaling from the bottle:

  “I knew it,” he said; “that would wake a corpse.”

  “Talk to us!” said Charles, “talk to us! Come around! It’s me, your Charles who loves you! Don’t you recognize me? Look, here is your little girl: so, kiss her!”

  The child held out her arms toward her mother to hang around her neck. But, turning her head aside, Emma said in a jerky voice:

  “No, no … nobody!”

  She swooned again. She was conveyed up to her bed.

  She remained stretched out, mouth open, eyelids closed, hands laid flat, motionless, and white as a waxen statue. From her eyes two rivulets of tears trickled slowly onto her pillow.

  Charles, on his feet, stayed at the back of the alcove, and the apothecary, close by, observed that thoughtful silence proper to life’s serious occasions.

  “Be comforted,” he said, giving him a nudge with his elbow, “I believe the fit is over.”

  “Yes, she’s resting a little now,” replied Charles, watching her sleep. “Poor woman, poor woman … there she is, relapsed!”

  Then Homais asked how this accident had occurred. Charles replied that it had come upon her all of a sudden, while she was eating apricots.

  “Extraordinary!…” the pharmacist went on. “But it could be the apricots that caused the swoon. Some natures are so sensitive to certain smells. And that would actually make a fine subject for study, as much with regard to pathology as to physiology. Priests recognized its importance, they having always mixed aromatics into their ceremonies. The aim being to stupefy your understanding and encourage a state of ecstasy, something readily obtained anyway among persons of the fairer sex, who are more delicate than the rest. Examples are cited of those who faint at the smell of burnt horn, or soft bread …”

  “Take care not to wake her,” said Bovary in a low voice.

  “And it’s not just humans,” continued the apothecary, “who are exposed to these anomalies, but animals as well. Thus, you cannot be ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by nepeta cataria, commonly called cat mint, on the feline race; and on the other hand, to cite an example whose authenticity I can vouch for, Bridoux (one of my old associates, presently practicing on the rue Malpalu) owns a dog who falls into convulsions as soon as he is offered a snuffbox. He has even tried it out time and again in front of his friends, at his wooden summerhouse in the Bois Guillaume. Can you believe that a simple sternutatory might exert such depredations in a quadruped’s organism? It’s extremely curious, don’t you find?”

  “Yes,” said Charles, who was not listening.

  “That proves to us,” the other went on, smiling with an air of benign self-conceit, “the countless irregularities in the nervous system. As far as Madame is concerned, she has always seemed to me, I confess, the genuinely sensitive type. Therefore I would not recommend to you, my good friend, any of these self-styled remedies which, under the pretext of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No, none of these medicinal trifles! Diet, that’s all! Sedatives, emollients, dulcifiers. Then don’t you think we should perhaps touch the imagination?”

  “How? In what way?” said Bovary.

  “Ah, there’s the question! Such indeed is the question: ‘That is the question!’ ” as I read recently in the newspaper.”

  But Emma, waking up, cried out:

  “And the letter? And the letter?”

  They thought she was delirious; and she did become so after midnight: brain fever declared itself.

  For forty-three days, Charles did not leave her side. He deserted all his patients; he no longer went to bed, he was continually feeling her pulse, applying mustard poultices and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as Neufchâtel to look for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back. He called Monsieur Canivet for a consultation; he sent for Doctor Larivière, his old teacher, from Rouen; he was desperate. What appalled him most of all was Emma’s prostration; for she did not talk, heard nothing and even seemed not to suffer—as if her body and soul had together taken a rest from all their agitation.

  Around the middle of October, she could sit upright in her bed, with her pillows behind her. Charles cried when he saw her eat her first slice of bread and jam. Her strength returned; she got up for a few hours in the afternoon, and, one day when she was feeling better, he tried to take her for an airing on his arm in the garden. The paths’ sand kept disappearing under the dead leaves; she walked step by step, dragging her slippers, and, leaning her shoulder on Charles, she continued to smile.

  They went thus down to the end, near the terrace. Slowly she stood erect again, shielded her eyes, in order to gaze; she gazed a long way, a very long way away; but on the horizon there were only some big grass fires, smoking on the hills.

  “You will tire yourself, my darling,” said Bovary.

  And, gently pushing her under the arbor:

  “Sit down on this bench, now: you’ll be comf
ortable.”

  “Oh no, not there, not there!” she said in a faltering voice.

  She suffered a giddy spell, and from that evening her illness started up again, with, it is true, a more unsettled turn and a more complex character. One moment she was suffering pains in the heart, then in the chest, in the brain, in the limbs; vomiting fits came over her unexpectedly in which Charles thought he could perceive the first symptoms of cancer.

  And the poor fellow, to cap it all, had money worries!

  XIV

  At first, he had no notion of how to repay Monsieur Homais for all the medicines taken from his shop; and, although as a doctor he could have avoided paying, nevertheless he blushed a little at this obligation. Then the household expenses, now that the cook was in charge, were becoming frightful; bills poured into the house; the tradesmen were grumbling; Monsieur Lheureux, above all, was harassing him. In fact, when Emma’s illness was at its peak, the former profiting from the circumstances to inflate his invoice, had quickly brought the cloak, the carpetbag, two chests instead of one, and a deal of other things besides. It was useless Charles stating that he did not need them, the dealer replied arrogantly that all these articles had been ordered and that he would not take them back; moreover, that would be to thwart Madame in her convalescence; Monsieur should think it over; in short, he was resolved to pursue him in the courts rather than abandon his dues and take away the merchandise. In the event, Charles directed them to be sent back to the shop; Félicité forgot; he had other worries; no more thought was given to it; Monsieur Lheureux returned to the charge, and, threatening and complaining by turns, schemed in such a way, that Bovary ended up countersigning a bill payable in six months. But scarce had he signed this bill, than a daring idea struck him: this was to borrow a thousand francs from Monsieur Lheureux. So he asked, with an embarrassed air, if there might not be a way of having them, adding that this would be for a year and at whatever rate desired. Lheureux ran to his shop, returned with the cash and dictated another bill, in which Bovary declared that he must pay to order, on the first of September next, the sum of one thousand and seventy francs; which, with the hundred and eighty already stipulated, came to just twelve hundred and fifty. So, lent at six percent, increased by commission of a quarter, and the goods supplied yielding a full third at least, that would, in twelve months, give a hundred and thirty francs profit; and he was hoping that the business would not stop there, that the bills would not be payable, that they would be renewed, and that his wretched money, thriving at the doctor’s as in a private hospital, would come back to him, one day, considerably plumper, and heavy enough to split the purse.

  Besides, he was succeeding in everything. He was contractor for a cider supplier to the hospital in Neufchâtel; Monsieur Guillaumin promised him shares in the Grumesnil turf pit, and he dreamed of starting up a new stagecoach service between Argueil and Rouen, which would not be long in ruining the Lion d’Or’s old van, and that, traveling faster, costing less and carrying more baggage, would also put Yonville’s trade entirely into his hands.

  Charles asked himself several times how he would manage to pay back such an amount next year; and he sought out, dreamed up short-term measures, such as resorting to his father or selling something. But his father would turn a deaf ear, and he had, for his own part, nothing to sell. Seeing then what financial straits he was in, he swiftly waved so unpleasant a subject of contemplation from his mind. He reproached himself for forgetting Emma; as if, all his thoughts belonging to this woman, not dwelling on her all the time would be to deprive her of something.

  It was a harsh winter. Madame’s convalescence was a long one. When the weather was fine, she was pushed in her chair close to the window, the one looking over the square; for she now had an antipathy for the garden, and the blind on that side remained always drawn. She wanted the horse to be sold; what she liked in the past, now displeased her. All her thoughts seemed limited to the notion of looking after herself. She stayed in her bed making little meals, rang for her maid to inquire about her tisanes or to chat with her. Meanwhile the snow on the roof of the market house cast a still, white reflection into the room; then it was the rain that fell. And Emma awaited daily, with a sort of anxiousness, the unerring return of trifling events, which nevertheless mattered little to her. The most significant was the arrival of the Hirondelle in the evening. Then the inn’s landlady shouted and other voices responded, while Hippolyte’s great lantern, seeking out the trunks on the canopy, was like a star in the darkness. At midday, Charles came home again; afterward he went out; then she had a plate of soup, and, around five o’clock, at the end of the day, the children going home from school, dragging their clogs on the pavement, all rapped the shutter catches with their rulers, one after the other.

  It was just at this time of day that Monsieur Bournisien would come to visit her. He would ask after her health, bring her news and urge her to the faith in a short, wheedling prattle that was not without charm. The mere sight of his cassock comforted her.

  One day when at the very height of her illness she had believed she was dying, she had asked for communion; and, gradually, all the while they were preparing her room for the sacrament, arranging an altar out of the chest of drawers encumbered with syrups and as Félicité was strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt something intense passing over her, that stripped her of her sorrows, of all perception, of all feeling. Her unburdened flesh no longer lay heavy, another life was beginning; it seemed to her that her being, ascending toward God, would vanish utterly in this love like lit incense that disperses into fumes. Her bedsheets were sprayed with holy water; the priest withdrew the white wafer from the ciborium; and it was in a swoon of celestial joy that she put forward her lips to receive the proffered body of the Savior. The curtains in her alcove swelled out softly, around her, like a great bank of clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the chest of drawers appeared to her in dazzling glory. Then she let her head sink back, believing she could hear in the spaces the strains of seraphic harps and perceive in an azure sky, on a throne of gold, in the midst of saints holding verdant palm fronds, God the Father blazing forth in majesty, Who at a sign bid angels with wings of flame descend to earth to bear her away in their arms.

  This sumptuous vision stayed in her memory as the most beautiful thing possible to dream; so much so that now she strove to seize the sensation anew, and it still continued, less exclusively yet with just as profound a sweetness. Her soul, foundered on pride, was at last reposing in Christian humility; and, relishing the pleasure of her enfeebled state, Emma inwardly meditated on the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide opening for grace to invade. So there existed greater delights in place of happiness, another love beyond all loves, with neither pause nor end, and increasing forever and ever! She glimpsed, amidst her hope’s illusions, a state of innocence floating above the earth, mingling with the sky, and where she aspired to be. She wanted to become a saint. She bought rosary beads, she wore amulets; she desired to have, in her room above her bed, a reliquary set with emeralds, to kiss each night.

  The priest was struck with wonder at these tendencies, even though he found Emma’s religion might, by dint of fervor, end up bordering on heresy and even folly. But, not being well versed in these matters the moment they exceeded a certain limit, he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, Monseigneur’s bookseller, to send him something renowned for a person of the fair sex, who was thoroughly intelligent. The bookseller, with the indifference of one dispatching ironmongery to Negroes, packed up higgledy-piggledy everything that was then current in the pious book business. They consisted of little question-and-answer handbooks, haughty-toned pamphlets in the manner of Monsieur de Maistre, and the type of novel with pink boards and an insipidly sweet style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent bluestockings. There was Think Well On It; The Man of the World at Mary’s Feet, by M. de, a Member of Several Distinguished Orders; Errors of Voltaire for the Use of Young People, et
c.

  Madame Bovary’s mind was not yet clear enough to apply herself seriously to just anything; moreover, she undertook her reading too hastily. She became exasperated by the creed’s prescriptions; the arrogance of polemical works displeased her in their obstinate pursuit of people unknown to her; and the profane tales lofty with religion seemed to her written in such an ignorance of the world that they imperceptibly kept her away from the truths whose proof she awaited. Still she persisted, and, when the volume slid from her hands, she thought herself seized by the most refined Catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could possibly conceive.

  As for the memory of Rodolphe, it had sunk to the very bottom of her heart; and it remained there, more solemn and still than a royal mummy in a vault. A single breath would escape from this great, embalmed love and, passing through everything, scent with tenderness the unstained atmosphere in which she desired to live. When she kneeled on her Gothic prayer stool, she offered up to the Lord the same sweet words she would murmur of old to her lover, in the outpourings of adultery. It was intended to summon belief; but no pleasing delight descended from the heavens, and she would stand up, weary of limb, vaguely sensing an immense deception. This seeking, she thought, was all the more to her credit; and in her devotional pride, Emma compared herself to those great ladies of bygone times, of whose glory she had dreamed over a portrait of La Vallière, and who, trailing the lace-trimmed train of their long dresses with such majesty, would withdraw into solitude to shed at Christ’s feet the innumerable tears of a heart wounded by existence.

  She then devoted herself to an excess of charity. She sewed clothes for the poor; she sent firewood to women in confinement; and Charles, coming home one day, found three good-for-nothings sitting at table in the kitchen, drinking soup. She summoned home her little girl, whom her husband, during her illness, had sent back to the wet nurse. She wanted to teach her to read; however much Berthe cried, she was no longer irritated. She had made her mind up to be resigned, to be universally indulgent. Her language, whatever the subject, was full of high-flown expressions. She would say to her child: