Madame Bovary (Modern Library) Read online

  “Come in,” she said; “your little one is over there, sleeping.”

  The bedroom, on the ground floor, the only one in the dwelling, had a large bed without curtains set against the wall at the far end, while the kneading trough occupied the window side, one of whose panes had been repaired with a blue paper sunflower. In the corner, behind the door, half-boots with gleaming studs were lined up under the scullery slab, near a bottle full of oil sporting a feather in its neck; a Mathieu Laensberg almanac drooped on the dusty chimneypiece, between gunflints, candle-stubs and bits of touch wood. The final piece of superfluousness in this room was Fame blowing on her trumpets, an image doubtless cut out from some perfumery prospectus, and nailed to the wall by six shoe tacks.

  Emma’s child slept on the floor, in a wicker cradle. She picked her up with the blanket she was wrapped in, and began to sing gently, rocking from side to side.

  Léon paced the room; it seemed queer to him to see this lovely woman in a nankeen dress, right in the middle of this wretchedness. Madame Bovary blushed; he averted his eyes, thinking that his look had perhaps betrayed some impropriety. Then she put the baby, which had just vomited over her collar, back to bed. The wet nurse immediately came to wipe it off, protesting that it would not show.

  “She’s done a lot worse to me,” she said, “and just rinsing her off keeps me busy! So if you’ve the kindness to make an order with Camus the grocer that he lets me take a bit of soap when I need it, as would be easier for you what’s more, so I wouldn’t be putting you to no bother.”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” said Emma. “Goodbye, Mère Rollet!”

  And she went out, wiping her feet on the threshold.

  The good woman accompanied her to the end of the yard, all the while talking of the trouble she had in getting up in the night.

  “I am that worn out by it sometimes, that I nod off in my chair; also, you ought at least to give me a little pound of ground coffee which’d do me for a month and I’d take mornings with some milk.”

  Having endured her thanks, Madame Bovary took herself off; and she was a little way along the path, when the sound of wooden clogs made her turn her head: it was the wet nurse!

  “What is it?”

  And the peasant woman, pulling her to one side, behind an elm, began to talk to her about her husband, who, with his trade and six francs a year which the captain …

  “Come to the point,” said Emma.

  “Ah well,” the nurse took up again, sighing between each word, “I’m afraid he’ll come over all sad when he sees me drink my coffee all alone; you know, these men …”

  “Since you are to have some,” Emma repeated, “so I shall give you some …! You’re boring me!”

  “Alas! My poor dear lady, it’s just that, owing to his injuries, he has terrible cramps in his chest. He even says that cider weakens him.”

  “Out with it, quickly, Mère Rollet!”

  “So,” the latter took up again with a curtsy, “if it’s not too much to ask”—she curtsied again—“when you like,”—and she gave a beseeching look,—“a little crock of brandy,” she said at last, “and I’ll rub some on the feet of your little one, hers being tender as a tongue.”

  Rid of the wet nurse, Emma took Léon’s arm again. She walked quickly for a while; then she slowed down, and her gaze adrift in front of her alighted on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock coat bore a collar of black velvet. His auburn hair fell over it, smooth and well combed. She noticed his nails, which were longer than were generally worn at Yonville. One of the clerk’s major occupations was keeping them in repair; and he kept, for this use, a uniquely appropriate knife in his ink case.

  They returned to Yonville along the water’s edge. In the warm season, the broader bank exposed the foundations of the garden walls, where a staircase of a few steps led down to the river. It flowed without a sound, swift and cold to the eye; slender long grasses bowed down there as one, depending on the current that pressed upon them, to spread out like forsaken heads of green hair in its limpidness. Sometimes, on the tips of the rushes or the water-lily leaves, an insect with delicate legs crawled or alighted. A single sunbeam pierced the waves’ little blue bubbles as they burst in one another’s wake; the lopped and ancient willows mirrored their gray bark in the water; beyond, all around, the meadowland seemed empty. It was lunchtime in the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard as they walked only the rhythm of their steps on the footpath’s earth, the words they uttered, and the brush of Emma’s gown rustling all around her.

  The garden walls, their coping studded with pieces of bottle, were as warm as greenhouse glass. Wallflowers had grown in the brickwork; and, with the edge of her spread parasol, Madame Bovary, as she passed by, made a few of their withered blooms drop their yellow pollen, or else some branch of honeysuckle or traveler’s joy hanging down on the outside would trail for a moment on the silk, catching in the fringe.

  They talked of a Spanish dance troupe, who were expected soon on the Rouen stage.

  “You’re going?” she asked.

  “If I can,” he replied.

  Had they nothing else to say? Yet their eyes were full of a more serious talk; and, while they were endeavoring to find trite phrases, both of them felt the same languor invade them; it was like a murmur of the soul, deep and continuous, prevailing over the murmur of the voices. Overtaken with wonder at this novel sweetness, they did not think of telling one another of the sensation nor of discovering its cause. Future joys, like tropical shores, discharge their native indolence, a perfumed breeze, on the immensity leading up to them, and you drowse in this intoxication without even troubling yourself about the horizon that you do not descry.

  The earth, at one point, had given way under the tread of cattle; they were obliged to walk on large green stones, carefully spaced apart in the mire. She would frequently stop for a moment to see where to place her lady’s boot—and, wavering on the shaky boulder, her elbows in the air, bent at the waist, her glance undecided, she would giggle then, from fear of falling over in the puddles.

  When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary pushed the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.

  Léon returned to his office. The master was absent; he cast an eye over the papers, then cut himself a pen, put his hat on at last and went out.

  He went up onto the Pasture, to the crest of Argueil hill, by the entrance to the forest; he lay down on the ground under the firs, and surveyed the sky through his fingers.

  “How bored I am!” he said to himself, “how bored I am!”

  He deserved to be pitied having to live in this village, with Homais for a friend and Monsieur Guillaumin for a master. The latter, completely taken up with cases, sporting spectacles with gold sidepieces and red whiskers on a white neck cloth, understood nothing of the mind’s delicacies, although he affected a stiff, English manner that had dazzled the clerk at first. As for the pharmacist’s wife, she was the best spouse in Normandy, gentle as a lamb, cherishing her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping at the ills of others, entirely free and easy with her household, and abhorring stays;—but so slow to stir, so dull to listen to, of so common an appearance and so limited in conversation, that he had never imagined, although she was thirty, and he twenty, and they slept next door to each other, and he talked to her each day, that she might be someone’s wife, or own anything else of her sex but the dress.

  And after that, who was there? Binet, a few tradesmen, two or three tavern keepers, the priest, and finally M. Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, wealthy folk, peevish, dull-witted, tilling their land themselves, feasting with their families, and bigots besides, and their company nothing less than unbearable.

  But on the common back-scene of all these human faces, Emma’s countenance stood out lone and yet further off, for between her and him he sensed vague, unfathomable depths.

  At first, he had called on her several times in the pharmacist’s
company. Charles had not seemed exceedingly eager to receive him; and Léon, between the fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that he considered almost impossible, did not know what to do.

  IV

  With the first chill days, Emma left her bedroom and took to the parlor, a long, low-ceilinged room where, on the chimneypiece, a tufted coral showed itself off in the mirror. Seated in her armchair, near the window, she could see the village folk passing by on the pavement.

  Léon, twice a day, repaired to the Lion d’Or from his office. Emma, from far off, would hear him coming; she would bend forward to listen; and the young man glided behind the curtain, always dressed in the same way and without turning his head. But when, at twilight, chin in her left hand, she had abandoned her needlework on her knees, she would often start at the apparition of that sudden shadow passing by. She would rise and order the table to be laid.

  Monsieur Homais would arrive during dinner. Bonnet-grec in his hand, he entered on soundless tread so as not to disturb a soul and always repeating the same phrase: “Good evening, everyone!” Then, when he had settled in his place, at table, between husband and wife, he would ask the doctor for news of his patients, and the doctor in turn consulted him on the likelihood of fees. Then they would chat about what had appeared in the paper. Homais, by that hour of the day, knew it almost by heart; and he recounted it in its entirety, with the journalist’s reflections and every story of individual catastrophe that had occurred in France or abroad. But, the subject drying up, soon enough he would toss out a few observations on the dishes he was examining. At times, half rising, he would even indicate daintily to Madame the tenderest piece, or, turning toward the maid, proffer her advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasonings; he spoke aroma, osmazome, juice and gelatine in a manner fit to dazzle. With a head more filled with recipes than his pharmacy with jars, Homais also excelled at making a variety of jams, vinegars and sweet cordials, as well as being acquainted with all the latest contrivances of economical steam kitchens, along with the art of conserving cheeses and nursing sick wines.

  At eight o’clock, Justin came for him in order to lock the pharmacy. Then Monsieur Homais would look slyly at the youth, above all if Félicité was present, aware that his apprentice had taken a fancy to the doctor’s house.

  “My young fellow,” he would say, “has begun to have ideas, and I do believe, the devil take me, that he’s in love with your maid!”

  But a more serious fault, and one he would reproach him for, was that he continually eavesdropped on conversations. On Sundays, for example, it was impossible to make him leave the drawing-room, where Madame Homais had called him to take away the children, who were nodding off in the armchairs, their backs dragging down the loose-fitting calico covers.

  Not many people came to the pharmacist’s evening parties, his backbiting and his political opinions having successively driven away various respectable people. The clerk never failed to be there. The moment he heard the bell, he ran to meet Madame Bovary halfway, took her shawl, and put to one side, under the pharmacy desk, the stout list slippers she wore over her boots, whenever it snowed.

  They would begin by playing several games of trente-et-un: then Monsieur Homais played écarté with Emma; Léon, behind her, giving her advice. Standing up and with his hands on the back of her chair, he gazed at the teeth of the comb sunk into her chignon. Each time she played her hand, the movement made the right side of her dress ride up. From her fastened hair, a dusky tint ran down over her back, and, gradually paling, lost itself little by little in shadow. From there her garment fell away on either side over the seat, puffing out, full of pleats, and sprawling down as far as the ground. When Léon occasionally felt the sole of his boot placed upon it, he moved away, as if he had stepped on someone.

  After the card game was over, the apothecary and the doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing seats, leaned her elbows on the table, leafing through L’Illustration. She had brought along her fashion journal. Léon sat down next to her; they looked at the engravings and waited for each other at the bottom of the page. She would often entreat him to read verses to her; Léon would recite them in a drawling manner and was careful to make his voice die away in the love passages. But the click of the dominoes vexed him; Monsieur Homais was good, he beat Charles by a whole double six. Then, the third hundred finished, the two of them stretched out in front of the fire and would not take long to nod off. The fire died in the embers; the teapot was empty; Léon went on reading. Emma listened to him, mechanically turning the lampshade, clowns in carriages and rope dancers with their swings painted on its gauze. Léon would stop, silently pointing out his sleeping audience; then they spoke in low voices, and their conversation seemed to them sweeter, because it was not heard.

  Thus a kind of confederacy set itself up between them, a continual intercourse of books and ballads; Monsieur Bovary, untroubled by jealousy, found nothing there to surprise him.

  For his birthday he received a handsome phrenological head, inlaid all over with numbers down to the chest and painted blue. It was a kind thought of the clerk’s. He had many another, going as far as to run errands for him in Rouen; and, a novelist’s work having brought into vogue a mania for cacti, Léon bought some for Madame, carrying them on his lap in the Hirondelle, all the while pricking his fingers on their hard bristles.

  She had a small board with railings fitted, against her casement, to take her oriental pots. The clerk also had his hanging garden; they were aware of each other at their respective windows, tending their flowers.

  There was one of the village windows that was occupied even more frequently; for, on Sundays, from morn till night, and every afternoon, if the weather was fine, you could see at an attic dormer window the lean profile of Monsieur Binet bent over his lathe, its monotonous hum audible as far as the Lion d’Or.

  One evening, on his return, Léon discovered in his room a wool and velvet coverlet patterned with foliage against a pale background; he called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais, Justin, the children, the cook, he spoke of it to his master; everyone wished to be acquainted with this cloth; why these kindnesses offered to the clerk by the doctor’s wife? It did seem odd, and they were of the definite opinion that she must be his sweetheart.

  He gave you good cause to believe it, so incessantly did he keep on about her charms and her wit, to such an extent that one time Binet responded in the most brutal manner:

  “What does it matter to me, since I am not of her society!”

  He tortured himself, trying to discover a way to declare his love; and, forever hesitating between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being fainthearted, he wept from discouragement and desire. Then he would make drastic resolutions; he wrote letters that he tore up, postponed things to a time that he kept deferring. Frequently he would march himself off, with the notion of daring all, but this resolution swiftly forsook him in Emma’s presence, and, when Charles, arriving unexpectedly, invited him to climb into his gig to go and see some patient or other in the neighborhood, he accepted straightaway, gave Madame a bow and went off. Her husband, was he not something of her?

  As to Emma, she did not examine her heart to know whether or not she loved him. Love, she believed, should come on all at once, with great claps of thunder and lightning—a hurricane from heaven that falls upon your life, turns it topsy-turvy, tears up intentions like leaves and sweeps your whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that, on the foundation terrace of a house, the rain makes lakes when the gutters are blocked, and so she remained safe and secure, until suddenly she discovered a crack in the wall.

  V

  It was a Sunday in February, one snowy afternoon.

  They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais and Monsieur Léon, set off to visit a flax mill that was being set up in the valley, a mile and a half from Yonville. The apothecary had brought Napoléon and Athalie with him, to give them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, ca
rrying umbrellas on his shoulder.

  Yet nothing could be less curious than this curiosity. A large area of waste ground, where a few gear wheels, already rusted, lay between heaps of sand and pebble, surrounded a long four-cornered building pierced by a number of small windows. It had not yet finished being built, and the sky could be seen through the roof joists. Attached to the gable beam, a straw bouquet woven with ears of corn snapped its tricolor ribbons in the wind.

  Homais talked. He explained to the gathered company the future importance of this establishment, calculated the strength of the floor, the thickness of the walls, and deeply regretted not having a metrical ruler, like the one Monsieur Binet had for his private use.

  Emma, who gave him her arm, leaned a little on his shoulder, and she watched the sun’s far-off disc radiating its dazzling paleness in the fog; but she turned her head: Charles was there. He had his cap pulled down over his eyebrows, and his thick lips were quivering, which added something stupid to his face; even his back, his unruffled back was irritating to look at, and there, exposed on the frock coat, she found all the vapidness of the individual.

  While she was considering him, tasting in her irritation a kind of depraved voluptuousness, Léon stepped forward. The cold that made him pale seemed to settle a sweeter languidness on his face; between his cravat and his neck, the shirt collar, a little loose, left the skin visible; an earlobe showed below a lock of hair, and his big blue eyes, uplifted to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and lovely than those mountain lakes in which the sky admires itself.