Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  “What you have there is fine when you’re at home. You need another one for calls. I saw that straight off when I came in, I did. I keep my eyes peeled.”

  He did not send her the cloth, he brought it around. Then he returned for the measurements; he returned on further pretexts, endeavoring each time to make himself agreeable, serviceable, enfeoffing himself, as Homais would have said, and forever slipping Emma some piece of advice about power of attorney. He did not bring up the bill. She did not consider it; Charles, at the beginning of her convalescence, had certainly told her some story about it; but her mind had been so tossed about since, that she no longer had any recollection. In addition to which, she was careful not to start any discussion about money; Mère Bovary was surprised, and attributed her change of mood to the religious feelings she had contracted when ill.

  But, as soon as she had left, Emma lost no time in amazing Bovary with her practical good sense. They would have to make inquiries, examine the mortgages, see if a coproprietorial sale or settlement had taken place. She cited technical terms, at random, talked big words about order, prospects, foresight, and continually exaggerated the intricacies of the inheritance; so skillfully that one day she showed him the proof of a general authorization “to manage and administer his affairs, carry out all borrowings, sign and endorse all bills, pay all sums, etc.” She had benefited from Lheureux’s lessons.

  Charles asked her, naively, where this paper came from.

  “From Monsieur Guillaumin.”

  And, with the utmost cool, she added:

  “I don’t trust him too much. Solicitors have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we need to take advice … We know only … Oh, nobody!”

  “Unless Léon …” replied Charles, ruminating.

  But it was hard to make arrangements by correspondence. So she offered to make the trip herself. He declined the offer. She insisted. It was a fencing match of considerateness. Finally, she cried out in an artificially mutinous tone:

  “No, I beg you, I am going.”

  “How good you are!” he said, kissing her forehead.

  The very next day, she embarked on the Hirondelle to go to Rouen and seek the opinion of Monsieur Léon; and she stayed there three days.

  III

  They were three full, exquisite, sumptuous days, a true honeymoon.

  They were at the Hôtel de Boulogne, on the quay. And they lived there, shutters shut, doors closed, with flowers on the floor and iced syrups, that they were brought first thing in the morning.

  Toward evening, they would take a covered boat and go off to dine on an island.

  It was the time of day when you hear, along the dockside, the echoing of the calkers’ mallets against the ships’ hulls. The smoke from the tar crept away though the trees, and large greasy drops were to be seen on the river, rippling unevenly under the sun’s purple coloring, like floating plaques of Florentine bronze.

  They sailed down between moored barks, whose long oblique cables just grazed the boat’s keel.

  The noises of the city imperceptibly withdrew, the rolling of carts, the din of voices, the yelping of dogs on the ships’ decks. She untied her hat and they landed at their island.

  They took a seat in the low-ceilinged room of an alehouse, which had black nets draped at its door. They ate fried sprats, cream and cherries. They lay down on the grass; they embraced one another in a secluded spot under the poplars; and, like two castaways, they wished to live forever in this little place, which seemed to them, in their bliss, the most magnificent on earth. It was not the first time they had observed trees, blue sky, turf, that they had heard water gliding and a breeze whispering in the leaves; but they had doubtless never wondered at it all, as if Nature had not existed until now, or had only begun to be lovely since the glutting of their desires.

  At nightfall, they would set off again. The bark followed the edge of the islands. They lay at one end, both of them concealed in the shadows, without speaking. The square oars rang between the iron tholes, and this marked the silence like the beating of a metronome, while from the stern the hawser would not leave off its soft little plashing as it trailed through the water.

  Once, the moon appeared; then they made sure to use flowery phrases, finding the celestial body melancholy and full of poetry; she even began to sing:

  One evening, do you remember? We sailed, etc.

  Her thin and melodious voice lost itself on the waters; and the wind bore away the roulades that he heard passing around him like the fluttering of wings.

  She sat opposite, leaning against the longboat’s partition, the moon stealing in by one of its open shutters. Her black dress, whose draperies spread out in a fan shape, made her thinner, taller. She was looking up, her hands clasped and her gaze skyward. Sometimes the shadows of the willows would wholly hide her, then she would reappear all of a sudden, like a vision, in the moonlight.

  Léon, on the deck next to her, found a flame-colored silk ribbon beneath his hand.

  The boatman examined it and said finally:

  “Ah, it’s maybe from that party I took out the other day. A load of jolly jokers they were, gents and ladies, with cakes, champagne, cornets, the whole shakes! There was one especially, a tall handsome fellow, thin mustache, good fun he was! And they said like so: ‘Come on, tell us a good story … Adolphe … Dodolphe … I think.’ ”

  She shuddered.

  “You’re not well?” said Léon, drawing nearer to her.

  “Oh, it’s nothing. The coolness of the night, no doubt.”

  “And who can’t be lacking for women, neither,” the old sailor softly added, thinking he was being polite to the stranger.

  Then, spitting on his hands, he took up the oars once more.

  And yet they had to part! The farewell was painful. He must send his letters to Mère Rolet’s house; and she gave him such precise advice concerning the double envelope, that he greatly admired her lover’s guile.

  “In this way, you’ll assure me that all’s well?”

  “Yes, of course!” But then why, he reflected afterward as he returned alone through the streets, did she care so much about this power of attorney?

  IV

  Before long, Léon adopted a superior air in front of his friends, abstained from their company, and totally neglected his case papers.

  He awaited her letters; he reread them. He wrote to her. He called her to mind with all the force of his memories and his desire. Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again increased, so much so that one Saturday morning he slipped away from the practice.

  When, from the hill’s height, he descried down in the valley the church tower with its tin flag turning in the wind, he felt that same delight mingled with triumphant vanity and selfish emotion that millionaires must have, when they come back to visit their village.

  He went to prowl about her house. A light shone in the kitchen. He looked out for her shadow behind the curtains. Nothing appeared.

  On seeing him, Mère Lefrançois made a great fuss, and she found him “taller and thinner,” whereas Artémise, on the contrary, found him “broader and darker.”

  He dined in the parlor, as before, but alone, without the tax-gatherer; for Binet, weary of waiting for the Hirondelle, had definitively brought forward his meal by an hour, and now he dined at precisely five o’clock, still claiming more often than not that the old gimcrack was late.

  Léon nevertheless made up his mind; he went to knock on the doctor’s door. Madame was in her room, from which she only came down a quarter of an hour later. Monsieur seemed delighted to see him again; but he stayed put the whole evening, and the entire day following.

  He saw her alone, very late at night, behind the garden, in the lane—in the lane, as with the other! It was stormy, and they chatted under an umbrella in the glimmer of lightning.

  Their leave-taking became unbearable.

  “It is better to die!” said Emma.

  She writhed on his arm, cryin
g all the while.

  “Farewell …! Farewell …! When will I see you again?”

  They retraced their steps to kiss once more; and it was then that she made him promise to find, by whatever means and soon, a permanent opportunity to see each other freely, at least once a week. Emma did not doubt it. She was, moreover, full of hope. Money would be coming to her.

  Then, she bought for her room a pair of broad-striped, yellow curtains, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had extolled to her; she longed for a carpet, and Lheureux, asserting “that it was not asking the impossible,” politely pledged to supply her one. She could no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she would send for him, and straightaway he would set out his bargains there, without so much as a murmur. One no more understood why Mère Rolet dined at Emma’s every day, and even called upon her privately.

  It was at about this period, that is to say near the beginning of winter, when she appeared to be gripped by a great fervor for music.

  One evening when Charles was listening to her, she started the same piece again four times running, and each time getting into a fret, while, not noticing any difference, he would cry out:

  “Bravo …! Very good …! You’re mistaken! Carry on now!”

  “No! It’s atrocious. My fingers are rusty.”

  The next day, he begged her to play him something more.

  “Oh very well, just to please you.”

  And Charles admitted that she had got out of practice. She mistook her place on the stave, slurred the notes; then, abruptly stopping:

  “Oh, that’s enough. I need to take lessons; but …”

  She chewed her lip and added:

  “Twenty francs for a private lesson, that’s too dear.”

  “Yes, indeed … a little …” said Charles, with a silly snigger. “Still, it seems to me that we could maybe do it for less; as there are players of no repute who are often better than the famous ones.”

  “Look for them,” said Emma.

  The next day, on his return, he gave her a sly look, and was unable in the end to hold back these words:

  “How stubborn you are at times! I was in Barfeuchères today. Well, Madame Liégeard assured me that her three daughters, who are at the Miséricorde, were having lessons for fifty sous the session, and from a famous teacher besides.”

  She shrugged, and did not open her instrument again.

  But, when she went near it (if Bovary chanced to be there), she would sigh:

  “Ah, my poor piano!”

  And when you visited her, she was sure to let you know that she had abandoned music and could not take it up again, for important reasons. So she was pitied. What a shame, she with such a fine talent! Bovary was even talked to about it. He was made to feel ashamed, and above all by the pharmacist.

  “You are mistaken. Nature’s abilities must never be left to lie fallow. Moreover, consider, my good friend, that in obliging Madame to practice music, you economize later on the musical education of your child. I for one deem that mothers themselves should instruct their children. It’s a notion of Rousseau’s, perhaps still a little new, but which will triumph in the end, I am sure of it, like mothers giving suck and like vaccination.”

  So Charles returned once more to this piano question. Emma replied churlishly that it would be best to sell it. This poor piano, which had given him so much vainglorious satisfaction, to see it go off, would have been for Bovary like watching the indefinable suicide of a part of herself!

  “If you want …” he said, “from time to time, a single lesson, that might not, after all, be exceedingly ruinous.”

  “But lessons,” she retorted, “are only any use when regular.”

  And that is how she set about procuring permission from her husband to go to town, once a week, to see her lover. They even reckoned, after one month, that she had made considerable progress.

  V

  It was Thursday. She rose, and she dressed silently so as not to wake Charles, who would have pointed out that she was getting ready too early. Then she walked up and down; she stood in front of the windows, she gazed down at the village square. The faint light of day would be creeping between the pillars of the marketplace, and the apothecary’s house, whose shutters were closed, showed a glimpse of its sign’s capital letters in the wan colors of dawn.

  When the clock chimed a quarter past seven, she set off for the Lion d’Or, whose door had just been opened by a yawning Artémise. The latter was digging out the embers buried under the ashes. Emma stayed on her own in the kitchen. From time to time, she would go out. Hivert was unhurriedly putting the horses to, and listening moreover to Mère Lefrançois, who, slipping her cotton-bonneted head through a hatch, was burdening him with errands along with explanations that would have muddled any other man. Emma tapped the sole of her boots against the yard’s paving.

  At last, once he had eaten his soup, donned his long woolen cape, lit his pipe and gripped his horse whip, he settled himself calmly on his seat.

  The Hirondelle set off at a gentle trot, and, for the first couple of miles, would stop here and there to take on passengers, who would stand on the side of the road by their gates, looking out for it. Those who had let the driver know the day before had him wait; several were still actually abed in their houses; Hivert would call, shout, fling curses, then climb down from his seat, to go and thump on the doors. The wind blew through the cracked casement windows.

  Nevertheless the four benches filled, the carriage rolled on, the rows of apple trees followed one upon another; and the road, between its two long ditches brimming with yellow water, went on ever narrowing toward the horizon.

  Emma knew it from one end to the other; she knew that after a meadow there would be a post, then an elm, a barn or a road laborer’s hut; sometimes, to surprise herself, she even closed her eyes. But she would never lose the clear sense of the distance left to run.

  At last, the brick houses drew near, the ground rang under the wheels, the Hirondelle glided between gardens in which, through an opening in the wall, statues, an ornamental hillock, pruned yews and a swing seat were discernible. Then, at a single glance, the town would appear.

  Descending just like an amphitheater and drowned in the fog, it spread confusedly beyond the bridges. The open countryside then rose in a monotonous rise and fall, until it touched in the distance the sky’s pale wavering base. Thus viewed from on high, the entire landscape had the motionless look of a painting; the ships at anchor were bunched in one corner; the river rounded off its curve at the foot of the green hills, and the islands, oblong shaped, looked like great black fish stilled on the water. The factory chimneys were sprouting immense brown plumes which blew away at the tips. The roaring of the foundries could be heard against the clear pealing of bells from the churches poking up through the mist. The boulevards’ trees, leafless, formed a violet brushwood amidst the houses, and the roofs, all glittery with rain, shimmered unevenly, according to the height of the district. Occasionally a gust of wind would bear the clouds away toward Sainte-Catherine hill, like airy billows shattering silently against a cliff.

  Something emanated from these packed lives that made her giddy, and her heart would swell with abundance, as if the hundred and twenty thousand souls throbbing there had all sent out to her at once the heady fumes of passion that she imagined they felt. Her love would expand with the space, and fill with tumult from the distant hum coming up. She poured it forth again outside, on the squares, on the walks, on the streets, and the old Norman city sprawled before her gaze like an enormous capital, like a Babylon she was entering into. She leaned on two hands out of the window, breathing in the breeze; the three horses galloped, the stones grated in the mud, the stagecoach rocked, and Hivert, from afar, hailed the carts on the road, while the townsfolk who had spent the night in the Bois Guillaume came peacefully down the hill, in their little family carriages.

  They stopped at the gate; Emma unbuckled her overshoes, donned other gloves, rearra
nged her shawl, and, twenty paces further on, she alighted from the Hirondelle.

  The town would be stirring then. Shop boys, in bonnet-grecs, rubbed down the shop fronts, and women on street corners, with baskets on their hips, would now and again give a high cry. She walked with eyes down, brushing the walls, and smiling with pleasure under her lowered black veil.

  For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the shortest route. She would dive into gloomy streets, and arrive bathed in sweat near the lower end of the rue Nationale, by the fountain there. This is the area known for its theater, taverns and girls. Often a wagon would pass close to her, carrying some quivering piece of scenery. Aproned waiters would throw sand on the flagstones, between green shrubs. There was a smell of absinthe, cigars and oysters.

  She turned down a street; she recognized him by his curly hair which poked out from his hat.

  Léon, on the pavement, would continue walking. She followed him to the hotel; he climbed the stairs, he opened the door, he went in … What clasping!

  Then, after the kisses, the words would come in a rush. They told each other of the week’s sorrows, the misgivings, the uneasiness over the letters; but now all was forgotten, and they would gaze at each other face-to-face, with voluptuous giggles and fond names.

  The bed was a large mahogany bed shaped like a skiff. The red silk drapes, falling from the ceiling, were gathered in too low over the broad bolster—and nothing in the world was as lovely as her dark head and white skin standing out against that crimson color, when, in a gesture of modesty, she would draw her naked arms together, burying her face in her hands.

  The warm apartment, with its discreet carpet, its frolicsome ornaments and calm light, seemed entirely suited to the intimacies of passion. If the sun penetrated, then the curtains’ spearheaded rods, brass tie-backs and the great balls of the firedogs would glitter all of a sudden. On the chimneypiece, between the candelabra, there were two of those big pink conch shells in which the sound of the sea can be heard when you put them to your ear.