Madame Bovary (Modern Library)

by Gustave Flaubert

  A metallic rattle dragged itself out on high and four strokes were heard from the convent bell. Four o’clock! And she felt as though she had been there, on that bench, forever. But an infinity of passions can be contained in a single minute, like a crowd in a small room. Emma lived entirely taken up by her own, and no more concerned herself with money than would an archduchess.

  Once, nevertheless, a mean-looking man, red-faced and bald, came to her house, professing to have been sent by Monsieur Vinçart, of Rouen. He withdrew the pins that fastened the side pocket of his long green riding coat, stuck them in his sleeve and politely held out a paper.

  It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, and that Lheureux, despite all his protestations, had passed over to Vinçart.

  She dispatched her maid to his house. He was unable to come.

  Then the stranger, who had remained on his feet, casting curious glances right and left that his coarse flaxen eyebrows concealed, asked with an innocent air:

  “What answer to take to Monsieur Vinçart?”

  “Well,” replied Emma, “tell him … that I haven’t one … It will be there next week … That he wait … yes, until next week.”

  And the fellow went off without another word.

  But, the following day, at twelve o’clock, she received a notarized protest for nonpayment; and the sight of the stamped paper, where Maître Hareng, bailiff at Buchy was displayed several times and in bold letters, affrighted her so much, that she ran as fast as she could to the cloth dealer’s house.

  She found him in his shop, tying up a package with string.

  “Your humble servant,” he said.

  Lheureux carried on with his task nonetheless, helped by a young girl of about thirteen, a little crook-backed, employed by him as both clerk and cook.

  Then, smacking his clogs against the shop’s floorboards, he led Madame up to the first floor, and showed her into a narrow study, where a large desk in pinewood bore up several registers, protected crosswise by a padlocked iron bar. Against the wall, under remnants of printed cotton, could be glimpsed a strongbox, but of such dimensions, that it must have contained other than bills and money. Monsieur Lheureux was, in fact, a pawnbroker, and it was there that he had deposited Madame Bovary’s gold chain, with the earrings belonging to poor old Tellier, who, finally forced to sell up, had bought a meager grocery business, where he was dying of his catarrh, amidst candles less yellow than his face.

  Lheureux sat down in his large straw-bottomed armchair, saying:

  “What news?”

  “Here.”

  And she showed him the paper.

  “Well, what can I do about it?”

  Then she flew into a passion, reminding him of the promise he had given not to pass the bills around; he admitted it.

  “But I was forced to on my own behalf, I had the knife at my throat.”

  “And what is going to happen, now?” she went on.

  “Oh, it’s very simple: a court verdict, and then the seizure … not a hope!”

  Emma forbore from hitting him. She asked him gently if there was not a way of soothing Monsieur Vinçart.

  “Well well, yes, soothing Vinçart! You scarce know him; fiercer than an Arab, he is.”

  Yet Monsieur Lheureux had to take a hand in this.

  “Now listen! It seems to me that, up until now, I have been rather good to you.”

  And, laying out one of his registers:

  “Here!”

  Then, moving his finger up the page:

  “Let’s see … let’s see … The third of August, two hundred francs … On the seventeenth of June, one hundred and fifty … Twenty-third of March, forty-six … In April …”

  He stopped, as though fearing to do something foolish.

  “And I’ve not mentioned the bills signed by Monsieur, one for seven hundred francs, another for three hundred! As for your petty installments, at interest, those are never-ending, we’re in a complete muddle. I’ll not take a hand in this any longer!”

  She wept, she even called him “good Monsieur Lheureux.” But he kept falling back on this “rascal Vinçart.” Besides, he had not a centime, nobody was paying him at present, they were having the shirt off his back, a poor shopkeeper like him could not make advances.

  Emma held her tongue; and Monsieur Lheureux, who was nibbling the vane of a quill, doubtless grew uneasy over her silence, for he resumed:

  “At least, if one of these days I were to have a few payments … I could …”

  “What’s more,” she said, “as soon as Barneville’s arrears …”

  “What?”

  And, on being apprised that Langlois had not yet paid up, he seemed most surprised. Then, in honeyed tones:

  “And we are agreed, you say …?”

  “Oh, whatever you like!”

  So, he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures, and, declaring that it would be seriously injurious to him, that the matter was shockingly risky and that he was bleeding himself, he suggested four bills of two hundred and fifty francs, each, payable at monthly intervals.

  “Provided Vinçart chooses to hear me! For the rest it’s agreed, I’m not the trifling sort, I’m as sound as a bell.”

  Then he carelessly showed her several new wares, but not one of which, in his opinion, were worthy of Madame.

  “When I consider that here’s a dress at seven sous the yard, and certified fast dye! Yet they swallow it! We don’t tell them what it really is, of course—” intending by this admission of roguery toward the others to convince her entirely of his fair dealing.

  Then he called her back, to show her three ells of silk lace that he had found recently “in an auction.”

  “Isn’t it smart!” said Lheureux; “they use it a lot these days, for the tops of armchairs, it’s the fashion.”

  And, quicker than a conjurer, he wrapped the silk lace in blue paper and placed it in Emma’s hands.

  “But if I at least know how …?”

  “Oh, later,” he replied, turning on his heels.

  That very evening, she urged Bovary to write to his mother so she might speedily send him all the unclaimed inheritance. The mother-in-law replied that she no longer had anything: the settlement was concluded, and there remained to them, other than Barneville, six hundred francs a year, that she would send to them promptly.

  Then Madame dispatched bills to two or three clients, and soon made copious use of this means, and successfully. She always took care to add as a postscript: Do not mention it to my husband, you know how proud he is … My apologies … Your servant … There were a few complaints; she intercepted them.

  In order to make herself some money, she set about selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old silver plate; and she haggled rapaciously—her peasant blood urging her to a profit. Then, on her trips to town, she would buy secondhand trifles, that Monsieur Lheureux, for want of others, would certainly take. She bought herself ostrich feathers, chinaware and chests; she borrowed from Félicité, from Madame Lefrançois, from the landlady of the Croix Rouge, from everyone, anywhere. With the money she finally received from Barneville, she paid two bills; the other fifteen hundred francs drained away. She committed herself anew, and always in this manner!

  At times, certainly, she tried to do her sums; but she unearthed doings that were so excessive, she could not believe it. So she began again, fast embroiled herself, walked away from it all and gave it not another thought.

  How very sad the house was, now! Tradesmen with furious faces were to be seen leaving. There were handkerchiefs drooping from the stoves; and little Berthe, much to the alarm of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes. If Charles, albeit timidly, ventured an observation, she brutally replied that it was not her fault!

  Why these fits of anger? He let her old nervous illness explain it all; and, reproaching himself for having taken her frailties as failings, he accused himself of selfishness, had a mind to go over and kiss her.

&
nbsp; “Oh, no,” he said, “I’ll annoy her.”

  And he stayed where he was.

  After dinner, he walked alone in the garden; he would take little Berthe on his knees, and, spreading out his medical journal, try to teach her to read. Soon enough the child, who had never studied, would open her sad eyes wide and start to cry. Then he would comfort her; he would go off to fetch her some water in the watering can to make rivers in the sand, or break branches off the privet bushes to plant trees in the flower beds, which hardly spoiled the garden, all congested as it was with long grass; Lestiboudois was owed so many days’ wages! Then the child would feel cold and ask for her mother.

  “Call your nursemaid,” said Charles. “Surely you know, my little one, that your mamma doesn’t want us to disturb her.”

  It was the beginning of autumn and already the leaves were falling—just like two years ago, when she was ill! So when would all this be over!… And he went on walking, hands behind his back.

  Madame was in her room. No one went up. She stayed there all day long, in a state of torpor, barely dressed, and, from time to time, burning pastilles of harem incense that she had bought in Rouen, from an Algerian’s shop. So as not to have, close to her at night, this spread-eagled and slumbering man, she ended up, by dint of pulling faces, relegating him to the second floor; and right through to the morning she read lurid books full of orgiastic scenes and blood-soaked plots. Frequently gripped by terror, she would let out a scream. Charles came running.

  “Oh, go away!” she would say.

  Or, at other times, scorched more fiercely by that intimate flame brightened by adultery, panting for breath, aroused, full of desire, she would open her window, suck in the cold air, scatter her too-heavy hair in the wind, and, gazing at the stars, long for a prince’s love. She thought of him, of Léon. She would have given anything for a single one of those meetings, sating her as they did.

  Those were her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous! And, whenever he was unable to afford an expense, she made up the difference liberally, something that happened almost every time. He tried to make her understand that they would be just as fine elsewhere, in some more modest hotel; but she found objections.

  One day, she pulled from her bag six little silver-gilt spoons (they were Père Rouault’s wedding present), begging him to go immediately and take them, on her behalf, to the pawnbroker; and Léon obeyed, even though he disliked taking this step. He was afraid of compromising himself.

  Then, on thinking it over, he felt that his mistress was behaving strangely, and that people were perhaps not amiss in wanting to disengage him from her.

  In fact, someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter, to warn her that he was going to wrack and ruin with a married woman; and straightaway the good lady, glimpsing every family’s nightmare, that vague and pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, which dwells phantasmagorically in love’s depths, wrote to his master, Maître Dubocage, who dealt with the matter impeccably. He kept him for three-quarters of an hour, wishing to open his eyes, warn him of the whirlpool. Such an intrigue would harm his business later on. He beseeched him to break off, and, if he would not make this sacrifice in his own interest, that he would at least do it for his, Dubocage’s, sake!

  Léon had finally sworn not to see Emma any longer; and he reproached himself for not having kept his word, considering all that this woman might still provoke by way of embarrassment and idle talk, not to mention his comrades’ pleasantries, which poured out every morning, around the stove. Moreover, he was going to be made senior clerk: now was the moment to be serious. He was also renouncing the flute, and exalted feelings, and the imagination; for every bourgeois, in the overexcitement of his youth, if but for a day, a minute, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty undertakings. The most ordinary rake has dreamed of sultans’ consorts; each notary bears within him the remnants of a poet.

  He grew weary now when Emma, all of a sudden, would sob on his chest; and his heart, like people who can only put up with a certain quantity of music, drowsed indifferently in the tumult of a love whose niceties he could no longer distinguish.

  They knew each other too well to feel that astonished sense of possession which increases joy a hundredfold. She was as tired of him as he was weary of her. Emma found in adultery all the same dullnesses of marriage.

  But how to get rid of him? Besides, however much she felt humiliated by the sordid nature of such happiness, she held on to it out of habit or depravity; and, each day, she hung on more fiercely, exhausting any bliss by wanting it too vast. She blamed Léon for her dashed hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even wished for a catastrophe to bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to resolve it herself.

  She carried on writing him love letters nonetheless, by virtue of this idea, that a woman must always write to her lover.

  But, as she wrote, she perceived another man, a phantom made up of her most fervid memories, her most beautiful readings, her strongest lusts; and he became so real, and approachable, that her heart beat wildly over him, wonder-struck, without however being able to imagine him distinctly, so much had he vanished, like a god, under the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in the blue-tinted country where ladders of silk swing from balconies, under the breath of flowers, in the brightness of the moon. She felt him near her, he was about to come and carry her away entire on a kiss. Then she would fall flat again, shattered; for these bursts of hazy love wore her out more than any grand debauch.

  She now experienced an incessant and universal ache. Emma would even receive frequent summonses, on stamped paper which she scarcely looked at. She would have liked to stop living, or uninterruptedly to sleep.

  On the middle day of Lent, she did not come back to Yonville; she went in the evening to the masked ball. She put on a pair of felt trousers and red stockings, with a pigtailed wig and a single lantern earring. She skipped all night to the furious sound of trombones; they gathered around her in a circle; and in the morning she found herself in the theater’s colonnade among five or six maskers, stevedore-trousered girls and sailors, friends of Léon’s, who were talking about going off to eat something.

  The neighboring cafés were full. In the harbor they spied the most mediocre of restaurants, whose landlord opened a little room for them on the fourth floor.

  The men whispered in a corner, doubtless consulting on the expenditure. They consisted of a clerk, two medical students and a shop boy: what company for her! As for the women, Emma rapidly perceived, by the tone of their voices, that almost all must be of the lowest rank. She felt frightened then, withdrew her chair and lowered her eyes.

  The others began to eat. She did not eat: she felt her face on fire, her eyelids tingling and an icy cold on her skin. She felt the ballroom floor in her head, rebounding still under the rhythmic pulse of the thousand dancing feet. Then the smell of the punch along with the cigar smoke made her giddy. She swooned; they carried her to the window.

  Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple was spreading in the pale sky beyond Sainte Catherine. The livid river shivered in the wind; there was no one on the bridges; the street lamps were going out.

  She revived nonetheless, and happened to think of Berthe, who was sleeping way over there, in her nursemaid’s bedroom. But a wagon full of long strips of iron passed by, hurling a deafening metallic shudder against the walls of the houses.

  She slipped away brusquely, got rid of her costume, told Léon that she had to return home, and finally stayed alone at the Hôtel de Boulogne. Everything and herself felt insufferable. She would have liked, vanishing like a bird, to be renewed somewhere, a great way off, in undefiled spaces.

  She went out, crossed the boulevard, the place Cauchoise and the outlying part of town, to an open road that looked down upon gardens. She walked quickly, the fresh air soothed her: and little by little the faces of the crowd, the quadrilles, the chandeliers, the supper, those women, all vanished
like blown-away mists. Then, returning to the Croix Rouge, she threw herself on her bed, in the little room on the second floor, where there were images from The Tower of Nesle. At four o’clock in the afternoon, Hivert woke her up.

  When she got back home, Félicité showed her a gray paper behind the clock. She read:

  By order, in execution of a judgment …

  What judgment? In fact, the previous day they had delivered another paper she knew nothing about; she was just as stupefied by these words:

  Order in the name of the king, the law and justice, to Madame Bovary …

  Then, jumping a few lines, she saw:

  In twenty-four hours, without any delay.—What now? To pay the total sum of eight thousand francs. And, lower down, there was even: She will be constrained thereto by all due course of law, and notably by the seizure of her furniture and effects.

  What to do? This was within twenty-four hours; tomorrow! No doubt Lheureux wanted to scare her again; for now at a stroke she guessed at all his schemes, the goal of his panderings. What reassured her, was the exaggerating of the amount.

  Yet, by dint of buying, not settling, borrowing, signing bills, then renewing bills, which rose at each new date of payment, she had ended up providing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux, which he was impatiently awaiting for his speculations.

  She called on him with a free and easy manner.

  “Do you know what has happened to me? It’s a joke, no doubt!”

  “No.”

  “How so?”

  He slowly turned, crossed his arms and said to her: