Madame Bovary (Modern Library) Read online

  Charles dragged himself up by the banisters, on his last legs. He had spent five hours on the trot, on his feet by the tables, watching the whist game without understanding a thing. So he gave a great sigh of relief when he removed his boots.

  Emma slipped a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window and leaned out.

  The night was dark. A few drops of rain fell. She breathed in the moist wind cooling her eyelids. The ball’s music still hummed in her ears, and she strained to keep awake, prolonging the illusion of this luxuriant life that she must so soon forsake.

  First light dawned. For a long time she gazed at the windows of the chateau, trying to guess which were the bedrooms of all those she had noticed the day before. She would have liked to know their reality, penetrated them, become one and the same.

  But she was shivering with cold. She undressed and curled up under the sheets against Charles, who slept.

  There were a lot of people at breakfast. The meal lasted ten minutes; no spirits were served, which astonished the doctor. Afterward Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers collected the pieces of brioche in a small hamper, to bear them to the swans on the lake; and a stroll was taken in the hothouse, where fantastical plants, bristling with hairs, tiered upward in pyramids under hanging vases, which, like nests crammed with too many snakes, had long, green, interlaced cords tumbling down from their rims. The orangery, found at the far end, led under cover right up to the chateau’s outhouses. The Marquis, to amuse the young lady, took her to see the stables. Above the basket-shaped racks, porcelain plaques carried the name of the horses in black. Each animal stirred in its stall when they passed close by, clicking their tongues. The wooden floor of the saddlery gleamed like a drawing-room’s parquet. The carriage harness was arranged in the middle on two revolving pillars, and the bridle bits, the whips, the stirrups, the curb chains were arrayed in a line the whole length of the wall.

  Charles, in the meantime, went off to ask a servant to hitch up his gig. It was brought before the flight of steps, and, all the packages having been stuffed inside, the Bovary couple paid their respects to the Marquis and Marquise, and set off again for Tostes.

  Emma, in silence, watched the wheels turn. Charles, perched on the very edge of the seat, drove with his arms spread, and the little horse ambled between the shafts, which were too wide for it. The slack reins, wet with sweat, struck against its croup, and the box, tied on with string to the gig’s rear, kept thumping against the frame.

  They were on the heights of Thibourville, when all of a sudden, in front of them, some mounted gentlemen passed, laughing and with cigars in their mouths. Emma thought she recognized the Vicomte; she turned and looked back, and saw nothing on the horizon but the movement of heads rising and falling, according to the unequal rhythm of trot or gallop.

  Three-quarters of a mile further on, they had to stop in order to mend a broken breeching-strap with rope.

  But Charles, giving a last glance at the harness, saw something on the ground, between the legs of his horse; and he retrieved a cigar case embroidered all over with green silk and blazoned in the middle with a coat of arms, like the door of a coach.

  “There are even two cigars inside,” he said; “those can be for this evening, after dinner.”

  “You smoke, then?” she asked.

  “Now and again, when the occasion presents itself.”

  He pocketed his find and whipped up the nag.

  When they arrived home, dinner was not ready. Madame railed. Nastasie responded with insolence.

  “Leave!” said Emma. “What cheek! You’re dismissed.”

  For dinner there was onion soup, with a piece of veal in sorrel. Charles, seated opposite Emma and happily rubbing his hands, said:

  “How delightful to be back home again!”

  They heard Nastasie crying. He quite liked this poor girl. In times past she had kept him company through many an evening, in the idleness of his widowhood. She was his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the area.

  “Have you sent her off for good?” he said at last.

  “Yes. Who’s to stop me?” she replied.

  Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen, while the bedroom was being prepared. Charles began to smoke. He smoked by pouting his lips, spitting every other minute, recoiling at each puff.

  “You’ll make yourself sick,” she said, disdainfully.

  He put his cigar down, and ran off to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Emma, seizing the cigar case, threw it brusquely into the bottom of the wardrobe.

  The next day passed so slowly! She walked in her little garden, going up and down the same paths, stopping before the flower beds, before the espalier, before the plaster priest, contemplating with amazement all these things belonging to the past that she knew so well. How distant the ball already seemed! What was it then that had set the morning of the day before yesterday so far apart from the evening of today? Her journey to La Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like those huge crevices that a storm, in a single night, sometimes scours in the mountains. Nevertheless, she was resigned; she reverently folded away in the chest of drawers her beautiful costume, right down to her satin slippers, whose soles had been yellowed by the parquet’s slippery beeswax. Her heart was like them: rubbed against wealth, it had been left a surface deposit which would never wash off.

  So the mere recollection of this ball kept Emma occupied. Every time Wednesday came round, she said to herself on waking up: “Ah! eight days ago …, fifteen days ago …, three weeks ago, I was there!” And little by little, the faces blended in her memory, she forgot the tunes of the quadrilles, she no longer saw so distinctly the liveries and the rooms; a few details slipped away, but the regret stayed.

  IX

  Often, when Charles was out, she would go to the wardrobe and take the cigar case in green silk from where she had left it between the folds of linen.

  She would look at it, open it, and even smell the scent of its lining, mingled with lemon verbena and tobacco. To whom did it belong …? To the Vicomte. Perhaps it was a present from his mistress? Embroidered on a rosewood frame, a delicate, pretty ornament it was, kept hidden from prying eyes, filling many hours, and over which the soft curls of the pensive, painstaking woman had leaned. A breath of love had crept between the stitches on the canvas; each stroke of the needle had fixed therein a hope and a memory, and all these interwoven silk threads were no more than a continuation of the same silent passion. And then the Vicomte, one morning, had taken it away with him. What did they talk about, while it stayed on the broad chimneypiece, between the vases of flowers and the Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes. He was in Paris, now; there, in that very place! What was Paris like? What a name beyond measure! She repeated it in a low tone, just for the pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it blazed in her eyes, even on the label on her pots of pomade.

  At night, when the fish merchants, in their carts, passed under her windows singing La Marjolaine, she woke up; and listening to the iron-rimmed wheels, their clatter deadened by the earth as soon as they left the village:

  “They will be there tomorrow!” she said to herself.

  And she followed them in her thoughts, going up and down the hills, traveling through villages, moving off along the high road by starlight. At the end of an indeterminate distance, there was always a confused spot where her dream expired.

  She bought a plan of Paris, and, with the tip of her finger on the map, she went shopping in the capital. She ascended the boulevards, stopping at each corner, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that denoted houses. Her eyes strained by the end, she closed her lids, and in the gloom she saw the gas lamps’ burners twist in the wind, and the footboards of the carriages lining up in front of the theater colonnades in a great hubbub.

  She subscribed to The Basket, a woman’s journal, and to The Sylph of the Salons. She devoured, without missing a thing, all the reports of first nights, of races
and parties, taking an interest in a singer’s debut, in a store’s opening. She knew all about the new fashions, the right addresses for tailors, the days for the Bois or the Opéra. She studied descriptions of furniture in the novels of Eugène Sue; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking imaginary gratifications for her private lusts. Even at table she would bring her book, leafing through the pages while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Vicomte always recurred in her reading. She drew comparisons between him and the invented characters. But little by little the circle whose center he occupied widened around him, and that halo of glory he wore, straying from his face, spread itself further off, to illumine other dreams.

  Paris, vaguer than the Ocean, thus shimmered to Emma’s eyes inside a silvery, gilded haze. The numerous lives that tossed about in this uproar were nevertheless divided into parts, classified in distinct lists. Emma perceived just two or three that concealed all the others from her, single-handedly standing for the whole of humanity. The ambassadorial world walked on gleaming parquet floors, in drawing-rooms paneled with mirrors, around oval tables spread with gold-tasseled cloths of velvet. Here were trailing gowns, great mysteries, distress dissembled under smiles. Then followed the society of duchesses; there, one was pale; one rose at four o’clock; the women—poor angels!—wore Brussels lace on the hems of their petticoats, and the men, capabilities unrecognized beneath frivolous exteriors, rode their horses to death for sport, went to spend the summer season in Baden, and at last, around their fortieth year, married heiresses. In the back rooms of restaurants where supper is eaten after midnight, under bright candlelight, the motley crowd of literati and actresses laughed. These types were as extravagant as kings, full of idealized ambitions and fantastical frenzies. It was a superior way of life, between earth and sky, storm-filled and sublime. As for the rest of the world, it was lost, indefinitely placed, as if nonexistent. Besides, the closer things lay, the more her mind averted its eyes. Everything that immediately surrounded her, tedious countryside, imbecilic petty burghers, life’s mediocrity, seemed to her exceptional in the world, a particular accident in which she was trapped, while beyond stretched further than the eye could reach the immense land of blissful joys and passions. In her longing, she confused the sensual pleasures of luxury with heartfelt joys, the elegance of social customs with the refinements of feeling. Did love, like an Indian plant, not need well-tilled soil, a precise temperature? So the sighs by moonlight, the long embraces, the tears trickling over forsaken hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languishings of tender love were inseparable from the balconies of great chateaux replete with leisure, from a boudoir with silken blinds and a good thick carpet, stands filled with flowers, a bed mounted on a platform, or from the sparkle of precious stones and the livery servants’ shoulder-braids.

  The postboy, who, each morning, came to groom the mare, would cross the corridor in his big wooden shoes; he had holes in his smock, his feet were bare in list slippers. That was the “foot-boy” in short breeches with whom she had to be satisfied! When his work was over, he stayed away for the rest of the day; for Charles, on returning, would stable the horse himself, removing the saddle and slipping on the halter, during which time the maid would bring a bundle of straw and throw it, as best she could, in the manger.

  To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes at last, in floods of tears), Emma took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet look. She forbade her to wear cotton caps, taught her that she must address you in the third person, bring a glass of water on a plate, knock at doors before entering, and how to iron, to starch, to dress her, intending to make of her a lady’s maid. To avoid being dismissed, the new servant obeyed without a murmur; and, as Madame usually left the key in the sideboard, each evening Félicité took a little supply of sugar that she ate all alone, in her bed, after saying her prayers.

  Sometimes, in the afternoon, she went to chat with the postboys. Madame stayed upstairs, in her room.

  She wore a wide-open dressing gown, revealing, between the shawl facings of her bodice, a plaited chemisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with fat tassels, and her little garnet-colored slippers had a tuft of broad ribbons that sprawled over her instep. She had purchased for herself a blotting case, stationery, a penholder and some envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she wiped the dust off her shelves, looked at herself in the mirror, took down a book, then, dreaming between the lines, let it fall in her lap. She had a desire to travel, or to go back and live at her convent. She wished both to die and to live in Paris.

  Charles, in rain, in snow, rode along the country ways. He ate omelettes at farm tables, poked his arm into damp beds, got struck in the face by the warm jet of bloodlettings, listened to death rattles, scrutinized basins, tucked up dirty linen; but he found, every evening, a blazing fire, dinner ready, yielding chairs, and a charming, nicely dressed wife, smelling so fresh that it was impossible to tell where the fragrance came from, or whether it was not her skin perfuming her chemise.

  She charmed him with a variety of niceties: sometimes it was a new way of making up paper sconces for the candles, a flounce she altered on her gown, or the extraordinary name of a very simple dish, that the maid had spoiled, but which Charles tucked into with pleasure to the last little morsel. In Rouen she saw ladies who wore a bundle of charms by their watches; she bought some charms. She wanted a pair of big blue glass vases on her chimneypiece, and, shortly afterward, an ivory sewing case with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these elegant touches, the more he was seduced by them. They added something pleasurable to his senses and to the sweetness of his home. It was like a dusting of gold scattered all along the little pathway of his life.

  He felt well, he looked well; his reputation was entirely established. The rustics cherished him because he was not haughty. He patted the children, never went to the tavern, and anyway inspired confidence by his character. He was particularly successful with catarrh and consumption. Very much afraid of killing his patients, Charles in fact scarcely prescribed anything but soothing drafts, or now and then an emetic, a foot bath or leeches. It was not that surgery frightened him; he would bleed people abundantly, like horses, and when it came to drawing teeth he had a devilish keen grip.

  Finally, to keep himself abreast, he took out a subscription to The Medical Hive, a new journal whose prospectus he had received. He would read a little of it after his dinner; but the heat of the apartment, on top of his digestion, caused him to fall asleep after five minutes; and there he stayed, chin on his hands, hair spread manelike down to the base of the lamp. Emma shrugged, looking at him. At least she might have had, as husband, one of those intense, silent men, who labor at their books deep into the night, and who, by the time they are sixty and rheumatism is setting in, sport a string of medals on their black, poorly cut coat. She would have wished this name Bovary, which was her name, to have been illustrious, to see it displayed in bookshops, repeated in the newspapers, known by all of France. But Charles had no ambition! A doctor from Yvetot, with whom he had recently been in consultation, had humiliated him a little, at the patient’s very bedside, in front of the assembled family. When Charles recounted the anecdote that evening, Emma inveighed loud and long against the colleague. Charles was touched by this. He kissed her tearfully on the brow. But she was incensed with shame, she wanted to hit him, she went into the corridor to open a window, sucking in the fresh air to calm herself down.

  “What a wretched man, what a wretched man!” she said in an undertone, chewing her lips.

  She was feeling more exasperated by him anyway. He was putting on weight with age; he kept cutting up the corks of empty bottles during dessert; he would pass his tongue over his teeth after eating; he would make a clucking noise each time he swallowed a mouthful of soup, and, as he was growing stout, his eyes, already small, seemed to be pushed up toward the temples by the bloating of his cheeks.

  Sometimes Emma would tuck
the red edging of his undervest back into his waistcoat, adjust his cravat, or throw out the faded gloves he was on the point of putting on; and this was not, as he imagined, for him, but for her own sake, in an outpouring of selfishness, of nervous irritation. She also talked to him at times of something she had read: a passage in a novel, a new play, or some anecdote of the high life regaled in the feuilleton; for Charles was at least someone happy to listen, ever ready with an approving remark. She confided many secrets to her greyhound! She would have confided them to the chimney’s logs and the clock’s pendulum.

  In the depths of her soul, meanwhile, she was awaiting an event. Like a shipwrecked sailor, she swept a despairing gaze over the solitude of her life, searching afar for any white canvas on the foggy horizon. She had no idea of what this chance happening might be, what wind might push it right to her, toward what shore it might carry her, whether it was a rowing boat or a three-masted vessel, laden with anguish or crammed with joys up to the gunnels. But each morning, when she woke, she would have high hopes for it that day, and she listened to every sound, started up out of bed, was amazed when it did not come; then, at sunset, all the more sad, she would yearn for the morrow.

  Spring reappeared. She had fits of breathlessness during the first warm days, when the pear trees blossomed.

  From the beginning of July, she counted on her fingers how many weeks she had left before October came, thinking that the Marquis d’Andervilliers would perhaps be giving another ball at La Vaubyessard. But the whole of September slipped past with neither letters nor visits.

  After the tedium of this disappointment, her heart was once more left empty, and then the series of selfsame days began again.

  Now they were going to follow each other thus in single file, always the same, numberless, and bringing nothing! Other existences, however vapid, at least stood the chance of a denouement. One adventure would occasion an infinity of dramatic turns, and the scenery shift. But for her, nothing was going to happen, God had decreed it! The future was a corridor entirely dark, with a door fast-shut at the end.