Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  “Yes,” he replied. “But she demands to see the invoice.”

  The next day, at first light, Emma ran to Monsieur Lheureux’s house and begged him to write another bill, which would not exceed a thousand francs; for if she were to show the one for four thousand, she would have to say that she had paid two-thirds, consequently admitting to the sale of the property, a transaction the dealer had carried out skillfully, and which would only be known about later.

  Despite the very low price of each article, Mère Bovary could not help finding the expense extravagant.

  “Could you not have done without a carpet? Why renew the covers on the armchairs? In my day, there was just one armchair, for the old folk—at least, that’s how it was at my mother’s, who was a respectable lady, I can assure you. It’s not given to everyone to be rich. No fortune can hold out against waste. I’d blush to coddle myself as you do! And yet look at me, I’m old, I need care and attention. Here we go, here we go: trickings out, showings off! What’s this? Silk for lining, at two francs … when you can find jaconet at ten sous and even at eight sous, which would do the business perfectly!”

  Emma, lolling on the small sofa, replied as calmly as she could:

  “Ah, Madame, enough, enough.”

  The other went on lecturing her, predicting that they would finish in the almshouse. Moreover, it was Bovary’s fault. Fortunate it was that he had promised to destroy that power of attorney …

  “What?”

  “Oh, he swore to me he would,” continued the good lady.

  Emma opened the window, called Charles, and the poor fellow had to acknowledge the promise wrenched from him by his mother.

  Emma disappeared, then was swiftly back, majestically tendering her a large sheet of paper.

  “Thank you,” said the old lady.

  And she threw the power of attorney on the fire.

  Emma began to laugh a harsh laugh, loud, going on and on: she was having hysterics.

  “Oh, dear God!” cried Charles. “Well, you’re in the wrong, too. It’s you who’s just worked her up!”

  His mother, giving a shrug, maintained that it was all affectation.

  But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took his wife’s side, so much so that Mère Bovary wanted to be off. She left first thing the following day, and on the threshold, as he was trying to keep her back, she replied:

  “No, no! You love her more than me, and you are right, it’s only natural. For the rest, too bad. You’ll see …! Your very good health!… because I’m not prepared to come here and work her up, as you put it.”

  Charles did not remain a jot less sheepish when it came to Emma, the latter making no effort to conceal the rancor that she reserved for him as a result of his mistrust; a lot of pleading was required before she agreed to resume her power of attorney, and he even accompanied her to Monsieur Guillaumin’s to have another drawn up, exactly the same.

  “I quite understand,” said the notary; “a man of science cannot go troubling his head over life’s practical details.”

  And Charles felt comforted by this wheedling consideration, which gave to his feebleness the flattering guise of a superior preoccupation.

  What debauchery, the Thursday following, at the hotel, in their room, with Léon! She laughed, cried, sang, danced, had sorbets brought up, desired to smoke cigarettes, seemed to him wild, but adorable, magnificent.

  He did not know what reaction of her entire being was urging her on to rush at life’s enjoyments. She became irritable, greedy, and voluptuous; and she walked with him through the streets, head held high, without fear, she said, of compromising herself. Sometimes, however, Emma trembled at the sudden idea of meeting Rodolphe; for it seemed to her, even though they had parted forever, that she was not entirely freed from her dependency.

  One evening, she did not return to Yonville. Charles was out of his wits, and the little Berthe, not wanting to go to bed without her mama, sobbed fit to burst. Justin had set off aimlessly down the road. Monsieur Homais had left the pharmacy.

  Finally, at eleven o’clock, unable to bear it any longer, Charles hitched his gig, leapt in, lashed his beast and arrived at about two o’clock at the Croix Rouge. Nobody. He thought that maybe the clerk had seen her; but where did he live? Happily, Charles remembered his master’s address. He ran there.

  Daylight was beginning to appear. He could make out escutcheons over a door; he knocked. Without opening up, someone shouted out the information required, while embellishing it with violent abuse against those who disturbed people during the night.

  The house where the clerk lived had neither bell, nor knocker, nor porter. Charles thumped his fists against the shutters. A police officer happened to be passing; so he took fright and slipped away.

  “I’m mad,” he said to himself; “doubtless, they’ve kept her back to dine at Monsieur Lormeaux’s house.”

  The Lormeaux family no longer lived in Rouen.

  “She’ll have stayed to nurse Madame Dubreuil. Ah, Madame Dubreuil died ten months ago …! So where can she be?”

  An idea occurred to him. He asked in a café for the town directory; and hurriedly looked up the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived at number 74, rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.

  As he came into this street, Emma herself appeared at the other end; he threw himself upon her rather than kissing her, crying out:

  “What kept you yesterday?”

  “I have been ill.”

  “And what with …? Where …? How …?”

  She swept a hand across her forehead, and replied:

  “At Mademoiselle Lempereur’s.”

  “I was certain of it! I’ll go there.”

  “Oh, it’s not worth it,” said Emma. “She’s just this minute gone out; but, in future, be more calm; I am not free, you understand, if I know that the slightest delay upsets you so.”

  She was giving herself a sort of permission not to cramp herself in her escapades. And amply did she take advantage of it, just as she liked. When the desire took her to see Léon, she left under any pretext, and, as he was not expecting her that particular day, she would go looking for him at his practice.

  This was a great joy the first few times; but soon he revealed the truth, namely: that his master was grumbling vociferously about these disturbances.

  “Nonsense! Now come,” she said.

  And he sneaked out.

  She wanted him to dress all in black and leave a pointy beard on his chin, so as to resemble the portraits of Louis XIII. She desired to be acquainted with his lodgings, found them ordinary; he blushed, she took no notice, then advised him to buy curtains like her own, and as he objected to the expense:

  “Well, well! You hold tight to your little coin,” she said, laughing.

  Each time, Léon had to recount to her everything he had done, since the last meeting. She wanted verses, verses to her, a love poem in her honor; he could never manage to find a rhyme for the second line, and he ended up copying a sonnet out of a keepsake book.

  This was less through vanity than from the sole aim of pleasing her. He did not argue with her ideas; he accepted all her inclinations; he became her mistress rather than she being his. Her tender words together with her kisses would sweep his soul away. Where then had she learned that corruption, almost ethereal by dint of being deep and concealed?

  VI

  On the trips he made to see her, Léon would often dine at the pharmacist’s, and politeness dictated that he should invite him in turn.

  “Willingly!” Monsieur Homais had replied; “besides, I’m in need of a little reinvigoration, for I’m stultifying here. We’ll go to the theater, to the restaurant, we shall go wild!”

  “Oh, dearest!” murmured Madame Homais tenderly, appalled by the vague dangers he was prepared to run.

  “Well, what of it? You find I am not ruining my health enough as it is, living amongst the pharmacy’s continual emanations? Such, however, is the character of women: they are j
ealous of Science, then object to you taking the most legitimate diversion. Never mind, count on me: one of these days, I’ll come to Rouen and together we’ll spend it like water.”

  The apothecary, in former times, would have refrained from using such an expression; but these days he was fond of a frolicsome, Parisian style that he would find in the best taste; and, like Madame Bovary, his neighbor, he would question the clerk carefully on the capital’s manners, even speaking slang with the aim of dazzling … the bourgeoisie, saying pad, crib, swellish, awful swellish, Breda Street and I’ll be cutting along for: “I’ll be off.”

  So, one Thursday, Emma was surprised to meet, in the kitchen of the Lion d’Or, Monsieur Homais dressed to travel, in other words in an old coat not seen on him before, while in one hand he carried a valise, and, in the other, the foot warmer belonging to his business. He had confided his project to no one, apprehensive of worrying the public with his absence.

  The idea of seeing again the places where he had spent his youth undoubtedly fired him up, for all the journey long he did not cease expatiating; then, he had scarce arrived, when he leapt vigorously out of the carriage to go in search of Léon; and the clerk struggled in vain, Monsieur Homais dragging him off to the large Café de Normandie, where he entered majestically without removing his hat, reckoning it decidedly provincial to bare his head in a public place.

  Emma waited three-quarters of an hour for Léon. At last she ran to his office, and, lost in all kinds of conjecture, accusing him of indifference and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the afternoon with her forehead glued to the windowpane.

  The two men were a further two hours at table facing one another. The large room emptied; the stovepipe, in the shape of a palm tree, rounded off its gilded spray against the white ceiling; and close to them, behind the glass partition, in full sun, a little jet of water splashed in a marble basin where, amongst cress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters stretched themselves out as far as some quails, all piled up on the side.

  Homais was reveling in it. Although the sumptuousness of the place intoxicated him even more than its fine fare, the Pomard wine was nevertheless exciting his faculties, and, when the rum omelette appeared, he set forth some immoral theories about women. What seduced him above all, was style. He adored an elegant dress in a nicely furnished drawing-room, and, as for corporeal qualities, did not abhor the crummy type.

  Léon regarded the clock with despair. The apothecary drank, ate, talked.

  “You must,” he said all of a sudden, “be very cut off in Rouen. Yet your amours do not live far.”

  And, as the other was blushing:

  “Come, be frank! Would you deny that at Yonville …?”

  The young man stammered.

  “At Madame Bovary’s, you are not courting …?”

  “Who then?”

  “The maid!”

  He was not joking; but, vanity outstripping discretion, Léon, despite himself, cried out. Besides, he only liked dark-haired women.

  “I approve of your taste,” said the pharmacist; “they are hotter-blooded.”

  And leaning to his friend’s ear, he outlined the symptoms by which one could recognize that a woman was hot-blooded. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: the German female was vaporish, the French debauched, the Italian passionate.

  “And Negresses?” asked the clerk.

  “An artist’s taste,” said Homais. “Waiter! Two small coffees!”

  “Are we leaving?” resumed the clerk at last, losing patience.

  “Yes.”

  But, before going off, he wanted to see the landlord of the place and offer his congratulations.

  Then the young man, in order to be alone, alleged he had business to deal with.

  “Ah, I shall escort you!” said Homais.

  And, while walking down the streets with him, he spoke of his wife, of his children, of their future and of his pharmacy, recounted how much it was on the decline in the past, and the state of perfection to which he had raised it.

  Arrived in front of the Hôtel de Boulogne, Léon abruptly left him, scaled the stairs, and found his mistress in a great flutter.

  At the pharmacist’s name, she flew into a passion. He had a heap of good reasons, however; it wasn’t his fault, didn’t she know Monsieur Homais? Could she really believe that he preferred his company? But she turned away; he checked her; and, sinking to his knees, he encircled her waist with both his arms, in a languid pose full of lust and supplication.

  She was standing; her large bright-burning eyes gazed on him gravely and in a fashion that was almost dreadful. Then tears dimmed them, her rosy eyelids fell, she surrendered her hands, and Léon was carrying them up to his mouth when a servant appeared, informing Monsieur that he was being asked for below.

  “You’ll come back?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “But when?”

  “Right away.”

  “It’s a dodge,” said the pharmacist on spotting Léon. “I wanted to interrupt what seemed to me to be a bothersome call for you. Let’s go to Bridoux’s place and have a glass of garus.”

  Léon swore that he must return to his office. Then the apothecary joked about waste paper and pleadings.

  “So leave off Cujas and Barthole for a bit, what the devil! Who’s stopping you? Be a brave fellow! Let’s go to Bridoux’s; you’ll see his dog. It’s the strangest thing!”

  And as the clerk was still holding out:

  “I shall go too. I’ll read a paper while waiting for you, or leaf through a law book.”

  Léon, stunned by Emma’s rage, Monsieur Homais’s prattle and perhaps the meal’s heaviness, stood wavering and as if under the spell of the pharmacist who kept repeating:

  “Let’s go to Bridoux’s! It’s just round the corner, rue Malpalu.”

  Then, through cowardice, through folly, through that unnameable feeling which tempts us into the most repugnant acts, he let himself be conducted to the place; and there they found Bridoux in the little courtyard, watching over three waiters puffing away as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer water. Homais gave them advice; he put his arms around Bridoux; they drank garus. Léon wanted to leave twenty times; but the other would hold him back by the arm, telling him:

  “I’m off in a jiffy. We’ll make for the Rouen Beacon, see those fine gentlemen. I’ll present you to Thomassin.”

  Nevertheless the clerk shook him off and ran in one bound to the hotel. Emma was no longer there.

  She had just left, exasperated. She now detested him. This breaking of his word over the assignation seemed to her a gross insult, and she sought yet further reasons to disengage herself from him; he was incapable of heroism, feeble, commonplace, more spineless than a woman, stingy with it and faint of heart.

  Then, calming herself down, she concluded by perceiving that she had doubtless slandered him. But the vilifying of those we still love loosens us from them a little. Idols should not be touched: the gilt comes off on the hands.

  They were reduced to speaking more often of matters that had nothing to do with their love; and, in the letters that Emma sent him, there was mention of flowers, of verses, of the moon and stars, artless expedients of a weakened passion, trying to revive itself by means of any possible outward aid. For the next trip, she would keep promising herself a consummate bliss; then admit to having felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment was quickly erased by a new hope, and Emma returned to him yet more inflamed, more eager. She undressed violently, tearing away the slender laces of her corset, which would hiss about her hips like a creeping snake. She would go up on her naked tiptoes to check yet again if the door was properly closed, then slip off all her clothes in a single movement; and, pale, speechlessly, in earnest, she would fall upon his chest, with a slow shudder.

  Yet on this forehead bathed in cold sweat, on these stammering lips, in these wild eyes, in the clasp of these arms, there lay something extreme, vague
and dismal which seemed to Léon to slide between them, cunningly, as if to sunder them.

  He did not dare ask her questions; but, seeing her so experienced, he told himself that she must have submitted to every test of suffering and pleasure. What charmed him before now faintly scared him. And he rebelled against the absorption, greater each day, of his personality. He begrudged Emma her constant victory. He even strove not to love her; then, at the creak of her boots, he felt himself waver, like drunkards at the sight of strong drink.

  She did not fail, it is true, to lavish all sorts of attention on him, from refinements at the dinner table to affectations of dress and languishing looks. In her bosom she brought roses from Yonville, tossing them in his face, was solicitous about his health, gave him advice on his conduct; and, so as to bridle him further, hoping that heaven would take a hand, she hung a Virgin medallion around his neck. She asked after his comrades, like a virtuous mother. She told him:

  “Don’t see them, don’t go out, think only of us; love me!”

  She would have liked to watch over his life, and the idea occurred to her to have him followed in the streets. There was always a kind of vagrant near the hotel, who accosted travelers and would not refuse … But her pride rebelled.

  “Ah, too bad! If he’s cheating on me, what does it matter! Do I care?”

  One day when they had parted from each other at the proper time, and she was returning alone by the boulevard, she noticed the walls of her convent; so she sat on a bench, in the elm trees’ shade. How calm it was back then! How she longed for love’s unutterable feelings, striving to conjure them up from books!

  The first months of her marriage, her rides in the forest, the Vicomte’s waltz, and Lagardy singing, all passed again before her eyes … And Léon suddenly appeared to her at the same distance as the others.

  “Yet I love him!” she told herself.

  No matter! She wasn’t happy, had never been so. From where did it come then—this deficiency of life, this instantaneous decay of everything she leaned upon? But, if only somewhere there were a manly and handsome being, valiant by nature, full of both high spirits and breeding, a poet’s heart in the guise of an angel, lyre strung with bronze, sounding its elegiac epithalamia to the heavens, why might she not accidentally meet him? Oh, impossible thought! Nothing, anyway, was worth the looking for; everything lied! Each smile concealed a yawn of tedium, each joy a curse, every pleasure its disgust, and the finest kisses left you nothing on the lips but the unattainable desire for a voluptuousness still more sublime.