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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Bovary, Volume 1 (of 2)
+by Gustave Flaubert
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Madame Bovary
+       A Tale of Provincial Life, Volume 1 (of 2)
+
+Author: Gustave Flaubert
+
+Release Date: December 20, 2008 [EBook #27575]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADAME BOVARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Transcriber's note: Minor printing errors have been corrected.
+    Phrases printed in italics in the original version are
+    indicated in this electronic version by _ (underscore).
+    A list of amendments are given at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         MADAME BOVARY
+
+                   A TALE OF PROVINCIAL LIFE
+
+                              BY
+                        GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
+
+
+                            WITH A
+                     CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
+                              BY
+                      FERDINAND BRUNETIÈRE
+                     Of the French Academy
+
+                 AND A BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE BY
+                       ROBERT ARNOT, M. A
+
+                           VOLUME I.
+
+                   SIMON P. MAGEE, PUBLISHER,
+                         CHICAGO, ILL.
+                      COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
+                        M. WALTER DUNNE
+
+
+
+
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I.
+
+  I. THE NEW BOY                             1
+
+  II. A GOOD PATIENT                        13
+
+  III. A LONELY WIDOWER                     23
+
+  IV. CONSOLATION                           31
+
+  V. THE NEW MÉNAGE                         38
+
+  VI. A MAIDEN'S YEARNINGS                  43
+
+  VII. DISILLUSION                          50
+
+  VIII. GLIMPSES OF THE WORLD               58
+
+  IX. IDLE DREAMS                           71
+
+PART II.
+
+  I. A NEW FIELD                            85
+
+  II. NEW FRIENDS                           98
+
+  III. ADDED CARES                         107
+
+  IV. SILENT HOMAGE                        121
+
+  V. SMOTHERED FLAMES                      126
+
+  VI. SPIRITUAL COUNSEL                    138
+
+  VII. A WOMAN'S WHIMS                     154
+
+  VIII. A VILLAGE FESTIVAL                 165
+
+  IX. A WOODLAND IDYLL                     193
+
+  X. LOVERS' VOWS                          206
+
+  XI. AN EXPERIMENT AND A FAILURE          217
+
+  XII. PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT             233
+
+  XIII. DESERTED                           251
+
+  XIV. RELIGIOUS FERVOR                    264
+
+  XV. A NEW DELIGHT                        278
+
+
+
+
+CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
+
+
+_Domi mansit, lanam fecit:_ "He remained at home and wrote," is the
+first thing that should be said of Gustave Flaubert. This trait, which
+he shares with many of the writers of his generation,--Renan, Taine,
+Leconte de Lisle and Dumas _fils_,--distinguishes them and distinguishes
+him from those of the preceding generation, who voluntarily sought
+inspiration in disorder and agitation,--Balzac and George Sand, for
+instance (to speak only of romance writers), and the elder Dumas or
+Eugène Sue. Flaubert, indeed, had no "outward life;" he lived only for
+his art.
+
+A second trait of his character, and of his genius as a writer, is that
+of seeing in his art only the art itself--and art alone, without the
+mingling of any vision of fortune or success. A competency,--which he
+had inherited from the great surgeon, his father,--and moderate tastes,
+infinitely more _bourgeois_ than his literature,--permitted him to shun
+the great stumbling-block of the professional man of letters, which, in
+our day, and doubtless in the United States as well as in France, is the
+temptation to coin money with the pen. Never was writer more
+disinterested than Flaubert; and the story is that _Madame Bovary_
+brought him 300 francs--in debts.
+
+A third trait, which helps not only to characterise but to individualise
+him, is his subordination not only of his own existence, but of life in
+general, to his conception of art. It is not enough to say that he lived
+for his art: he saw nothing in the world or in life but material for
+that art,--_Hostis quid aliud quam perpetua materia gloriæ?_--and if it
+be true that others have died of their ambition, it could literally be
+said of Flaubert that he was killed by his art.
+
+It is this point that I should like to bring out in this
+Introduction,--where we need not speak of his Norman origin, or (as his
+friend Ducamp has written in his _Literary Souvenirs_ with a
+disagreeable persistence, and so uselessly!) of his nervousness and
+epilepsy; of his loves or his friendships, but solely of his work. We
+know, in fact, to-day, that if all such details are made clear in the
+biography of a great writer, in no way do they explain his work. The
+author of _Gil Blas_, Alain René Lesage, was a Breton, like the author
+of _Atala_; the Corneille brothers had almost nothing in common. Of all
+our great writers, the one nearest, perhaps, to Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
+who died a victim to delirium from persecution, was Madame Sand, who
+had, without doubt, the sanest and best balanced temperament.
+
+Other writers have sought,--for instance, our great classical authors,
+Pascal, Bossuet and perhaps Corneille,--to influence the thought of
+their time; some, like Molière, La Fontaine, and La Bruyère, to correct
+customs. Others still,--such as our romantic writers, Hugo or De
+Musset,--desired only to express their personal conception of the world
+and of life. And then Balzac, whose object,--almost scientific,--was to
+make a "natural history," a study and description, of the social
+species, as an animal or vegetable species is described in zoology or
+botany. Gustave Flaubert attempted only to work out his art, for and
+through the love of art. Very early in life, as we clearly see from his
+correspondence, his consideration for art was not even that of a social
+but of a _sacred_ function, in which the artist was the priest. We hear
+sometimes, in metaphor and not without irony, of the "priesthood" of the
+artist and the "worship" of art. These expressions must be taken
+literally in Flaubert's case. He was cloistered in his art as a monk in
+his convent or by his discipline; and he truly lived only in meditation
+upon that art, as a Mystic in contemplation of the perfections of his
+God. Nothing outside of art truly interested him, neither science, nor
+things political or religious, nor men, nor women, nor anything in the
+world; and if, sometimes, it was his duty to occupy himself with them,
+it was never in a degree greater than could benefit his art. "The
+accidents of the world"--this is his own expression--appeared to him
+only as things permitted _for the sake of description_, so much so that
+his own existence, even, seemed to him to have no other excuse.
+
+It is that which explains the mixture of "romanticism," "naturalism,"
+and I will add, of "classicism"--which has been pointed out more than
+once in Flaubert's work. _Madame Bovary_ is the masterpiece of
+naturalistic romance and has not been surpassed by the studies of Zola
+or the stories of De Maupassant. On the other hand, there is nothing in
+Hugo, even, more romantic than _The Temptation of Saint Antony_. But it
+is necessary to look for many things in romanticism; and the romanticism
+of Hugo, which was one of the delights of Flaubert, did not resemble
+that of De Musset, (Lord de Musset, as Flaubert called him) which he
+strongly disliked. What he loved in romanticism was the "colour," and
+nothing but the colour. He loved the romanticism of the Orientals, of
+Hugo and Chateaubriand, that plastic romanticism, whose object is to
+substitute in literature "sensations of art" for the "expression of
+ideas," or even of sentiments. It is precisely here that naturalism and
+romanticism--or at least French naturalism, which is very different from
+that of the Russians or the English--join hands. In the one case, as in
+the other, the attempt is made to "represent"--as he himself puts it;
+and when one represents nothing except the vulgar, the common, the
+mediocre, the everyday, commonplace, or grotesque, he is a "naturalist,"
+like the author of _Madame Bovary_; but one is a "romanticist" when,
+like the author of _Salammbô_, he makes this world vanish, and recreates
+a strange land filled with Byzantine or Carthaginian civilization, with
+its barbaric luxury, its splendour of corruption, immoderate appetites,
+and monstrous deities.
+
+We have done wrong in considering Flaubert a naturalist impeded by his
+romanticism, or a romanticist impenitent, irritated with himself because
+of his tendency to naturalism. He was both naturalist and romanticist.
+And in both he was an artist, so much of an artist (I say this without
+fear of contradiction) that he saw nothing in his art but
+"representation," the telling of the truth in all its depth and
+fidelity. _Les Fileuses_ and _La Reddition de Bréda_ are always by
+Velasquez; but the genius of the painter has nothing in common with the
+subject he has chosen or the circumstances that inspired him.
+
+From this source proceeds that insensibility in Flaubert with which he
+has so often been reproached, not without reason, and which divides his
+naturalism from that of the author of _Adam Bede_ or that of the author
+of _Anna Karenina_ by an abyss. Honest, as a man, a good citizen, a good
+son, a good brother, a good friend, Flaubert was indifferent, as an
+artist, to all that did not belong to his art. "I believe that it is
+necessary to love nothing," he has written somewhere, and even
+underscored it--that is to say, it is necessary to hover impartially
+above all objective points. And, in fact, as nothing passed before his
+eyes that he considered did not lie within the possibility of
+representation, he made it a law unto himself to look nothing in the
+face except from this point of view.
+
+In this regard one may compare his attitude in the presence of his model
+to that of his contemporaries, Renan, for example, or Taine, in the
+presence of the object of their studies. With them also critical
+impartiality resembles not only indifference but insensibility. Not only
+have they refused to confound their emotions with their judgments, but
+their judgments have no value in their eyes except as they separate them
+from their emotions,--as they emancipate themselves from them or even
+place themselves in opposition to them. In like manner did Flaubert. The
+first condition of an exact representation of things is to dominate
+them; and in order to dominate them, is it not necessary to begin by
+detaching yourself from them? We see dimly through tears, and we are
+too much absorbed in that which gives us pleasure to be good judges of
+it. "An ideal society would be one where each individual performed his
+duty according to his ability. Now, then, I do my duty as best I can;
+I am forsaken.... No one pities my misfortunes; those of others
+occupy their attention! I give to humanity what it gives to
+me--_indifference!_" Is not the link between Flaubert's "indifference"
+and his conception of art evident here?
+
+But Flaubert said besides: "Living does not concern me! It is only
+necessary to shun suffering." Should we not change the name of this to
+"egotism" or "insensibility?" We might, indeed, did we not know that
+this egotism germinated in Flaubert as a means of discipline. The object
+of this discipline was to concentrate, for the profit of his art, those
+qualities or forces which the ordinary man dissipates in the pursuit of
+useless pleasures, or squanders in intensity of life.
+
+We may take account at the same time of the nature of his pessimism. For
+there are many ways of being a pessimist, and Flaubert's was not at all
+like that of Schopenhauer or Leopardi. His pessimism, real and sincere,
+proceeded neither from personally grievous experiences of life, as did
+that of the recluse of Recanati, nor from a philosophic or logical view
+of the conditions of existence in which humanity is placed, like the
+pessimism of the Frankfort philosopher. Flaubert was rather a victim of
+what Théophile Gautier, in his well-known _Emaux et Camées_, calls by
+the singularly happy name of "the Luminous Spleen of the Orient." To
+tell the truth, what Flaubert could not pardon in humanity was that it
+did not make enough of art, and so his pessimism was a consequence of
+his æstheticism. "As lovers of the beautiful," he tells us, "we are all
+outlaws! Humanity hates us; we do not serve it; we hate it because it
+wounds us! Let us love, then, in art, as the Mystics love their God; and
+let all pale before this love."
+
+These lines are dated 1853, before he had published anything. Therefore,
+Flaubert did not express himself thus because he was not successful. His
+self-love was not in question! No one had yet criticised or discussed
+him. But he felt that his ideal of art, an art which he could not
+renounce, was opposed to the ideal methods, if they are ideal, held by
+his contemporaries; and the vision of the combats that he must face at
+once exalted and exasperated him. His pessimism was of the élite, or
+rather the minority of one who feels himself, or at least believes
+himself to be, superior, and who, knowing well that he will always be in
+the minority, fears, and rightly too, that he will not be recognised. It
+is a form of pessimism less rare in our day than one would think, and
+Taine, among others, said practically the same thing when he averred
+that "one writes only for one or two hundred people in Europe, or in the
+world." It may be that this is too individual a case! A more liberal
+estimate would be that we write for all those who can comprehend us;
+that style has for its first object the increase of such a number; and,
+after that, if there still be those who cannot comprehend us, no reason
+for despair exists on our part or on theirs.
+
+Let us follow, now, the consequences of this principle in Flaubert's
+work, and see successively all that his work means, and the dogma of
+art which proceeds from it.
+
+At first you are tempted to believe that Flaubert's work is diverse,
+though inconsiderable in volume; and, primarily do not see clearly the
+threads which unite the _Education Sentimentale_ with the _Tentation de
+Saint Antoine_ or _Salammbô_ with _Madame Bovary_.
+
+On the one side Christian Egypt, and on the other the France of 1848,
+Madame Arnoux, Rosanette, and Frederick Moreau, the Orleanist carnival,
+and the "underwood" of Fontainebleau. Here, Carthage, Hamilcar,
+Hannibal, Narr' Havas, the Numidian hero, and Spendius, the Greek slave,
+the lions in bondage, the pomegranate trees which they sprinkled with
+silphium, the whole a strange and barbaric world; then Charles Bovary,
+the chemist Homais, his son Napoléon and his daughter Athalie,
+provincial life in the time of the Second Empire; _bourgeois_ adultery,
+_diligences_ and notaries' clerks. Then again Herodias, Salome, Saint
+Jean-Baptiste, or Saint Julien l'Hospitalier, the middle ages and
+antiquity,--all, at first sight, seem far removed, one from the other.
+At first one must admire, in such a contrast of subjects and colors, the
+extraordinary skill, let us say the _virtuosité_, of the artist. But, if
+we look more closely, we shall not be slow to perceive that no work is
+more homogeneous than that of Flaubert, and that, in truth, the
+_Education Sentimentale_, differs from _Salammbô_ only as a Kermesse of
+Rubens, for example, or a Bacchante of Poussin differs from the
+apotheoses or the Church pictures of the painters themselves. The making
+is the same, and you immediately recognise the hand. The difference is
+in the choice of subjects, which is of no importance, since Flaubert is
+only attempting to "represent" something, and in the choice of material,
+when he is "representing," he is no longer free. That is the reason why,
+if one seek for lessons in "naturalism" in _Salammbô_, he will find
+them, and will also find all the "romanticism" he seeks in the
+_Education Sentimentale_ and in _Madame Bovary_.
+
+From the other lessons that flow from this work, I find some in
+rhetoric, in art, in invention, in composition, and two or three of
+great import, eloquent in their bearing upon the history of contemporary
+French literature.
+
+A master does not mingle or engage his personality in his subject; but,
+as a God creates from the height of his serenity, without passion, if
+without love, so the poet or the artist expands the thing he touches,
+and, on each occasion, brings to bear upon it all the faculties that are
+his by toil but not innate. Nothing is demanded of the workers, and they
+make no confessions or confidences. Literature and art are not, nor
+should be, the expression of men's emotions, and still less the history
+of their lives. That is the reason why, while from reading _René_, for
+example, or _Fraziella_, _Delphine_, _Corinne_, _Adolphe_, _Indiana_,
+_Volupté_, or some of the romances of Balzac--_La Muse du Departement_,
+or _Un Grand Homme de Province à Paris_,--you could induct Balzac's
+entire psychology, or Sainte-Beuve's, or Madame Sand's, Benjamin
+Constant's, Madame de Staël's or Chateaubriand's, you would find in
+_Madame Bovary_ or _Salammbô_ nothing of Flaubert, except his
+temperament, his taste, and his ideals as an artist. Let us suppose
+another Flaubert, who did not live at Rouen, whose life is not that
+related in his correspondence, who was not the friend of Maxime Ducamp
+or of Louise Colet, and the _Education Sentimentale_ or the _Tentation
+de Saint Antoine_ would not be in the least different from what they are
+now, nor should we see one line of change to be made. This is a triumph
+in objective art. "I do not wish to consider art as an overflow of
+passion," he wrote once, a little brutally. "I love my little niece as
+if she were my daughter, and I am sufficiently active in her behalf to
+prove that these are not empty phrases. But may I be flayed alive rather
+than exploit that kind of thing in style!" It has been but a short
+hundred years since, as he expressed it, romanticism "exploited its
+emotions in style," and made art from the heart.
+
+"Ah! strike upon the heart, 'tis there that genius lies!" But, for a
+whole generation, _Madame Bovary_, _Salammbô_ and _Education
+Sentimentale_ have been teaching the contrary. "The author in his work
+should be like God in the universe, everywhere present but nowhere
+visible. Art being second nature, the creator of this nature should act
+through analogous procedure. He must be felt in each atom, under every
+aspect, concealed but infinite; the effect upon the spectator should be
+a kind of amazement." Furthermore, he remarks that this principle was
+the core of Greek art. I know not, or at least I do not recall, whether
+he had observed (as he should, since Anglo-Saxons have been quick to
+notice it) that this "principle" underlies the art of Shakespeare.
+
+To realize this principle in work you must proceed scientifically, and,
+in this connection, we may notice that Flaubert's idea is that of
+Leconte de Lisle in the preface to his _Poèmes Antiques_, and of Taine
+in his lectures upon _L'Idéal dans l'art_.
+
+Romanticism had confounded the picturesque with the anecdotal; character
+with accident; colour with oddity. _Han d'Islande_, _Nôtre-Dame de
+Paris_ and some romances of Balzac, the first and poorest, not signed
+with his name, may serve as an example. The classic writers on their
+side, had not always distinguished very profoundly the difference
+between the general and the universal, the principal and the accessory,
+the permanent and the superficial. We see this in the French comedies of
+the eighteenth century, even in some of Molière's--in his _L'Avare_ and
+his _Le Misanthrope_, for example. Flaubert believed that a means of
+terminating this conflict is to be found in method; and that is the
+reason why, if we confine ourselves wholly to the consideration of the
+medium in his works, we shall find the _Tentation de Saint Antoine_
+entirely romantic; while, as a retaliation, nothing is more classic than
+_Madame Bovary_.
+
+The reason for this is, that in his subject, whatever it was,
+Carthaginian or low Norman, refined or _bourgeois_, modern or antique,
+he saw only the subject itself, with the eyes and after the manner of a
+naturalist, who is concerned only in knowing thoroughly the plant or the
+animal under observation. There is no sentiment in botany or in
+chemistry, and in them the desideratum is truth. Singleness of aim is
+the primary virtue in a _savant_. Things are what they are, and we
+demand of him that he show them to us as they are. We accuse him of
+lying if he disguises, weakens, alters or embellishes them.
+
+Likewise the artist! His function is ever to "represent:" and in order
+to accomplish this, he should, like the savant, mirror only the facts.
+After this, what do the names "romanticism" or "classicism" signify?
+Their sole use is to indicate the side taken; they are, so to speak, an
+acknowledgment that the writer is adorning the occurrence he is about to
+represent. He may make it more universal or more characteristic than
+nature! But, inversely, if all art is concentrated upon the
+representation, what matters the subject? Is one animal or plant more
+interesting than another to the naturalist? Does a name matter? All
+demand the same attention. Art can make exception in its subjects no
+more than science.
+
+If we ask in what consists the difference between science and art, on
+this basis, Flaubert, with Leconte de Lisle and with Taine, will tell us
+that it is in the beauty which communicates prestige to the work, or in
+the power of form.
+
+"What I have just written might be taken for something of Paul de
+Kock's, had I not given it a profoundly literary form," wrote Flaubert,
+while he was at work on _Madame Bovary_; "but how, out of trivial
+dialogue, produce style? Yet it is absolutely necessary! It must be
+done!" He went further still, and persuaded himself that style had a
+value in itself, intrinsic and absolute, aside from the subject. In
+fact, if the subject had no importance of its own, and if there were no
+personal motives for choosing one subject rather than another, what
+reason would there be for writing _Madame Bovary_ or _Salammbô_? One
+alone: and that to "make something out of nothing," to produce a work of
+art from things of no import. For though everyone has some ideas, and
+everyone has had experience in some kind of life, it is given to few to
+be able to express their experience or their ideas in terms of beauty.
+This, precisely, is the goal of art.
+
+Form, then, is the great preoccupation of the artist, since, if he is an
+artist, it is through form, and in the perfection or originality of that
+form, that his triumph comes. Nothing stands out from the general
+mediocrity except by means of form; nothing becomes concrete, assuming
+immortality, save through form. Form in art is queen and sovereign. Even
+truth makes itself felt only through the attractiveness of form. And
+further, we cannot part one from the other; they are not opposed to each
+other; they are at one; and art in every phase consists only in this
+union. It is the end of art to give the superior life of form to that
+which has it not; and finally, this superior life of form, this magic
+wand of style, rhythmic as verse and terse as science, by firmly
+establishing the thing it touches, withdraws it from that law of change,
+constant in its inconstancy, which is the miserable condition of
+existence.
+
+    All passes; art in its strength
+    Alone remains to all eternity;
+          The bust
+    Survives the city.
+
+This it is that makes up the charm, the social dignity, and the lasting
+grandeur of art.
+
+This is not the place to discuss the "æsthetic" quality, and I shall
+content myself with indicating briefly some of the objections it has
+called forth.
+
+Has form indeed all the importance in literature that Flaubert claimed
+for it? And what importance has it in sculpture, for example, or in
+painting? Let us grant its necessity. Colour and line, which are, so to
+speak, the primal elements in the alphabet of painting and of sculpture,
+have not in themselves determined and precise significance. Yellow and
+red, green and blue are only general and confused sensations. But words
+express particular sentiments and well-defined ideas, and have a value
+that does not depend upon the form or the quality of the words. You
+cannot, then, in using them, distinguish between significance and form,
+or combine them independently of the idea they are intended to convey,
+as is possible with colours and with lines, solely for the beauty that
+results from combination. If literary art is a "representation," it is
+also something more; and the lapse in Flaubert, as in all those who have
+followed him in the letter, lies in having missed this distinction. You
+cannot write merely to represent; you write also to express ideas, to
+determine or to modify convictions; you write that you may act, or impel
+others to act: these are effects beyond the power of painting or of
+sculpture. A statue or a picture never brought about a revolution; a
+book, a pamphlet, nay, a few fiery words, have overturned a dynasty.
+
+It is no longer true, as a whole generation of writers has believed,
+that art and science may be one and the same thing; or that the first,
+as Taine has said, may be an "anticipation of the second." We could not
+in the presence of our fellow-creatures and their suffering affect the
+indifference of a naturalist before the plant or the animal he is
+studying. Whatever the nature of "human phenomena" may be, we in our
+quality as man can only look at them with human eyes, and could
+temptation make us change our point of view, it would properly be called
+inhuman.
+
+One might add that, if it is not certain that nature was made for man,
+and if, for that reason, science is wholly independent of conscience,
+as we take it, it is otherwise with art. We know that man was not made
+for art, but that art was made for man. We forget each time we speak of
+"art for art's sake" that there is need precisely to define the meaning
+of the expression and to recall that but for truth art could not have
+for its object the perfecting of political institutions, the uplifting
+of the masses, the correction of customs, the teachings of religion, and
+that although this may lead finally to the realization of beauty, it
+nevertheless remains the duty of man, and consequently, is human in its
+origin, human in its development, and human in its aim.
+
+Upon all these points, it is only necessary to think sensibly, as also
+upon the question--which we have not touched upon,--of knowing under
+what conditions, in what sense, and in what degree the person of the
+artist can or should remain foreign to his work.
+
+But a peculiarity of Flaubert's,--and one more personal, which even most
+of the naturalists have not shared with him, neither the Dutch in their
+paintings, nor the English in the history of romance (the author of _Tom
+Jones_ or of _Clarissa Harlowe_), nor the Russians, Tolstoi or
+Dostoiefski,--is to despise the rôle of irony in art. "My personages are
+profoundly repugnant to me," he wrote, _à propos_ of _Madame Bovary_.
+But they were not always repugnant to him, at least not all of them,
+and, in verification of this, we find that he has not for Spendius,
+Matho, Hamilcar, and Hanno, the boundless scorn that he affects for
+Homais or for Bournisien, for Bouvard or for Pecuchet.
+
+We recognise here the particular and special form of Flaubert's
+pessimism. That there could be people in the world, among his
+contemporaries, who were not wholly absorbed and preoccupied with art,
+surpassed his comprehension, and when this indifference did not arouse
+an indignation which exasperated him even to blows, it drew from him a
+scornful laughter that one might call Homeric or Rabelaisian, since it
+incited more to anger than to gaiety. And this is the reason why _Madame
+Bovary_, _Education Sentimentale_, _Un Coeur Simple_, and _Bouvard et
+Pecuchet_ would be more truly named were they called satires and not
+representations.
+
+The exaggeration of the principle here recoils upon itself. That
+disinterestedness, that impartiality, that serenity which permitted him
+to "hover impartially above all objects" deserted him. A satirist, or to
+be more exact, a caricaturist, awoke within the naturalist. He raged at
+his own characters. He railed at them and mocked them. The interest of
+the representation had undergone a change. He was no longer in the
+attitude of mere fidelity to facts, but in a state of scorn and violent
+derision. Homais and Bournisien are no longer studies in themselves, but
+a burden to Flaubert. His _Education Sentimentale_, in spite of him,
+became, to use his own expression, an overflow of rancour. In _Bouvard
+et Pecuchet_ he gave way to his hatred of humanity; here, as a favour,
+and under the mask of irony, he brings himself into his work, and, like
+a simple Madame Sand, or a vulgar De Musset, we perceive Flaubert
+himself, bull-necked and ruddy, with the moustaches of a Gallic chief,
+agonizing at each turn in the romance.
+
+It is not necessary to exaggerate Flaubert's influence. In his time
+there were ten other writers, none of whom equalled him,--Parnassians in
+poetry, positivists in criticism, realists in romance or in dramatic
+writing,--who laboured at the same work. His æstheticism is not his
+alone, yet _Madame Bovary_ and _Salammbô_ shot like unexpected meteors
+out of a grey sky, the dull, low sky of the Second Empire. In 1860 the
+sky was not so grey or so low; and the _Poèmes Antiques_ of Leconte de
+Lisle, the _Études d'histoire religieuse_ of Renan, and the _Essais de
+Critique_ of Taine, are possibly not unworthy to be placed in parallel
+or comparison with the first writings of Flaubert. An exquisite judge of
+things of the mind, J. J. Weiss, very clearly saw at that time what
+there was in common in all these works, in the glory of which he was not
+deceived when he added the _Fleurs du Mai_ by Charles Baudelaire, and
+the first comedies of Alexandre Dumas _fils_. But the truth is, not one
+of these works was marked with signs of masterly maturity in like degree
+with _Madame Bovary_.
+
+It is, then, natural that, from day to day, Flaubert should become a
+guide, and here, if we consider the nature of the lessons he gives, we
+cannot deny their towering excellence.
+
+If there was need to agitate against romanticism, _Madame Bovary_
+performed the duty; and if in this agitation there was need to save what
+was worth salvation, _Salammbô_ saved it. If it was fitting to recall to
+poets and to writers of romance, to Madame Sand herself and Victor Hugo,
+that art was not invented as a public carrier for their confidences, it
+is still Flaubert who does it. He taught the school of hasty writers
+that talent, or even genius, is in need of discipline,--the discipline
+of a long and painful prenticehood in the making and unmaking of their
+work. He has widened, and especially has he hollowed and deepened, the
+notion that romanticism was born of nature, and, in doing this, has
+brought art back to the fountain-head of inspiration. His rhetoric and
+æstheticism brought him face to face with Nature, enabled him to see
+her, a gift as rare as it is great, and to "represent" her--the proof of
+the preceding. It is the artist that judges the model. Poets and
+romance-writers, like painters, we value only in as much as they
+represent life--by and for the fidelity, the originality, the novelty,
+the depth, the distinction, the perfection with which they represent it.
+It is the rule of rules, the principle of principles! And if Flaubert
+had no other merit than to have seen this better than any other writer
+of his age, it would be enough to assure for him a place, and a very
+exalted place, in the Pantheon of French Literature.
+
+F. BRUNETIÈRE
+
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE
+
+
+Gustave Flaubert was born at Rouen, December 12, 1821. His father was a
+physician, who later became chief surgeon in the Hôtel Dieu of that
+city, and his mother, Anne-Justine-Carline Fleuriot, was of Norman
+extraction.
+
+Fourth of a family of six children, as a child Flaubert exhibited marked
+fondness for stories, and, with his favourite sister, Caroline, would
+invent them for pastime. As a youth, he was exceedingly handsome, tall,
+broad-shouldered and athletic, of independent turn of mind, fond of
+study, and caring little for the luxuries of life. He attended the
+college of Rouen, but showed no marked characteristic save a pronounced
+taste for history. After graduating, he went to Paris to read law, at
+the École de Droit. At this time disease, the nature of which he always
+endeavored to conceal from the world, attacked him and compelled a
+return to Rouen. The complaint, as revealed after his death by Maxime
+Ducamp, was epilepsy, and the constant fear of suffering an attack in
+public led Flaubert to live the life of a recluse.
+
+The death of his father occurring at this critical period, Flaubert
+abandoned the study of law, which he had begun only in obedience to the
+formally expressed wish of his family. Having a comfortable income, he
+turned his thoughts to literature, and from that time all other work was
+distasteful. He read and wrote incessantly, although at this period he
+never completed anything. Among his papers were found several fragments
+written between his eighteenth and twentieth years. Some bear the stamp
+of his individuality, if not in the substance, which is romantic,--at
+least in the form, which is peculiarly lucid and concise,--for instance,
+the slight, romantic, autobiographic sketch entitled _Novembre_.
+
+Flaubert wrote neither for money nor for fame. To him, art was religion,
+and to it he sacrificed his life. Perfection of style was his goal; and
+unremitting devotion to his ideal slew him. That he was never satisfied
+with what he wrote, his letters show; and all who knew him marvelled at
+his laborious and pathetic application to his work. He settled first in
+Croisset, near Rouen, with his family, but shortly afterwards went to
+Brittany with Maxime Ducamp. On his return he planned _La Tentation de
+Saint Antoine_, which grew out of a fragmentary sketch entitled _Smarh_
+(a mediæval Mystery, the manuscript tells us), written in early youth.
+_La Tentation_ proved a source of labor, for he never ceased revising it
+until it appeared in book form in 1874. In 1847, he wrote a modern play,
+entitled _Le Candidat_, produced in 1874 at the Vaudeville. It was not
+his first dramatic effort, as he had already written a sort of lyric
+fairy-play, _Le Château des Coeurs_, which was published in his
+_Oeuvres Posthumes_.
+
+In 1849 Flaubert visited Greece, Egypt, and Syria, again accompanied by
+his friend Maxime Ducamp. After his return he planned a book of
+impressions similar to _Par les Champs et par les Grèves_, which was the
+result of the trip to Brittany; but the beginning only was achieved.
+Still he gathered many data for his future great novel, _Salammbô_. The
+year 1851 found him back in Croisset, working at _La Tentation de Saint
+Antoine_, which he dropped suddenly, when half finished, for an entirely
+different subject--_Madame Bovary_, a novel of provincial life,
+published first in 1857 in the _Revue de Paris_. For this Flaubert was
+prosecuted, on the charge of offending against public morals, but was
+acquitted after the remarkable defense offered by Maître Senard.
+
+Flaubert's fame dates from _Madame Bovary_, which was much discussed by
+press and public. Many, including his friend, Maxime Ducamp, condemned
+it, but Sainte-Beuve gave it his decisive and courageous approval. It
+was generally considered, however, as the starting point of a new phase
+in letters, frankly realistic, and intent on understanding and
+expressing everything. Such success might have influenced Flaubert's
+artistic inclinations but did not, for while _Madame Bovary_ was
+appearing in the _Revue de Paris_, the _Artiste_ was publishing
+fragments of _La Tentation de Saint Antoine_.
+
+In 1858 Flaubert went to Tunis, visited the site of ancient Carthage,
+and four years afterwards wrote _Salammbô_, a marvellous reconstitution,
+more than half intuitive, of a civilisation practically unrecorded in
+history. This extraordinary book did not call forth the enthusiasm that
+greeted _Madame Bovary_. Flaubert, in whom correctness of detail was a
+passion, was condemned, even by Sainte-Beuve, for choosing from all
+history a civilisation of which so little is known. The author replied,
+and a lengthy controversy ensued, but it was not a subject that could be
+settled definitely in one way or another.
+
+In _L'Education Sentimentale, roman d'un jeune homme_, published in
+1869, Flaubert returns momentarily to the style which brought him such
+rapid and deserved celebrity. In 1877 appeared _Trois Contes_, three
+short stories written in the impersonal style of _Salammbô_, contrasting
+strangely with _La Legende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier_ and
+_Herodias_, wherein Flaubert shows himself supreme in the art of
+word-painting.
+
+Death came to him on May 8, 1880, as he was writing the last chapters of
+a new work, _Bouvard et Pecuchet_, which was published in part after he
+died and later appeared in book form (1881).
+
+At the age of twenty-five, Flaubert met the only woman who in any way
+entered his sentimental life. She was an author, the wife of Lucien
+Colet, and the "Madame X" of the Correspondence. Their friendship lasted
+eight years and ended unpleasantly, Flaubert being too absorbed by his
+worship for art to let passion sway him.
+
+He remained unmarried because his love for his mother and family made
+calls upon him that he would not neglect. He was indifferent to women,
+treated them with paternal indulgence, and often avowed that "woman is
+the undoing of the just." Yet a warm friendship existed between him and
+George Sand, and many of his letters are addressed to her, touching upon
+various questions in art, literature, and politics.
+
+The misanthropy which haunted Flaubert, of which so much has been said,
+was not innate, but was acquired through the constant contemplation of
+human folly. It was natural for him to be cheerful and kind-hearted,
+and of his generosity and disinterestedness not enough can be said. At
+the close of his life financial difficulties assailed him, for he had
+given a great part of his fortune to the support of a niece, restricting
+his own expenses and living as modestly as possible. In 1879, M. Jules
+Ferry, then Minister of Public Instruction, offered him a place in the
+Bibliothèque Mazarine, but the appointment was not confirmed.
+
+Flaubert's method of production was slow and laborious. Sometimes weeks
+were required to write a few pages, for he accumulated masses of notes
+and, it must be said, so much erudition as at times to impede action. He
+thought no toil too great, did it but aid him in his pursuit of literary
+perfection, and when the work that called for such expenditure of
+strength and thought was finished, he looked for no reward save that of
+a satisfied soul. Alien to business wisdom, he believed that to set a
+price upon his work disparaged it.
+
+In Flaubert, a Romanticist and a Naturalist at first were blended. But
+the latter tendency was fostered and acknowledged, while the former was
+repressed. He was an ardent advocate of the impersonal in art, declaring
+that an author should not in a page, a line, or a word, express the
+smallest part of an opinion. To him a writer was a mirror, but a mirror
+that reflected life while adding that divine effulgence which is Art. Of
+him a French Romanticist still living says:
+
+     "Imagination was espoused by Unremitting-Toil-in-Faith and bore
+     Flaubert. France fed the child, but Art stepped in and gave him to
+     the Nations as a Beacon for the worshippers of
+     Truth-in-Letters-and-in-Life."
+
+The city of Rouen reared a monument to Flaubert's memory, but on the
+spot where he breathed his last are reared the chimneys and the
+buildings of a factory, a tribute--possibly unconscious--to reality in
+life.
+
+
+Before writing _Madame Bovary_ Flaubert had tested himself, and an idea
+of the scope and variety of his ideas may be gained from the following
+list of inedited and unfinished fragments:
+
+HISTORICAL
+
+    The Death of the Due de Guise, 1835
+    Norman Chronicle of the Tenth Century, 1836
+    Two Hands on a Crown, or, During the Fifteenth Century, 1836.
+    Essay on the Struggle between Priesthood and Empire, 1838.
+    Rome and the Cæsars, 1839.
+
+TRAVELS
+
+    Various notes on Travels to the Pyrenean Mountains, Corsica,
+    Spain and the Orient, from 1840 to 1850.
+
+TALES AND NOVELS
+
+    The Plague in Florence, 1836
+    Rage and Impotence, 1836
+    The Society Woman, fantastic verses, 1836
+    Bibliomania, 1836
+    An Exquisite Perfume, or, The Buffoons, 1836.
+    Dreams of the Infernal Regions, 1837
+    Passion and Chastity, 1837
+    The Funeral of Dr. Mathurin, or, During the XVth Century, 1839.
+    Frenzy and Death, 1843
+    Sentimental Education (not the novel published under same title).
+    1843.
+
+PLAYS
+
+    Louis XI, Drama, 1838
+    Discovery of Vaccination, a parody of tragic style; one act only
+    was written.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+    On Romantic Literature in France
+
+MISCELLANY
+
+    Quidquid volueris? A psychological study, 1837.
+    Agony (Sceptical Thoughts), 1838
+    Art and Commerce, 1839.
+    Several nameless sketches.
+
+Unfortunately, nearly all the works of Flaubert's youth were mere
+sketches, laid aside by him. Their publication would have added nothing
+to his fame. Still, the loss of some would have been deplorable, to wit,
+such gems as _Novembre_, _The Dance of Death_, _Rabelais_, and the
+travels, _Over Strand and Field_. These sketches will be found in this
+edition.
+
+ROBERT ARNOT
+
+
+
+
+MADAME BOVARY
+
+PART I.
+
+I.
+
+THE NEW BOY.
+
+
+We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new
+fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a
+large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if
+just surprised at his work.
+
+The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the
+class-master, he said to him in a low voice:
+
+"Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be
+in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into
+one of the upper classes, as becomes his age."
+
+The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he
+could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller
+than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village
+chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was
+not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black
+buttons must have been tight about the armholes, and showed at the
+opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in
+blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by
+braces. He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots.
+
+We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as
+attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean
+on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was
+obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.
+
+When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on
+the floor so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to
+toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a
+lot of dust: it was "the thing."
+
+But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt
+it, the "new fellow" was still holding his cap on his knees even after
+prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in
+which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin
+cap, and cotton nightcap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb
+ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval,
+stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in
+succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;
+after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with
+complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long, thin cord,
+small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new;
+its peak shone.
+
+"Rise," said the master.
+
+He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to
+pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked
+it up once more.
+
+"Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag.
+
+There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the
+poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap
+in his hand, leave it on the floor, or put it on his head. He sat down
+again and placed it on his knee.
+
+"Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name."
+
+The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name.
+
+"Again!"
+
+The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of
+the class.
+
+"Louder!" cried the master; "louder!"
+
+The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately
+large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling some one
+the word, "Charbovari."
+
+A hubbub broke out, rose in _crescendo_ with bursts of shrill voices
+(they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari!"), then
+died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty,
+and now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence
+rose here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.
+
+However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established
+in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of
+"Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read,
+at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form
+at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going
+hesitated.
+
+"What are you looking for?" asked the master.
+
+"My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round
+him.
+
+"Five hundred verses for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice,
+stopped, like the _Quos ego_, a fresh outburst "Silence!" continued the
+master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he had
+just taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate
+'_ridiculus sum_' twenty times." Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll
+find your cap again; it hasn't been stolen."
+
+Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained
+for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some
+paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he
+wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.
+
+In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk,
+arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him
+working conscientiously, looking out every word in the dictionary, and
+taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he
+showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his
+rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the curé of
+his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from
+motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.
+
+His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolomé Bovary, retired
+assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription
+scandals, and forced at that time to leave the service, had then taken
+advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand
+francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen
+in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his
+spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache,
+his fingers always garnished with rings, and dressed in loud colors, he
+had the dash of a military man with the easy air of a commercial
+traveller. Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's
+fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not
+coming in at night till after the theater, and haunting cafés. The
+father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in
+for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country,
+where he thought he would make money. But, as he knew no more about
+farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to
+plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the
+finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the
+fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he would do better
+to give up all speculation.
+
+For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of the
+provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half
+private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his
+luck, jealous of every one, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five,
+sick of men, he said, and determined to live in peace.
+
+His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a
+thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once,
+expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the
+fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered,
+grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at
+first, when she had seen him going after all the village drabs, and when
+a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking
+drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her
+anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was
+constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the
+lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them
+renewed, and at home, ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen,
+paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally
+besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say
+disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into
+the cinders.
+
+When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,
+the lad was spoiled as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with
+jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the
+philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the
+young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain
+virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing
+him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong
+constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink
+off large draughts of rum, and to jeer at religious processions. But,
+peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His
+mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him
+tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety
+and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the
+child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of
+high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an
+engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even on an old piano
+she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur
+Bovary, caring little for letters, said: "It is not worth while. Shall
+we ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a
+practice, or to start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always
+gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked
+about the village.
+
+He went after the laborers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens
+that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the
+geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in
+the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and
+at great fêtes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he
+might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward
+by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong of
+hand, fresh of color.
+
+When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began his
+lessons. The curé took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and
+irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare
+moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a
+burial; or else the curé, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil
+after the _Angelus_. They went up to his room and settled down; the
+flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell
+asleep and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his
+stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,
+when Monsieur le Curé, on his way back after administering the viaticum
+to some sick person in the neighborhood, caught sight of Charles playing
+about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour,
+and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the
+foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All
+the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man"
+had a very good memory.
+
+Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.
+Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a
+struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take
+his first communion.
+
+Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to
+school at Rouen, whither his father took him towards the end of October,
+at the time of the St. Romain fair.
+
+It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him.
+He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in
+school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, and
+ate well in the refectory. He had _in loco parentis_ a wholesale
+ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays
+after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the
+boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before
+supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with
+red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or
+read an old volume of "Anarchasis" that was knocking about the study.
+When we went for walks he talked to the servant who, like himself, came
+from the country.
+
+By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once
+even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his
+third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study
+medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself.
+
+His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she
+knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his board,
+got him furniture, a table and two chairs, sent home for an old
+cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with
+the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child. Then at the end of a
+week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to be good, now that he
+was going to be left to himself.
+
+The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him: lectures on
+anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on
+pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,
+without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose
+etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to
+sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.
+
+He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did
+not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all
+the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task
+like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not
+knowing what work he is doing.
+
+To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a
+piece of veal baked in the oven, on which he lunched when he came back
+from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall. After
+this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the
+hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the
+evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his room
+and set to work again in his wet clothes, that smoked as he sat in front
+of the hot stove.
+
+On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are
+empty, when the servants are playing shuttlecock at the doors, he opened
+his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter of
+Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the bridges
+and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling on the
+banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting from the
+attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite, beyond the
+roofs, spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How pleasant it
+must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he expanded his
+nostrils to breathe in the sweet odors of the country which did not
+reach him.
+
+He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look
+that made it almost interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he
+abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the
+next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little
+he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the
+public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every
+evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the
+small sheep-bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his
+freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see
+life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his
+hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things
+hidden within him come out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to
+his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Béranger, learnt how to
+make punch, and, finally, how to make love.
+
+Thanks to these preparatory labors, he failed completely in his
+examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night
+to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
+of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused him,
+threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners,
+encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight.
+It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was
+old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man
+born of him could be a fool.
+
+So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,
+ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty
+well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.
+
+Where should he go to practise? To Tostes, where there was only one old
+doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his
+death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was
+installed, opposite his place, as his successor.
+
+But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him
+taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practise it; he
+must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe,
+who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs. Though
+she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the
+spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her ends
+Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in very
+cleverly baffling the intrigues of a pork-butcher backed up by the
+priests.
+
+Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he
+would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his
+wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast
+every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients
+who did not pay. She opened his letters, watched his comings and goings,
+and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his
+surgery.
+
+She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She
+constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of
+footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to
+her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles
+returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from
+beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit
+down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he
+was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be
+unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little
+more love.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A GOOD PATIENT.
+
+
+One night toward eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of a
+horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the
+garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.
+He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Nastasie came downstairs
+shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left
+his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He
+pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in
+a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested his elbow on the
+pillow to read it. Nastasie, standing near the bed, held the light.
+Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.
+
+This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur
+Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken
+leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across
+country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;
+Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was
+decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three
+hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and
+show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.
+
+Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his
+cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,
+he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped
+of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that
+are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly
+remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures
+he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of
+the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers
+bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as
+eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals
+seemed like dark violet stains on the vast gray surface, that on the
+horizon faded into the gloom of the sky, Charles from time to time
+opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and sleep coming upon him, he soon
+fell into a doze wherein his recent sensations blending with memories,
+he became conscious of a double self, at once student and married man,
+lying in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation theater as of
+old. The warm smell of poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh
+odor of dew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of
+the bed, and saw his wife sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came
+upon a boy sitting on the grass at the edge of a ditch.
+
+"Are you the doctor?" asked the child.
+
+And on Charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on
+in front of him.
+
+The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk
+that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers. He had
+broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a Twelfth-night
+feast at a neighbor's. His wife had been dead for two years. There was
+only his daughter, who helped him to keep house, with him.
+
+The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux. The
+little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared; then he
+came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The horse slipped
+on the wet grass; Charles had to stoop to pass under the branches. The
+watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their chains. As he
+entered the Bertaux the horse took fright and stumbled.
+
+It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the
+open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new
+racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from
+which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys five or six
+peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of
+it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your
+hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with
+their whips, shafts, and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool
+were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The
+courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and
+the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.
+
+A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the
+threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the
+kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servants' breakfast was
+boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were
+drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of
+the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while
+along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the
+hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the
+window, was mirrored fitfully.
+
+Charles went up to the first floor to see the patient. He found him in
+his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton
+nightcap far away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white
+skin and blue eyes, the fore part of his head was bald, and he wore
+ear-rings. Near him on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence
+he poured himself out a little from time to time to keep up his spirits;
+but as soon as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and
+instead of swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, he
+began to groan feebly.
+
+The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication. Charles
+could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind the
+devices of his masters at the bedside of patients, he comforted the
+sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon
+that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some
+splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Charles
+selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment of
+window-pane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and
+Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before
+she found her workcase, her father grew impatient; she did not answer,
+but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her
+mouth to suck. Charles was much surprised at the whiteness of her nails.
+They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of
+Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not
+white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too
+long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in
+her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and
+her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.
+
+The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself
+to "pick a bit" before he left.
+
+Charles went down into the room on the ground-floor. Knives and forks
+and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a
+huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing
+Turks. There was an odor of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from
+a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were
+sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the
+neighboring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of
+decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the
+wall, whose green paint had scaled off from the effects of saltpeter,
+was a crayon head of Minerva in a gold frame, underneath which was
+written in Gothic letters "To dear Papa."
+
+First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold,
+of the wolves that infested the fields at night. Mademoiselle Rouault
+did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look
+after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she
+ate. This showed something of her full lips, that she had a habit of
+biting when silent.
+
+Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose two
+black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was
+parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the
+curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined
+behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the
+country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of
+her cheek was rose-colored. She had, like a man, thrust in between two
+buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.
+
+When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the
+room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the
+window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked
+down by the wind. She turned round.
+
+"Are you looking for anything?" she asked.
+
+"My whip, if you please," he answered.
+
+He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It
+had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle
+Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. Charles, out of politeness,
+made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment
+felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath
+him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder
+as she handed him his whip.
+
+Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised, he
+went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without
+counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.
+
+Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favorably; and
+when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk
+alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man of
+great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured
+better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.
+
+As to Charles, he did not stay to ask himself why it was a pleasure to
+him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have
+attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the
+money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits
+to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of
+his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on
+his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black
+gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing
+the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads
+run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old
+Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his savior; he liked the
+small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the
+kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in
+front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp
+sound against the leather of her boots.
+
+She always reconducted him to the first step of the stairs. When his
+horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said
+"Good-bye;" there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round,
+playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro
+on her hips her apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once,
+during a thaw, the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on
+the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold,
+and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade, of silk of
+the color of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up
+with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the
+tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on
+the stretched silk.
+
+During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame
+Bovary, junior, never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had
+even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a
+clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a
+daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt that Mademoiselle
+Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called
+"a good education;" and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to
+embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.
+
+"So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he
+goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of
+spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! that woman!"
+
+And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by
+allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations
+that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to
+which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now
+that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet?
+Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who knew how to
+talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted
+town misses." And she went on:
+
+"The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was
+a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes
+for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss,
+or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown, like a countess.
+Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year,
+would have had much ado to pay up his arrears."
+
+For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Héloise made
+him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more,
+after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He
+obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the
+servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naïve
+hypocrisy, that this interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to
+love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all
+weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her
+shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they
+were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the
+laces of her large boots crossed over gray stockings.
+
+Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few
+days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then,
+like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and
+observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why did he always
+offer a glass of something to every one who came? What obstinacy not to
+wear flannels!
+
+In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of
+the widow Dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all
+the money in his office. Héloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a
+share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the Rue St.
+François; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted
+abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes,
+had appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone into. The house
+at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations;
+what she had placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the
+boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In
+his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the
+flags, accused his wife of having caused the misfortune of their son by
+harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide.
+They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. Héloise
+in tears, throwing her arms about her husband, conjured him to defend
+her from his parents. Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry
+and left the house.
+
+But the blow had struck home. A week after, as she was hanging up some
+washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the
+next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the
+window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was
+dead! What a surprise!
+
+When all was over at the cemetery, Charles went home. He found no one
+downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress
+still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the
+writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful
+reverie. She had loved him, after all!
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A LONELY WIDOWER.
+
+
+One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his
+leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard
+of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.
+
+"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been
+through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be
+quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I
+talked nonsense to him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the
+branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And
+when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their
+nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on
+the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very
+idea of going to a café disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well,
+quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an
+autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb;
+it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something
+always remains at the bottom, as one would say--a weight here, at one's
+heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way
+altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must
+pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see
+us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you
+are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some
+rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit."
+
+Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all
+as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear
+trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again,
+came and went, making the farm more full of life.
+
+Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor
+because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off,
+spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended
+to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him
+than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He
+told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his
+wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in;
+he thought no more about her.
+
+He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new
+delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now
+change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was
+very tired stretch himself full length on his bed. So he nursed and
+coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. On
+the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his
+business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young man!
+what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had
+increased; and, moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked.
+He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better
+looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.
+
+One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields.
+He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the
+outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun
+sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners
+of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table
+were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they
+drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in
+by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and
+touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth
+Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of
+perspiration on her bare shoulders.
+
+After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to
+drink. He said no; she insisted and at last laughingly offered to have a
+glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curaçoa from
+the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim,
+poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after clinking their
+glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back
+to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the
+strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her
+tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the
+bottom of her glass.
+
+She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was
+darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did
+Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the
+flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in
+his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the
+yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her
+hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.
+
+She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from
+giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began
+talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They
+went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little
+prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a
+cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even
+showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every
+month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But their
+gardeners had understood nothing about it; servants were so careless.
+She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town,
+although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more
+wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her
+voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden, all languor, lingering out in
+modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself; now
+joyous, opening big, naïve eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her
+look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.
+
+Going home at night, Charles went over her words, one by one, trying to
+recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life
+she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts
+other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her.
+Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married,
+and to whom? Alas! old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But
+Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the
+humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry, after all!
+if you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was
+parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and
+opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing
+in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head toward the
+Bertaux.
+
+Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised
+himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each
+time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words
+sealed his lips.
+
+Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was
+of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her
+too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one
+never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it, the
+good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in
+which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
+properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him
+less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his
+pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself,
+liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old
+cider, underdone legs of mutton, _glorias_[1] well beaten up. He took
+his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table
+brought to him all ready laid, as on the stage.
+
+[Footnote 1: A mixture of coffee and spirits.--TRANS.]
+
+When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his
+daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days,
+he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a
+little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he
+was said to be well-conducted, economical, very learned, and no doubt
+would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old
+Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property,"
+as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the
+shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said
+to himself, "I'll give her to him."
+
+At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux. The last
+had passed like the others, in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old
+Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of
+ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself
+as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it:
+
+"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to
+you."
+
+They stopped. Charles was silent.
+
+"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault,
+laughing softly.
+
+"Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.
+
+"I ask nothing better," the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the
+little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get
+off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes,' you needn't return because of
+all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so
+that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter
+of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning
+over the hedge."
+
+And he went off.
+
+Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited.
+Half-an-hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch.
+Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown
+back; the hook was still swinging.
+
+The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he
+entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in
+countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion
+of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before
+them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out
+of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.
+
+The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with
+her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself
+chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When
+Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked
+over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed
+of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be the
+entrées.
+
+Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding
+with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So
+there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which
+they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to
+some extent on the days following.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+CONSOLATION.
+
+
+The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
+cars, old open gigs, wagonettes with leather hoods, and the young people
+from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows,
+holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well
+shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville,
+from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had
+been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long
+since lost sight of written to.
+
+From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
+the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
+steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
+sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies wearing bonnets,
+had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
+the ends tucked into belts, or little colored fichus fastened down
+behind with a pin, that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
+dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
+(many that day handselled their first pair of boots), and by their
+sides, speaking never a word, wearing the white dress of their first
+communion lengthened for the occasion, were some big girls of fourteen
+or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered,
+their hair greasy with rose-pomade, and very much afraid of soiling
+their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
+carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
+themselves. According to their different social positions, they wore
+tail-coats, overcoats, shooting-jackets, cutaway-coats: fine tail-coats,
+redolent of family respectability, that came out of the wardrobe only on
+state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
+round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting-jackets of coarse cloth,
+usually worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
+cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a
+pair of eyes, the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
+carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
+the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with
+collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
+plaits and the waist fastened very far down with a worked belt.
+
+And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Every one had
+just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been
+close-shaven; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and
+not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or
+cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air
+_en route_ had inflamed, so that the great, white, beaming faces were
+mottled here and there with red dabs.
+
+The _mairie_ was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither
+on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The
+procession, first united like one long colored scarf that undulated
+across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn,
+soon lengthened out, and broke up in different groups that loitered to
+talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons in
+its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all
+following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves
+plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing among themselves
+unseen. Emma's skirt, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from
+time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her
+gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,
+while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault,
+with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands
+up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary, senior. As to Monsieur
+Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply
+in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing
+compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and
+did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their
+business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another
+on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the
+squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he
+saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly
+rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set
+off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark
+time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove the little birds far
+away.
+
+The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six
+chicken fricassées, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle
+a fine roast sucking-pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At
+the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round
+the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine
+beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least
+shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of
+the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot
+had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up
+in the place, he had taken great trouble, and at dessert he himself
+brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin
+with, at its base was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple
+with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the
+niches were constellations of gilt paper stars; on the second stage was
+a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied
+angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the
+upper layer was a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell
+boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing, whose
+two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.
+
+Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they
+went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the
+granary, and then returned to table. Toward the finish some went to
+sleep and snored. But with the coffee every one woke up. Then they began
+songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with
+their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad
+jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed up
+to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they
+kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore; and
+all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were
+runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over
+yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning
+out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.
+
+Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.
+The children had fallen asleep under the seats.
+
+The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage
+pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even
+brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water
+from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in
+time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position of
+his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the
+same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused
+old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a
+corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running
+served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been
+badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints
+hoping he would ruin himself.
+
+Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been
+consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the
+arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead
+of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till
+daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This
+added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.
+
+Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.
+He answered feebly to the puns, _doubles entendres_, compliments, and
+chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup
+appeared.
+
+The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who
+might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before,
+whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did
+not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near
+them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed
+nothing. He called her "my wife," _tutoyéd_ her, asked for her of every
+one, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards
+where he could be seen from afar, among the trees putting his arm round
+her waist, and walking half bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of
+her bodice with his head.
+
+Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of
+his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back
+in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here he
+embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.
+When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the
+cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
+Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of
+his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her
+from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,
+trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
+country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
+the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois head-dress so
+that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head
+he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
+under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
+time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
+have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
+road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
+with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
+felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
+afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
+directly home.
+
+Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock. The
+neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.
+
+The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
+having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
+look over her house.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE NEW MÉNAGE.
+
+
+The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
+Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black
+leather cap, and on the floor in a corner, were a pair of leggings still
+covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment that was both
+dining and sitting room. A canary-yellow paper, relieved at the top by a
+garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the
+badly-stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung
+crosswise the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a
+clock with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate
+candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was
+Charles's consulting-room, a little room about six paces wide, with a
+table, three chairs, and an office-chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of
+Medical Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the
+successive sales through which they had gone, occupied almost alone the
+six shelves of a deal bookcase. The smell of melted butter penetrated
+the thin walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could
+hear the people coughing in the consulting-room and recounting their
+whole histories. Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a
+large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar,
+and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements
+past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to
+guess.
+
+The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered
+apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the
+middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower-beds with
+eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen-garden bed.
+At the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a curé in plaster reading
+his breviary.
+
+Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second,
+which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red
+drapery. A shell-box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary
+near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin
+ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other
+one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it
+up to the attic, while Emma, seated in an armchair (they were putting
+her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a
+bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she
+were to die.
+
+During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in
+the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wall-paper
+put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the
+sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain
+and fishes. Finally, her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
+picked up a second-hand dog-cart, which, with new lamps and a
+splash-board in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.
+
+He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together, a
+walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her
+hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and
+many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now
+made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by
+her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down
+on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her nightcap. Seen thus
+closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up,
+she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the shade, dark
+blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different
+colors, that, darker in the center, grew paler toward the surface of the
+eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in
+miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head
+and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window to see
+him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium,
+clad in her dressing-gown hanging loosely about her. Charles in the
+street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she
+talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or
+leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating, described
+semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the
+ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless
+at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a kiss; she answered with
+a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And then along the highroad,
+spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the
+trees bent over as in arbors, along paths where the corn reached to the
+knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his
+heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at
+ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner
+taste again the truffles which they are digesting.
+
+Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when he
+remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of
+companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his
+accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
+with cakes in their muffs? Or later, when he studied medicine, and never
+had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have
+become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
+widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life
+this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend
+beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself
+with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,
+ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
+he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.
+
+He could not keep from continually touching her comb, her rings, her
+fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
+her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from
+the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away
+half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.
+
+Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that
+should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought,
+have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in
+life by the words _felicity_, _passion_, _rapture_, that had seemed to
+her so beautiful in books.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A MAIDEN'S YEARNINGS.
+
+
+She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little
+bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidèle, but above all the
+sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for
+you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand,
+bringing you a bird's nest.
+
+When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her
+in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter,
+where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the
+story of Mademoiselle de la Vallière. The explanatory legends, chipped
+here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the
+tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.
+
+Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the
+society of the good sisters who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,
+which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very
+little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she
+who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living
+thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the class-rooms, and
+amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was
+softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
+altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.
+Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with
+their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
+heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the
+cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
+whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill.
+
+When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
+might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her
+face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The
+comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
+marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
+unexpected sweetness.
+
+In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the
+study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the
+Lectures of the Abbé Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the
+"Génie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to
+the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing
+through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
+shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her
+heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us
+only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
+she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. Accustomed to calm
+aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement.
+She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields
+only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out
+of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to
+the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more
+sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.
+
+At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
+mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
+ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
+refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
+of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
+out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love-songs
+of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.
+She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the
+sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
+pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long
+chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
+sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions
+killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, somber
+forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
+moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions,
+gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
+weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of
+age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. With
+Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed
+of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in
+some old manor-house, like those long-waisted châtelaines who, in the
+shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in
+hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse
+from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and
+enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc,
+Héloise, Agnès Sorel, the beautiful Ferronnière, and Clémence Isaure
+stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also
+were seen, lost in shadow and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak,
+the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St.
+Bartholomew's, the plume of the Béarnais, and always the remembrance of
+the plates painted in honor of Louis XIV.
+
+In the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
+little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;--mild
+compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
+of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria
+of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes"
+given them as New Year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
+it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately
+handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
+the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the
+most part as counts or viscounts.
+
+She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
+saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the
+balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his
+arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or
+there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
+looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
+eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through
+parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage, driven at a
+trot by two small postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on
+sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open
+window half draped by a black curtain. The naïve ones, a tear on their
+cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,
+smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a
+marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
+shoes. And you too were there, Sultans with long pipes, reclining
+beneath arbors in the arms of Bayadères; Djiaours, Turkish sabers, Greek
+caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that
+often show us at once palm-trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion
+to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very
+neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in
+the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a
+steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
+
+And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head
+lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one
+by one in the silence of the dormitory, to the distant noise of some
+belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.
+
+When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a
+funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter
+sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
+buried some day in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,
+and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
+a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
+hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
+to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
+the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the
+Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
+confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
+herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
+brow.
+
+The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
+great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from
+them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
+novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
+saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
+the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
+horses: she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
+nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
+church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
+songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the
+mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
+antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
+no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
+had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.
+
+Emma at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
+servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
+When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought
+herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing
+more to feel.
+
+But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
+caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
+that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
+great bird with rose-colored wings, had hung in the splendor of the
+skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she
+lived was the happiness she had dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+DISILLUSION.
+
+
+She thought sometimes that, after all, this was the happiest time of her
+life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of
+it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with
+sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most
+suave. In post-chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up
+steep roads, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the
+mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a
+waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of
+lemon-trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in
+hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her
+that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar
+to the soil, that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over
+balconies in Swiss châlets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch
+cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails,
+and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills?
+
+Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to some one.
+But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable
+as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage.
+
+If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but
+once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have
+gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a
+hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater
+became the gulf that separated her from him.
+
+Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and every
+one's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting
+emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said,
+while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from
+Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could
+not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in
+a novel.
+
+A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold
+activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements
+of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing,
+wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm,
+this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.
+
+Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand
+there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes
+half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers,
+little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers
+glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb,
+and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
+up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the
+other end of the village when the window was open, and often the
+bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bareheaded and in list
+slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.
+
+Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the
+patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a
+bill. When they had a neighbor to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have
+some dainty dish--piled up pyramids of green-gages on vine leaves,
+served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying
+finger-glasses for dessert. From all this, much consideration was
+extended to Bovary.
+
+Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.
+He showed with pride in the sitting-room two small pencil sketches by
+her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the
+wall-paper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at
+his door in his wool-work slippers.
+
+He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked
+for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on
+him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one
+after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been,
+the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he
+finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off
+the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to
+bed, and lay on his back and snored.
+
+As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief
+would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was
+all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of
+the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore
+thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely
+towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
+line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that was "quite good
+enough for the country."
+
+His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
+when there had been some violent scene at her place; and yet Madame
+Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought
+"her ways too fine for their position;" the wood, the sugar, and the
+candles disappeared as at "a grand establishment," and the amount of
+firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses.
+She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to
+keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with
+these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words
+"daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by
+little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice
+trembling with anger.
+
+In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the
+favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion
+from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched
+her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the
+windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as
+remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
+Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to
+adore her so exclusively.
+
+Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved
+his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,
+and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madame
+Bovary had gone he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or
+two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma Emma
+proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his
+patients.
+
+And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make
+herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the
+passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many
+melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before,
+and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.
+
+When she had thus for a while struck the flint of her heart without
+getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not
+experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in
+conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that
+Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became
+regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
+other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony
+of dinner.
+
+A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had
+given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for
+she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see
+before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far
+as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an
+angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amid the vegetation of
+the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut.
+
+She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last
+she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and
+wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the
+patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always
+closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts,
+aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round
+and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing
+the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. Then
+gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that
+she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to herself,
+"Good heavens! why did I marry?"
+
+She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would not have
+been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would
+have been these unrealized events, this different life, this unknown
+husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been
+handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old
+companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In
+town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theaters, and the
+lights of the ball-room, they were living lives where the heart expands,
+the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose
+dormer-window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was
+weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. She
+recalled the prize-days, when she mounted the platform to receive her
+little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and
+open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her
+seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was
+full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows;
+the music-master with his violin-case bowed in passing by. How far off
+all this! How far away!
+
+She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long,
+delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles."
+
+Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned
+slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud
+as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.
+
+Occasionally there came gusts of wind, breezes from the sea rolling in
+one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even
+to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
+whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their
+summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl
+round her shoulders and rose.
+
+In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lighted the short moss
+that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky
+showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,
+and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out
+against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali,
+and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the highroad, threw herself into an
+armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.
+
+But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her
+life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.
+
+Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to
+re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the
+Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a
+great deal of wood, and in the Conseil Général always enthusiastically
+demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had
+suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by
+giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes
+to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some
+superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry-trees did not
+thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it
+his business to thank him personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty
+figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not
+think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other
+hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.
+
+One Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in
+their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on
+behind and a bonnet-box in front on the apron. Besides these Charles
+held a bandbox between his knees.
+
+They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being
+lighted to show the carriage-drive.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+GLIMPSES OF THE WORLD.
+
+
+The château, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting
+wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense
+green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees
+set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,
+syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green
+along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;
+through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs
+scattered over the field bordered by two gently-sloping well-timbered
+hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel
+lines the coach-houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old
+château.
+
+Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants
+appeared; the Marquis came forward, and offering his arm to the doctor's
+wife, conducted her to the vestibule.
+
+It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of
+footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.
+Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
+overlooking the garden led to the billiard-room, through whose door one
+could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the
+drawing-room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces,
+their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled
+silently as they made their strokes. On the dark wainscoting of the
+walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black
+letters. She read:
+
+     "Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yverbonville, Count de la
+     Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnaye, killed at the battle of
+     Coutras on the 20th of October 1587."
+
+And on another:
+
+     "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral
+     of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the
+     battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May 1692; died at
+     Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693."
+
+One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the
+lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room.
+Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in
+delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all
+these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there
+some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked
+at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the
+buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf.
+
+The Marquis opened the drawing-room door; one of the ladies (the
+Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on
+an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her
+a long time. She was about forty years old, with fine shoulders, a hook
+nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair
+a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young
+woman was by her side in a high-backed chair, and gentlemen with flowers
+in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.
+
+At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down
+at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the
+dining-room with the Marquis and Marchioness.
+
+Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a
+blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes
+of the viands, and the odor of the truffles. The silver dish-covers
+reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal
+covered with light steam reflected pale rays from one to the other;
+bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the
+large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a
+bishop's miter, held between its two gaping folds a small oval-shaped
+roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open
+baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke
+was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and
+frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offered ready-carved
+dishes between the shoulders of the guests, and with a touch of the
+spoon gave the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with
+copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed
+motionless on the room full of life.
+
+Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their
+glasses.
+
+But at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent
+over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child,
+an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His
+eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black
+ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdière,
+once on a time favorite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the
+Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it
+was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de
+Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch,
+full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and
+frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him
+in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly
+Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as
+to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed
+of queens!
+
+Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it
+cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted
+pine-apples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than
+elsewhere.
+
+The ladies afterward went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.
+
+Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her
+début. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,
+and put on the barège dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers
+were tight across the belly.
+
+"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.
+
+"Dancing?" repeated Emma.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.
+Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added.
+
+Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish
+dressing.
+
+He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes
+seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating toward the ears, shone
+with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,
+with artificial dewdrops on the tips of the leaves. She wore a gown of
+pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
+green.
+
+Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.
+
+"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."
+
+One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
+went downstairs restraining herself from running.
+
+Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She
+sat down on a form near the door.
+
+The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
+and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line
+of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid smiling
+faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed
+hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
+at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
+trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair,
+well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or
+bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of
+corn, and cornflowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with
+forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.
+
+Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
+tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and
+waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,
+swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight
+movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate
+phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
+instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the
+louis-d'or that were being thrown down upon the card-tables in the next
+room; then all struck in again, the cornet-à-piston uttered its sonorous
+note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and
+parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again.
+
+A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here
+and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished
+themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their
+differences in age, dress, or face.
+
+Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
+brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate
+pomades. They had the complexion of wealth,--that clear complexion that
+is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the
+veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite
+nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low
+cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they
+wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs, with embroidered initials, that
+gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an
+air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the
+young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily
+satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that
+peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in
+which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of
+thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women.
+
+A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
+with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.
+
+They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoli,
+Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum
+by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation
+full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very
+young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romulus,"
+and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
+that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
+that had disfigured the name of his horse.
+
+The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. Guests
+were flocking to the billiard-room. A servant got upon a chair and broke
+the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her
+head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the
+window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to
+her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse
+under the apple-trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming
+with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the
+refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then,
+faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was
+there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She
+was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a
+silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth.
+
+A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentleman was passing.
+
+"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has
+fallen behind the sofa?"
+
+The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw
+the hand of the young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,
+into his hat. The gentleman picking up the fan, offered it to the lady
+respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began
+smelling her bouquet.
+
+After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups _à la
+bisque_ and _au lait d'amandes_, puddings _à la Trafalgar_, and all
+sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the
+carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corner of
+the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering
+through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were
+still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on
+their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door.
+
+At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.
+Every one was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the
+Marquis only the guests staying at the castle were still there about a
+dozen persons.
+
+One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and
+whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time
+to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and
+that she would get through it very well.
+
+They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
+was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
+a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
+caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at
+her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They
+started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging
+her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where,
+panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his
+breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to
+her seat. She leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her
+hands.
+
+When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing-room three
+waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the
+Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.
+
+Every one looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid
+body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure
+curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how
+to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.
+
+Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the good-nights, or
+rather good-mornings, the guests of the château retired to bed.
+
+Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His knees were going up
+into his body. He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright
+at the card-tables, watching them play whist, without understanding
+anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled
+off his boots.
+
+Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.
+
+The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the
+damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still
+murmuring in her ears, and she tried to keep herself awake in order to
+prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to
+give up.
+
+Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the château,
+trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the
+evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,
+blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and
+cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.
+
+There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten
+minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. Next,
+Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small
+basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went
+to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs,
+rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from overfilled nests
+of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was
+at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the château.
+The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables.
+Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the
+horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when
+any one went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness-room
+shone like the flooring of a drawing-room. The carriage harness was
+piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the
+whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.
+
+Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The
+dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and all the parcels being
+crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and
+Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.
+
+Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge
+of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little
+horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose
+reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened
+on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.
+
+They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen
+with cigars between their lips passed, laughing. Emma thought she
+recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the
+movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the
+trot or gallop.
+
+A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces
+that had broken.
+
+But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the
+ground between the horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a
+green silk border and blazoned in the center like the door of a
+carriage.
+
+"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening
+after dinner."
+
+"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.
+
+"Sometimes, when I get a chance."
+
+He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.
+
+When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper.
+Nastasie answered rudely.
+
+"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you
+warning."
+
+For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.
+Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.
+
+"How good it is to be at home again!"
+
+Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She
+had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowerhood, kept him
+company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest
+acquaintance in the place.
+
+"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.
+
+"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.
+
+Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being
+made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with his lips protruded,
+spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.
+
+"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.
+
+He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the
+pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar-case threw it quickly to the back
+of the cupboard.
+
+The next day was a long one. She walked above her little garden, up and
+down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier,
+before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of
+once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed
+already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day
+before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard
+had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevasses that a
+storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was
+resigned. She devoutly put away in her closets her beautiful dress, down
+to the satin shoes whose sole were yellowed with the slippery wax of the
+dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth
+something had come over it that could not be effaced.
+
+The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma. Whenever
+the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah! I was
+there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." And little by little the
+faces grew confused in her remembrance. She forgot the tune of the
+quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so
+distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+IDLE DREAMS.
+
+
+Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds
+of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar-case. She
+looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odor of the lining--a
+mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps it
+was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some
+rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had
+occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the
+pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the
+canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and
+all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same
+silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with
+him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-manteled chimneys
+between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at
+Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague name! She
+repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her
+ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the
+labels of her pomade-pots.
+
+At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts
+singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the
+iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon
+deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to
+herself.
+
+And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing
+villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the
+end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into
+which her dream died.
+
+She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map
+she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at
+every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white
+squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of
+her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind
+and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles
+of theatres.
+
+She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des
+Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of
+first nights, races, and soirées, took an interest in the début of a
+singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the
+addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In
+Eugène Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and
+George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.
+Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while
+Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always
+returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made
+comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened
+round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened
+out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.
+
+Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an
+atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult
+were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma
+perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in
+themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over
+polished floors in drawing-rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables
+covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were skirts with
+trains; deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the
+society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the
+women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men,
+unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to
+death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards
+the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,
+where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the
+motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as
+kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence
+outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of
+storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it
+was lost, with no particular place, and as if non-existent. The nearer
+things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All
+her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class
+imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a
+peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched as
+far as eye could see an immense land of joys and of passions. She
+confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of
+the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love,
+like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Sighs
+by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the
+fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be
+separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from
+boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled
+flower-stands, a bed on a raised dais, nor from the flashing of precious
+stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.
+
+The lad from the posting-house, who came to groom the mare every
+morning, passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there
+were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this
+was the groom in knee-breeches with whom she had to be content! His work
+done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put
+up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the
+servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could
+into the manger.
+
+To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma
+took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet
+face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in
+the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before
+coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her,--tried to make a
+lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not
+to be sent away; and, as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,
+Félicité every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone
+in her bed after she had said her prayers.
+
+Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. Madame
+was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing-gown, that showed
+between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chemisette with three
+gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her
+small garnet-colored slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over
+her instep. She had bought herself a blotting-book, writing-case,
+pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she
+dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,
+and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She
+longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same
+time to die and to live in Paris.
+
+Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
+farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt
+of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
+basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he
+found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
+woman, charming with an odor of freshness, though no one could say
+whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous
+her chemise.
+
+She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
+arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on
+her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the
+servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
+mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on
+their watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her
+mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory
+_nécessaire_ with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood
+these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the
+pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a
+golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life.
+
+He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established. The
+country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children,
+never went to the public-house, and, moreover, his morals inspired
+confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest
+complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact,
+prescribed only sedatives, from time to time an emetic, a footbath, or
+leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people
+copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the
+"devil's own wrist."
+
+Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "La Ruche Médicale," a
+new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little
+after dinner, but in about five minutes, the warmth of the room added to
+the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin
+on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the
+lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was
+not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their
+books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age when rheumatism
+sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coats? She
+could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been
+illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the
+newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition. An Yvetot
+doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated
+him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives.
+When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed
+loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed her
+forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she
+felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the
+passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.
+
+"What a man! what a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips.
+
+Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his
+manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles;
+after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he
+made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting
+fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up
+to the temples.
+
+Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest into his
+waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the soiled gloves he
+was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it
+was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.
+Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in
+a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had
+seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an
+ever-open ear, an ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to
+her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to
+the pendulum of the clock.
+
+At bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to
+happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the
+solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of
+the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would
+bring it her, toward what shore it would drive her, if it would be a
+shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the
+port-holes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that
+day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that
+it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for
+the morrow.
+
+Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear-trees
+began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.
+
+From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to
+October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give
+another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or
+visits.
+
+After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained
+empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would
+thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing
+nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some
+event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences,
+and the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it
+so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.
+
+She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?
+Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking
+with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel
+the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while
+boring herself with practising. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery
+she left in the cupboard. What was the good? what was the good? Sewing
+irritated her. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she
+sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.
+
+How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull
+attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over
+some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the
+highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and
+the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away
+over the fields.
+
+But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the
+peasants in new blouses, the little bareheaded children skipping along
+in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six
+men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door
+of the inn.
+
+The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with rime,
+and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass,
+sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp
+had to be lighted.
+
+On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the
+cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one
+to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the
+espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent
+under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the
+many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the
+curé in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right
+foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white
+scabs on his face.
+
+Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with
+the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever.
+She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of
+shame restrained her.
+
+Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skull-cap opened
+the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre
+over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by
+three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the
+bell of a public-house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear
+the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop
+creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving
+of a fashion-plate stuck against a window-pane and the wax bust of a
+woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted
+calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big
+town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbor, near the
+theater--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church,
+sombre, and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she
+always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skull-cap over
+his ears and his waistcoat of lasting.
+
+Sometimes in the afternoon, outside the window of her room, the head of
+a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with
+a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately
+began, and on the organ, in a little drawing-room, dancers the size of a
+finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in
+frock-coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the
+sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking-glass held
+together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his
+handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and
+again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the
+milestone, with his knee he raised his instrument, whose hard straps
+tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried,
+the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink
+taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other
+places at the theaters, sung in drawing-rooms, danced to at night under
+lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless
+sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing-girl on the
+flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leaped with the notes, swung from
+dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some
+coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his
+organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him
+going.
+
+But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this
+small room on the ground-floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking
+door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness of life
+seemed served up on her plate, and with the smoke of the boiled beef
+arose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow
+eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused
+herself with drawing lines along the oil-cloth table-cover with the
+point of her knife.
+
+She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame
+Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much
+surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now
+passed whole days without dressing, wore gray cotton stockings, and
+burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they
+were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that
+Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth
+of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow
+her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that
+mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she
+had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good
+woman did not mention it again.
+
+Emma was growing _difficile_, capricious. She ordered dishes for
+herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, and
+the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out,
+then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light frocks. After
+she had well scolded her servant, she gave her presents or sent her out
+to see the neighbors, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver
+in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily
+accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who
+always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the
+paternal hands.
+
+Toward the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself
+brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes.
+Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in
+the room, spat on the fire-dogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry,
+and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him
+with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover,
+she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at
+times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with
+that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral,
+all which made her husband open his eyes widely.
+
+Would this misery last forever? Would she never issue from it? Yet she
+was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen
+duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she
+execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls to
+weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent
+pleasures, with all the wildness, that she did not know, but that these
+must surely yield.
+
+She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart. Charles
+prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only
+seemed to irritate her the more.
+
+On certain days she chattered with feverish rapidity, and this
+over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she
+remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was
+pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.
+
+As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her
+illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea,
+began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.
+
+From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and
+completely lost her appetite.
+
+It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and
+when he was "beginning to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her
+to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of
+air was needed.
+
+After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in
+the Neufchâtel arrondissement there was a considerable market-town
+called Yonville l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a
+week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number
+of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his
+predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being
+satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's
+health did not improve.
+
+One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,
+something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding-bouquet. The
+orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin
+ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up
+more quickly than dry straw. Then it was like a red bush in the cinders,
+slowly devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard berries
+burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shrivelled paper
+corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at
+last flew up the chimney.
+
+When they left Tostes in the month of March, Madame Bovary was
+pregnant.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+I.
+
+A NEW FIELD.
+
+
+Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not
+even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen,
+between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley
+watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after
+turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout
+that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.
+
+We leave the highroad at La Boissière and keep straight on to the top of
+the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it
+makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies,--all
+on the left is pasture land, all on the right arable. The meadow
+stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the
+pasture land of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain,
+gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond
+cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line
+the color of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a
+great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of
+silver.
+
+Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of
+Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to
+bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain-tracks, and these
+brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the gray color of the
+mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the
+neighboring country.
+
+Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Île-de-France,
+a bastard land, whose language is without accent as its landscape is
+without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchâtel
+cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is
+costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full
+of sand and flints.
+
+Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but
+about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to
+that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their
+way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of
+its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping
+up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the
+lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread
+riverwards. It is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a
+cowherd taking a siesta by the waterside.
+
+At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with
+young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the
+place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full
+of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds, and distilleries
+scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to
+the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach
+down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses
+have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the
+plaster wall, diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree
+sometimes leans, and the ground floors have at their door a small
+swing-gate, to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread
+steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the
+houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns
+swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a
+blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts
+outside that partly block up the way. Then across an open space appears
+a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on
+his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps;
+scutcheons[2] blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the
+finest in the place.
+
+[Footnote 2: The _panonceaux_ that have to be hung over the doors of
+notaries.--TRANS.]
+
+The church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther
+down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds
+it, closed in by a wall breast-high, is so full of graves that the old
+stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the
+grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was
+rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof
+is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows
+in its blue color. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft
+for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden
+shoes.
+
+The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon
+the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a
+straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Monsieur
+So-and-so's pew." And at the spot where the building narrows, the
+confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a
+satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and
+with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a
+copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,"
+overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the
+perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted.
+
+The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts,
+occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town
+hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of
+Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On the
+ground floor are three Ionic columns, and on the first floor a
+semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a
+Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other
+the scales of Justice.
+
+But that which most attracts the eye is, opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the
+chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand
+lamp is lighted, and the red and green jars that embellish his
+shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of color; then
+across them, as if in Bengal lights, is seen the shadow of the chemist
+leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with
+inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy,
+Seltzer, Barège waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine,
+Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,
+hygienic chocolate," &c. And the signboard, which takes up all the
+breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at
+the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the
+word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about
+half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black
+ground.
+
+Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only
+one) a gunshot in length, and flanked by a few shops on either side,
+stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand
+and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed, the cemetery is soon
+reached.
+
+At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall
+was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all
+the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue
+to crowd together toward the gate. The keeper, who is at once
+gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the
+parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to
+plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows
+smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to
+rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.
+
+"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the curé at last said to him one
+day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time;
+but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and
+even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.
+
+Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at
+Yonville. The tin tricolor flag still swings at the top of the
+church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from
+the linendraper's; the chemist's foetuses, like lumps of white amadou,
+rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the
+inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its
+poodle mane.
+
+On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow
+Lefrançois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated
+great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The
+meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee
+made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meals to see to, and that of the
+doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with
+bursts of laughter; three millers in the small parlor were calling for
+brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the
+long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of
+plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which the spinach
+was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the
+fowls which the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.
+
+A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and
+wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the
+chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he
+appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head
+in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.
+
+"Artémise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water
+bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to
+offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers
+are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has
+been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when
+it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only to think,
+Monsieur Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games,
+and drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she
+went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.
+
+"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would
+buy another."
+
+"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.
+
+"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrançois. I tell you again
+you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want
+narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is
+changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!"
+
+The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on:
+
+"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one
+were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or
+the sufferers from the Lyons floods"--
+
+"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the
+landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as
+long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered
+our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Café Français' closed
+with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went
+on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding
+the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six
+visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!"
+
+"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?"
+
+"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six
+you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for
+punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlor. He'd
+rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so
+particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Léon; he sometimes comes
+at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he
+eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!"
+
+"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and
+an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector."
+
+Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.
+
+He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin
+body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his
+head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,
+flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth
+waistcoat, a hair collar, gray trousers, and, all the year round,
+well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking
+out of his big toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair
+whiskers, which encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a
+garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose
+hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine
+hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning
+napkin-rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an
+artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.
+
+He went to the small parlor, but the three millers had to be got out
+first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet
+remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and
+took off his cap in his usual way.
+
+"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said
+the chemist, as soon as he was alone with the landlady.
+
+"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the
+cloth line were here--such clever chaps, who told such jokes in the
+evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a
+dab fish and never said a word."
+
+"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that
+makes the society man."
+
+"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.
+
+"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he parts! In his own line it is
+possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--
+
+"Ah! that a merchant, who has large connections, a juris-consult, a
+doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become
+whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in
+history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something.
+Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the
+bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had
+put it behind my ear?"
+
+Madame Lefrançois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle"
+were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into
+the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his
+face was rubicund and his form athletic.
+
+"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Curé?" asked the landlady, as she
+reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with
+their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of
+_cassis_? A glass of wine?"
+
+The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he
+had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking
+Madame Lefrançois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the
+evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.
+
+When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the
+square, he thought the priest's behavior just now very unbecoming. This
+refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy;
+all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days
+of the tithe.
+
+The landlady took up the defense of her curé.
+
+"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year
+he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six
+trusses at once, he is so strong."
+
+"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to
+fellows with such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have
+the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrançois, every month--a
+good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals."
+
+"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion."
+
+The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have
+more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I
+adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a
+Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below
+to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't
+need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my
+pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one
+can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the
+eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God of Socrates, of
+Franklin, of Voltaire, and Béranger! I am for the profession of faith of
+the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't
+admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane
+in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies
+uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd
+in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,
+which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in
+torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."
+
+He ceased looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the
+chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town
+council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a
+distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled
+with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground,
+and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.
+
+It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,
+prevented travelers from seeing the road and soiled their shoulders. The
+small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach
+was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old
+layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away.
+It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came
+down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.
+
+Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all
+spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert
+did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place
+in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the
+shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his
+mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hairdresser's, and
+all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,
+which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of
+his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.
+
+An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across
+the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had
+even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight
+of her; but it had been necessary to go on. Emma had wept, grown angry;
+she had accused Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper,
+who happened to be in the coach with her had tried to console her by a
+number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of
+long years. One, he said, had been told of who had come back to Paris
+from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a
+straight line, and swam four rivers; and his own father had possessed a
+poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped
+on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+NEW FRIENDS.
+
+
+Emma got out first, then Félicité, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and
+they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly
+since night set in.
+
+Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to Madame and his
+respects to Monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render
+them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had
+ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.
+
+When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney. With
+the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having
+thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to
+the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole
+of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gown, the fine
+pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and
+again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind
+through the half-open door. On the other side of the chimney a young man
+with fair hair watched her silently.
+
+As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the
+notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin Monsieur Léon Dupuis (it was he who was
+the second _habitué_ of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his
+dinner-hour in the hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with
+whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done
+early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and
+endure from soup to cheese a _tête-à-tête_ with Binet. It was therefore
+with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should
+dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large
+parlor where Madame Lefrançois, for the purpose of showing off, had had
+the table laid for four.
+
+Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;
+then turning to his neighbor--
+
+"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in
+our 'Hirondelle.'"
+
+"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like
+change of place."
+
+"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same
+places."
+
+"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the
+saddle"--
+
+"But," Léon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it
+seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.
+
+"Moreover," said the chemist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard
+work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the
+use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are well off, they pay pretty
+well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of
+enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few
+intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a
+serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of
+scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
+peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur
+Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your
+science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse
+to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the
+doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad,
+and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I
+have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees and in the
+hottest season rises to 25 or 30 degrees Centigrade at the outside,
+which gives us 24 degrees Réaumur as the maximum, or otherwise 54
+degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a matter of fact,
+we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the
+one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and
+this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapors given off
+by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which,
+as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen,
+and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into
+itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different
+emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the
+electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in
+the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious
+miasmata,--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side
+whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the
+southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled
+themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once, like
+breezes from Russia."
+
+"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighborhood?" continued Madame
+Bovary, speaking to the young man.
+
+"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pâture, on
+the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I
+go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."
+
+"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but
+especially by the side of the sea."
+
+"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Léon.
+
+"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the
+mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of
+which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?"
+
+"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Léon. "A cousin
+of mine who traveled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not
+picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls,
+the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size
+across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand
+feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must
+stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer
+marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his
+imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing
+site."
+
+"You play?" she asked.
+
+"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.
+
+"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais,
+bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the
+other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I
+heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor."
+
+Léon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's, where he had a small room on the
+second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his
+landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to
+him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He
+was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was
+not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a
+good deal of show.
+
+Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"
+
+"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream."
+
+"Have you been to the opera?"
+
+"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish
+reading for the bar."
+
+"As I had the honor of putting it to your husband," said the chemist,
+"with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find
+yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the
+most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a
+doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen.
+Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a
+laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, etc. He was a
+gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the
+side of the water, he had an arbor built just for the purpose of
+drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be
+able"--
+
+"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has been
+advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room
+reading."
+
+"Like me," replied Léon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by
+one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against
+the window and the lamp is burning?"
+
+"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon
+him.
+
+"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we
+traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the
+fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the
+adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were
+yourself palpitating beneath their costumes."
+
+"That is true! that is true!" she said.
+
+"Has it ever happened to you," Léon went on, "to come across some vague
+idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from
+afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
+
+"I have experienced it," she replied.
+
+"That is the reason why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think
+verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to
+tears."
+
+"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the
+contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one.
+I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are
+in nature."
+
+"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart, it
+seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the
+disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble
+characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself,
+living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville
+affords so few resources."
+
+"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a
+lending library."
+
+"If madame will do me the honor of making use of it," said the chemist,
+who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library
+composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott,
+the 'Echo des Feuilletons;' and in addition I receive various
+periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage
+to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchâtel,
+Yonville and vicinity."
+
+For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant
+Artémise, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags,
+brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly
+left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against
+the wall with its hooks.
+
+Unconsciously, Léon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the
+bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small
+blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar,
+and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently
+sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus, side by side, while
+Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague
+conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to
+the fixed center of a common sympathy. The Paris theaters, titles of
+novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where
+she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked
+of everything till to the end of dinner.
+
+When coffee was served Félicité went away to get ready the room in the
+new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrançois was
+asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was
+waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw
+stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had
+taken in his other hand the curé's umbrella, they started.
+
+The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the
+earth was all gray as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was
+only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost
+immediately, and the company dispersed.
+
+As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster
+fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the
+wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish
+light passed through the curtainless windows. She could catch glimpses
+of tree-tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay
+reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of
+the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt
+poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the floor,--the two
+men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly.
+
+This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. The
+first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her
+arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth.
+And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in
+her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in
+the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life
+lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be
+better.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ADDED CARES.
+
+
+The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She
+had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and
+reclosed the window.
+
+Léon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going
+to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The
+dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he
+had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How
+then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of
+things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy,
+and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and
+dissimulation. At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to
+the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about
+politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some
+accomplishments; he painted in water-colors, could read the key of _G_,
+and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards.
+Monsieur Homais respected him for his education; Madame Homais liked him
+for his good-nature, for he often took the little Homaises into the
+garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoiled, and
+somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look after
+them, they had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of
+Monsieur Homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who
+was useful at the same time as a servant.
+
+The chemist proved the best of neighbors. He gave Madame Bovary
+information as to the tradespeople, sent expressly for his own cider
+merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly
+placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply
+of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the
+sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funereal functions, looked
+after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,
+according to the taste of the customers.
+
+The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the
+chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it
+all.
+
+He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventôse, year xi, article 1, which
+forbade all persons not having a diploma to practice medicine; so that,
+after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen
+to see the procureur of the king in his own private room; the magistrate
+receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in
+the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard the
+heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise
+great locks that were shut. The chemist's ears tingled as if he were
+about to have an apoplectic stroke: he saw the depths of dungeons, his
+family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was
+obliged to enter a café and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover
+his spirits.
+
+Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he
+continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his
+back-parlor. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous,
+everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his
+attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out
+later, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him
+"the paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments
+to have a chat with the Doctor.
+
+Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours
+without speaking, went into his consulting-room to sleep, or watched his
+wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a
+workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been
+left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had spent
+so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the
+moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped
+away in two years. Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during
+their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster
+curé, who, falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been
+dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavement of Quincampoix!
+
+A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his
+wife. As the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the
+more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it
+were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he
+saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her
+hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she
+took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he
+got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little
+mamma, wanted to make her dance, and, half-laughing, half-crying,
+uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The
+idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He
+knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.
+
+Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be
+delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not being
+able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a
+swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit
+of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the
+whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing
+anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that
+stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the
+very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.
+
+As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to
+think of him more consecutively.
+
+She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him
+George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected
+revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he
+may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste
+of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once
+inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and
+legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a
+string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws
+her, some conventionality that restrains.
+
+She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was
+rising.
+
+"It is a girl!" said Charles.
+
+She turned her head away and fainted.
+
+Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrançois of the Lion d'Or, almost
+immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as a man of
+discretion, offered only a few provisional felicitations through the
+half-open door. He wished to see the child, and thought it well made.
+
+While she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name
+for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian
+endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde very
+well, and Yseult or Léocadie still better. Charles wanted the child to
+be called after her mother; Emma opposed this. They ran over the
+calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders.
+
+"Monsieur Léon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it the
+other day, wonders you do not choose Madeleine. It is very much in
+fashion just now."
+
+But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a
+sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that
+recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it
+was on this system that he baptized his four children. Thus Napoléon
+represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to
+romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the
+French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with
+his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of
+sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination
+and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the
+ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded
+all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic
+over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,
+but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for
+their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in
+which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with
+both his hands and argue with him for a good quarter of an hour.
+
+At last Emma remembered that at the château of Vaubyessard she had heard
+the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was
+chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested
+to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment,
+to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of
+marsh-mallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy, into the bargain,
+that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony
+there was a grand dinner; the curé was present; there was much
+excitement. Monsieur Homais toward liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu
+des bonnes gens." Monsieur Léon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary,
+senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally,
+M. Bovary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began
+baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head.
+This mockery of the first of the sacraments made the Abbé Bournisien
+angry; old Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux;" the
+curé wished to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they
+succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on
+with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.
+
+Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the
+natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in
+the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the
+habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to
+the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's
+account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his
+daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne.
+
+The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the
+world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier
+times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had
+partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs
+or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look
+out for yourself."
+
+Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and
+fearing that her husband might in the long run have an immoral influence
+upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure.
+Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was
+not the man to respect anything.
+
+One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl,
+who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and without looking
+at the almanac to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were yet
+passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme end
+of the village, between the highroad and the fields.
+
+It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed, and the slate
+roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to
+strike sparks from the crest of their gables. A heavy wind was blowing;
+Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she
+was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to
+rest.
+
+At this moment Monsieur Léon came out from a neighboring door with a
+bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the
+shade in front of Lheureux's shop under the projecting gray awning.
+
+Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was
+beginning to grow tired.
+
+"If--" said Léon, not daring to go on.
+
+"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.
+
+And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same
+evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's
+wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was
+compromising herself."
+
+To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving
+the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little
+houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in
+bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the
+sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the
+hedges one could see into the huts, some pig on a dung-heap, or tethered
+cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by
+side, walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace,
+which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges
+fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.
+
+They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. Low,
+and covered with brown tiles, outside it hung, beneath the dormer-window
+of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence
+surrounded a bed of lettuces, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet
+peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the
+grass, and several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico
+jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen, were spread over the hedge.
+At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling
+on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little
+fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom
+his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country.
+
+"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."
+
+The room on the ground floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its
+farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a
+kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was
+mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,
+shining hobnailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,
+near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a _Matthieu
+Laensberg_ lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gun-flints, candle-ends,
+and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a
+"Fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some
+perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.
+
+Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the
+wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
+herself to and fro.
+
+Léon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this
+beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.
+Madame Bovary reddened, he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been
+an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the baby girl, who
+had just vomited over her frock. The nurse at once came to dry her,
+protesting that it wouldn't show.
+
+"She gives me other doses," she said; "I am always a-washing of her. If
+you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a
+little soap; it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't
+trouble you then."
+
+"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and
+she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.
+
+The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the
+time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.
+
+"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you
+might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a
+month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk."
+
+After submitting to her thanks, Madame Bovary left. She had gone a
+little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned
+round. It was the nurse.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began
+talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year
+that the captain--
+
+"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.
+
+"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid
+he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone; you know men--"
+
+"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You
+bother me!"
+
+"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see, in consequence of his wounds he
+has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him."
+
+"Do make haste, Mère Rollet!"
+
+"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking
+too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes
+begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little
+one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue."
+
+Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Léon's arm. She walked
+fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of
+her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat
+had a black-velvet collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and
+carefully arranged. She noticed his nails, which were longer than one
+wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to
+trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his
+writing-desk.
+
+They returned to Yonville by the waterside. In the warm season the
+bank, wider than at other times, showed to its foot the garden walls,
+whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift, and
+cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the
+current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like
+streaming hair; sometimes at the top of the reeds or on the leaf of a
+water-lily an insect with thin legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced
+with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed
+each other; branchless old willows mirrored their gray backs in the
+water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the
+dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard
+nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the
+path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's skirts rustling
+around her.
+
+The walls of the gardens, with pieces of bottle on their coping, were as
+hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up
+between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary,
+as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow
+dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its
+fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.
+
+They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected
+shortly at the Rouen theatre.
+
+"Are you going?" she asked.
+
+"If I can," he answered.
+
+Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of
+more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial
+phrases they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the
+whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices.
+Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of
+speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like
+tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn
+softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication
+without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.
+
+In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to
+step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. She often
+stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on the
+stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look
+of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of
+water.
+
+When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the
+little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.
+
+Léon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the
+briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went
+out.
+
+He went to La Pâture at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of
+the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and gazed
+at the sky through his fingers.
+
+"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!"
+
+He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais
+for a friend and Monsieur Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely
+absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red
+whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements,
+although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had
+impressed the clerk.
+
+As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as
+a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins,
+weeping for others' woes, letting everything go in her household, and
+detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so
+common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although
+she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each
+other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a
+woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than
+the gown.
+
+And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three
+publicans, the curé, and, finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his
+two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and
+had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable
+companions.
+
+But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood
+out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to
+see a vague abyss.
+
+In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the
+druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him
+again, and Léon did not know what to do between his fear of being
+indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost
+impossible.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SILENT HOMAGE.
+
+
+When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the
+sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on
+the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the
+looking-glass. Seated in her armchair near the window, she could see
+the villagers pass along the pavement.
+
+Twice a day Léon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear
+him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man
+glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without
+turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her
+left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she
+often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past.
+She would get up and order the table to be laid.
+
+Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on
+tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase,
+"Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at table
+between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter
+consulted him as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked
+of what was in the paper. Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart,
+and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the
+penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had
+occurred in France or abroad. But the subject becoming exhausted, he was
+not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him.
+Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to Madame the
+tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the
+manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning. He talked aroma,
+osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. Moreover,
+Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled
+in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew
+also all the last inventions in economic stoves, together with the art
+of preserving cheeses and of curing sick wines.
+
+At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop. Then
+Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Félicité was there,
+for he had noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house.
+
+"The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil
+take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!"
+
+But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his
+constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could
+not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called
+him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the armchairs,
+and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too
+large.
+
+Not many people came to these soirées at the chemist's, his
+scandal-mongering and political opinions having successively alienated
+various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be
+there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took
+her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that
+she wore over her boots when there was snow.
+
+First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais
+played écarté with Emma; Léon behind her gave her advice. Standing up
+with his hands on the back of her chair, he saw the teeth of her comb
+that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made to throw
+her cards the right side of her bodice was drawn up. From her turned-up
+hair a dark color fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost
+itself little by little in the shade. Then her skirt fell on both sides
+of her chair, puffing out, full of folds, and reaching the floor. When
+Léon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back
+as if he had trodden upon some one.
+
+When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played
+dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table,
+turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration." She had brought her ladies'
+journal with her. Léon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings
+together, and waited for each other at the bottom of the pages. She
+often begged him to read her the verses; Léon declaimed them in a
+languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love
+passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais was
+strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.
+Then, the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in
+front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the
+cinders; the teapot was empty, Léon was still reading. Emma listened to
+him, mechanically turning round the lamp-shade, on the gauze of which
+were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dancers with their
+balancing-poles. Léon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping
+audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed
+the more sweet to them because it was unheard.
+
+Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of
+books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did
+not trouble himself about it.
+
+On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked
+with figures to the thorax, and painted blue. This was an attention of
+the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at
+Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses
+fashionable, Léon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on
+his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers with their stiff
+hairs.
+
+She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the
+pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other
+tending their flowers at their windows.
+
+Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for
+on Sundays, from morning to night, and every morning when the weather
+was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of a garret the profile
+of Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could
+be heard at the Lion d'Or.
+
+One evening on coming home Léon found in his room a rug in velvet and
+wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur
+Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;
+every one wished to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the
+clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be in love
+with him.
+
+He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and
+of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him:
+
+"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"
+
+He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to
+her, and, always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the
+shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.
+Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put
+it off to times that he again deferred. Often he set out with the
+determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in
+Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into
+his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighborhood, he at
+once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not
+something belonging to her?
+
+As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she
+thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a
+hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots
+up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She
+did not know that on the terraces of houses lakes are formed when the
+pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when
+she suddenly discovered a rent in its wall.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+SMOTHERED FLAMES.
+
+
+It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.
+
+They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Léon,
+gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and
+half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoléon and Athalie to give
+them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas
+on his shoulder.
+
+Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great
+piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and
+stones, were a few brake-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a
+quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The
+building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the
+roofing. Attached to the top-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed
+with corn-ears fluttered its tricolored ribbons in the wind.
+
+Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance of
+this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the
+thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick
+such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.
+
+Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she
+looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale
+splendor. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over his
+eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of
+stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to
+behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the
+bearer.
+
+While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of
+depraved pleasure, Léon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale
+seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and
+his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the
+lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large
+blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more
+beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.
+
+"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.
+
+And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of
+lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was
+being overwhelmed Napoléon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes
+with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his.
+
+"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carries a knife in his pocket like a
+peasant."
+
+The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.
+
+In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbor's, and when
+Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison recurred
+with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that
+lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from
+her bed at the clear fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had
+down there, Léon standing up with one hand bending his cane, and with
+the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She
+thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she
+recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the
+sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
+lips as if for a kiss--
+
+"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but
+with whom? With me?"
+
+All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of
+the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back,
+stretching out her arms.
+
+Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had but willed it!
+And why not? What prevented it?"
+
+When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened,
+and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then
+asked carelessly what had happened that evening.
+
+"Monsieur Léon," he said, "went to his room early."
+
+She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a
+new delight.
+
+The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lheureux, the
+draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but
+bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of
+the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction
+of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen
+brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been
+formerly; a pedlar, said some, a banker at Routot, according to others.
+What was certain was, that he made complex calculations in his head that
+would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always
+held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who
+invites.
+
+After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a
+green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with
+many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without
+gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract a
+"fashionable lady;" he emphasized the words; yet she had only to
+command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might
+wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he
+went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the
+best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois Frères," at the "Barbe
+d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage;" all these gentlemen knew him as well
+as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then, he had come to show
+madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the
+most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered
+collars from the box.
+
+Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she said.
+
+Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves,
+several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and,
+finally, four eggcups in cocoa-nut wood, carved in open-work by
+convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out,
+his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma's look, who was
+walking up and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if
+to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves
+spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making
+in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like
+little stars.
+
+"How much are they?"
+
+"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no hurry;
+whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews."
+
+She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur
+Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly:
+
+"Very well. We shall understand each other by and by. I have always got
+on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!"
+
+Emma smiled.
+
+"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that
+it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some,
+if need be."
+
+She made a gesture of surprise.
+
+"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go far to
+find you some, rely on that."
+
+And he began asking after Père Tellier, the proprietor of the "Café
+Français," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.
+
+"What's the matter with Père Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his
+whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than
+a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! That sort of people,
+madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still
+it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off."
+
+And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's
+patients.
+
+"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor,
+"that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these
+days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my
+back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble
+servant." And he closed the door gently.
+
+Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she
+was a long time over it; everything was well with her.
+
+"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.
+
+She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Léon. She got up and took
+from the chest of drawers the first of a pile of dusters to be hemmed.
+When he came in she seemed very busy.
+
+The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes,
+while he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near
+the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She
+stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with
+her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence,
+as he would have been by her speech.
+
+"Poor fellow!" she thought.
+
+"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.
+
+At last, however, Léon said that he should have, one of these days, to
+go to Rouen on some office business.
+
+"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?"
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--"
+
+And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of gray thread.
+
+This work irritated Léon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers.
+A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.
+
+"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.
+
+"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to
+look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many
+duties that must be considered first?"
+
+She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then she affected anxiety.
+Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!"
+
+The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness in his behalf
+astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up his praises, which
+he said every one was singing, especially the chemist.
+
+"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.
+
+"Certainly," replied the clerk.
+
+And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance
+generally made them laugh.
+
+"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does not
+trouble about her appearance."
+
+Then she relapsed into silence.
+
+It was the same on the following days; her talk, her manners, everything
+changed. She took interest in the house-work, went to church regularly,
+and looked after her servant with more severity.
+
+She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Félicité brought her
+in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared
+she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and
+she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outbursts which would have
+reminded any one but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Nôtre Dame de
+Paris."
+
+When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire.
+His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was
+quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the nightcaps arranged in piles
+of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn
+in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not
+understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when
+Léon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
+his two feet on the fender, his cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist
+with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with
+the slender waist who came behind his armchair to kiss his forehead:
+
+"What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!"
+
+And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all
+hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an
+extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly
+attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she
+rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent
+manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure
+feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because
+they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion
+rejoices.
+
+Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black
+hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always
+silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely
+touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine
+destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,
+that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in
+churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the
+marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist
+said--
+
+"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a
+sub-prefecture."
+
+The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the
+poor her charity.
+
+But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with
+the narrow folds hid a distracted heart, of whose torment those chaste
+lips said nothing. She was in love with Léon, and sought solitude that
+she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his form
+troubled the voluptuousness of this meditation. Emma thrilled at the
+sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and
+afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended
+in sorrow.
+
+Léon did not know that when he left her in despair, she rose after he
+had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his
+comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history
+to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy
+to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centred
+upon this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip
+their red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma
+recognized her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be
+evident, that she might make it less. She would have liked Léon to guess
+it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.
+What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of
+shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was
+past, that all was lost. Then pride, the joy of being able to say to
+herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking
+resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she
+was making.
+
+Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy
+of passion, all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of
+turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself
+to pain, and seeking everywhere occasions for it. She was irritated by
+an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had
+not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow
+home.
+
+What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her
+anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an
+imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose
+sake, then, was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all
+felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of
+that complex strap that buckled her in on all sides?
+
+On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that
+resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented
+it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,
+and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own
+gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity
+drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tendernesses to adulterous desires.
+She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better
+right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised
+sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and
+she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she
+was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.
+
+Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
+temptation to flee somewhere with Léon to try a new life; but at once a
+vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.
+
+"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me?
+What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?"
+
+She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with
+flowing tears.
+
+"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in
+during these crises.
+
+"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would
+worry him."
+
+"Ah! yes," Félicité went on, "you are just like La Guérine, Père
+Guérin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at
+Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, that to see her
+standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a
+winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was
+a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do
+anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went off
+quite alone to the seashore, so that the customs officer, going his
+rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle.
+Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say."
+
+"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began."
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SPIRITUAL COUNSEL.
+
+
+One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been
+watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard
+the Angelus ringing.
+
+It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a
+warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like
+women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fêtes. Through the bars
+of the arbor and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields,
+meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapors
+rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet
+tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart
+their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps
+nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the
+air, kept up its peaceful lamentation.
+
+With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost
+themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered
+the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the
+altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked
+to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here
+and there by the stiff black hoods of the good sisters bending over
+their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the
+gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense.
+Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the
+down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she
+went towards the church, inclined to no matter what devotions, so that
+her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.
+
+On the Place she met Lestiboudois on his way back, for, in order not to
+shorten his day's labor, he preferred interrupting his work, then
+beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own
+convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads
+of catechism hour.
+
+Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the
+cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their
+clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the
+newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but
+stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.
+
+The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure
+made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the
+humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the
+great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on
+the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the
+air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow
+nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was
+burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a
+distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of
+the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and
+the corners.
+
+"Where is the curé?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was
+amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it.
+
+"He is just coming," he answered.
+
+And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbé Bournisien appeared;
+the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.
+
+"These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!" Then,
+picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with his foot,
+"They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame Bovary,
+"Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognize you."
+
+He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing
+the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.
+
+The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the
+lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, ravelled at the hem. Grease
+and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the
+buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his
+neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was
+dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of
+his greyish beard. He had just dined, and was breathing noisily.
+
+"How are you?" he added.
+
+"Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill."
+
+"Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days weaken
+one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer,
+as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?"
+
+"He!" she said with a gesture of contempt.
+
+"What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe
+something for you?"
+
+"Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need."
+
+But the curé from time to time looked into the church, where the
+kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs
+of cards.
+
+"I should like to know--" she went on.
+
+"You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm
+your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma. "He's Boudet the carpenter's
+son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he
+could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes
+for a joke I call him _Ri_boudet (like the road one takes to go to
+Maromme), and I even say '_Mon_ Riboudet.' Ha! ha! '_Mont_ Riboudet.'
+The other day I repeated that jest to Monsignor, and he laughed at it;
+he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"
+
+She seemed not to hear him. And he went on:
+
+"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest
+people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a
+thick laugh, "and I of the soul."
+
+She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you
+solace all sorrows."
+
+"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to
+Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a
+spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me!
+Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! will you leave off?"
+
+And with a bound he ran into the church.
+
+The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over
+the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were
+just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly
+distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of
+their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their
+knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them
+there.
+
+"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton
+handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are
+much to be pitied."
+
+"Others, too," she replied.
+
+"Assuredly. Town-laborers, for example."
+
+"It is not they--"
+
+"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I
+assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread."
+
+"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she
+spoke, "those, Monsieur le Curé, who have bread and have no--"
+
+"Fire in the winter," said the priest.
+
+"Oh, what does that matter?"
+
+"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and
+food--for, after all--"
+
+"My God! my God!" she sighed.
+
+"Do you feel unwell?" he asked, approaching her anxiously. "It is
+indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink a little
+tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a
+little moist sugar."
+
+"Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream.
+
+"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought
+you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were asking me
+something? What was it? I really don't remember."
+
+"I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma.
+
+And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the
+cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking.
+
+"Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you
+know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will
+soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after
+Ascension Day I keep them _recta_ an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor
+children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as,
+moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of His Divine
+Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband."
+
+And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached
+the door.
+
+Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with
+heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two
+hands half-open behind him.
+
+Then she turned on her heel with one movement, like a statue on a pivot,
+and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices
+of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her.
+
+"Are you a Christian?"
+
+"Yes, I am a Christian?"
+
+"What is a Christian?"
+
+"He who, being baptized--baptized--baptized--"
+
+She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and
+when she was in her room threw herself into an armchair.
+
+The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations. The
+furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose
+itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the
+clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all
+things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was there,
+between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes,
+and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her
+apron-strings.
+
+"Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand.
+
+The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on
+them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a
+small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron.
+
+"Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably.
+
+Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.
+
+"Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow.
+
+Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting
+against it her cheek, which began to bleed. Madame Bovary sprang to lift
+her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might,
+and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It was
+the dinner-hour; he had come home.
+
+"Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down
+while she was playing, and has hurt herself."
+
+Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for
+some sticking plaster.
+
+Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to
+remain alone to look after the child. Then, watching her sleep, the
+little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid
+to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little.
+Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed. Her breathing now imperceptibly
+raised the cotton covering. Big tears lay in the corner of the
+half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken
+pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely.
+
+"It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!"
+
+When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop,
+whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the
+sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle.
+
+"I assure you it's nothing," he said, kissing her on the forehead.
+"Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill."
+
+He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed
+much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to
+"keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the various dangers that
+threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew
+something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin
+full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her
+good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not
+sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows
+and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homaises, in spite of
+their spirit, could not stir without some one watching them; at the
+slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they
+were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded
+head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais's; her
+husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences
+of such compression to the intellectual organs, he even went so far as
+to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?"
+
+Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation.
+"I should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear,
+who went upstairs in front of him.
+
+"Can he suspect anything?" Léon asked himself. His heart beat, and he
+racked his brain with surmises.
+
+At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what
+would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotype. It was a
+sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his
+portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know how much it would
+be. The inquiries would not put Monsieur Léon out, since he went to town
+almost every week.
+
+Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom
+of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Léon was after no love-making.
+He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrançois saw from the amount of
+food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the
+tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he wasn't paid by the
+police.
+
+All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Léon often
+threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained
+vaguely of life.
+
+"It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector.
+
+"What recreation?"
+
+"If I were you I'd have a lathe."
+
+"But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk.
+
+"Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of
+mingled contempt and satisfaction.
+
+Léon was weary of loving without any result; moreover, he was beginning
+to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of
+life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored
+with Yonville and the Yonvillers, that the sight of certain persons, of
+certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good
+fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the
+prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced
+him.
+
+This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar
+sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he
+was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented
+him? And he began making home preparations; he arranged his occupations
+beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an
+artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have
+a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already
+was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a
+death's-head on the guitar above them.
+
+The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed
+more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other
+chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course,
+then, Léon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none,
+and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he
+set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She
+consented.
+
+He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises,
+parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and
+when Léon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three armchairs
+restuffed, bought a stock of cravats, in a word, had made more
+preparations than for a voyage round the world, he put it off from week
+to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to
+leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation.
+
+When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin
+sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to
+carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary,
+who was taking Léon to Rouen in his carriage. The latter had just time
+to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary.
+
+When he reached the head of the stairs he stopped, he was so out of
+breath. On his coming in, Madame Bovary rose hurriedly.
+
+"It is I again!" said Léon.
+
+"I was sure of it!"
+
+She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her
+red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained
+standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot.
+
+"The doctor is not here?" he went on.
+
+"He is out." She repeated, "He is out."
+
+Then there was silence. They looked one at the other, and their
+thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two
+throbbing breasts.
+
+"I should like to kiss Berthe," said Léon.
+
+Emma went down a few steps and called Félicité.
+
+He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the brackets,
+the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But
+she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a
+windmill roof downward at the end of a string. Léon kissed her several
+times on the neck.
+
+"Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!"
+
+And he gave her back to her mother.
+
+"Take her away," she said.
+
+They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed
+against a window-pane; Léon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly
+against his thigh.
+
+"It is going to rain," said Emma.
+
+"I have a cloak," he answered.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+She turned round, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. The light
+fell on it as on a piece of marble to the curve of the eyebrows, without
+one's being able to guess what Emma was seeing in the horizon or what
+she was thinking within herself.
+
+"Well, good-bye," he sighed.
+
+She raised her head with a quick movement.
+
+"Yes, good-bye--go!"
+
+They advanced toward each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.
+
+"In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to
+him, and forcing a laugh.
+
+Léon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being
+seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their
+eyes met again, and he disappeared.
+
+When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to
+look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds.
+He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the
+curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it,
+slowly opened its long oblique folds, that spread out with a single
+movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Léon
+set off running.
+
+From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a
+coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were
+talking. They were waiting for him.
+
+"Embrace me," said the chemist with tears in his eyes. "Here is your
+coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after
+yourself."
+
+"Come, Léon, jump in," said the notary.
+
+Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs,
+uttered these three sad words:
+
+"A pleasant journey!"
+
+"Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head."
+
+They set out, and Homais went back.
+
+          *     *     *     *     *
+
+Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched
+the clouds. They were gathering round the sunset on the side of Rouen,
+and swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays
+of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy,
+while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust
+of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered
+against the green leaves. Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked,
+sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water
+on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an
+acacia.
+
+"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.
+
+Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.
+
+"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!"
+
+"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair: "Any news
+at home?"
+
+"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know
+women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be wrong
+to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more
+malleable than ours."
+
+"Poor Léon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he get used
+to it?"
+
+Madame Bovary sighed.
+
+"Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at
+restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly
+enough, I assure you."
+
+"I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary.
+
+"Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to do
+like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what
+a life those dogs lead in the Latin Quarter with actresses. Besides,
+students are thought a great deal of at Paris. Provided they have a few
+accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even
+ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which
+subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches."
+
+"But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--"
+
+"You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the
+medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket
+there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual
+presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, whom any one
+would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself;
+offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more
+intimate; he takes you to a café, invites you to his country-house,
+introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three
+fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into
+some pernicious step."
+
+"That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of
+illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the
+provinces."
+
+Emma shuddered.
+
+"Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the
+perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the
+water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the
+spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever
+people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always
+preferred plain living; it is more healthful. So when I was studying
+pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boardinghouse; I dined with the
+professors."
+
+And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal
+likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was
+wanted.
+
+"Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out for a
+minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling.
+What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By the way, do you know
+the news?"
+
+"What news?"
+
+"That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and
+assuming one of his most serious expressions, "that the agricultural
+meeting of the Seine-Inférieure will be held this year at
+Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumor, at all events, is going the round. This
+morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance
+for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you;
+Justin has the lantern."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+A WOMAN'S WHIMS.
+
+
+The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Every thing seemed to her
+enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of
+things, and sorrow was engulphed within her soul with soft shrieks such
+as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we
+give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after
+everything done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every
+wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings
+on.
+
+As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in
+her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. Léon
+reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though
+separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of
+the house seemed to hold his shadow. She could not detach her eyes from
+the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had
+sat. The river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the
+slippery banks. They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves,
+over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been! What happy
+afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! He
+read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh
+wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the
+nasturtiums of the arbor. Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life,
+the only possible hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happiness
+when it came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with
+both knees, when it was about to flee from her? And she cursed herself
+for not having loved Léon. She thirsted for his lips. The wish took
+possession of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his
+arms and say to him, "It is I; I am yours." But Emma recoiled beforehand
+at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by
+regret, became only the more acute.
+
+Henceforth the memory of Léon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt
+there more brightly than the fire travelers leave on the snow of a
+Russian steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she
+stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything that
+could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most
+immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined,
+her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness
+that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost
+hopes, the domestic tête-à-tête,--she gathered it all up, took
+everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy.
+
+The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted
+itself, or because it had been piled up too much. Love, little by
+little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this
+incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and
+faded by degrees. In the supineness of her conscience she even took her
+repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the
+burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still
+raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help
+came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the
+terrible cold that pierced her.
+
+Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now far
+more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty
+that it would not end.
+
+A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself
+certain whims. She bought a gothic prie-Dieu, and in a month spent
+fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen
+for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves,
+and wore it knotted round her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with
+closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch
+in this garb.
+
+She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair _à la Chinoise_, in
+flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted it on one side and rolled it
+under like a man's.
+
+She wished to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a
+supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history, and
+philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke up with a start,
+thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming," he stammered;
+and it was the noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But
+her reading fared like her pieces of embroidery, all of which, only
+just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to
+other books.
+
+She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any
+folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she
+could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid
+enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop.
+
+In spite of her vaporish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called
+them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the
+corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of
+old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all
+over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils,
+her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three gray hairs on
+her temples, she talked much of her old age.
+
+She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Charles fussed
+round her showing his anxiety--
+
+"Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?"
+
+Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table,
+sitting in an armchair at his bureau under the phrenological head.
+
+Then he wrote to his mother to beg her to come, and they had many long
+consultations together on the subject of Emma.
+
+What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all
+medical treatment?
+
+"Do you know what your wife wants?" replied Madame Bovary, senior. "She
+wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she were
+obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have
+these vapors, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her
+head, and from the idleness in which she lives."
+
+"Yet she is always busy," said Charles.
+
+"Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works against
+religion, in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire.
+But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Any one who has no
+religion always ends by turning out badly."
+
+So they decided to stop Emma from reading novels. The enterprise did not
+seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she passed through
+Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Emma had
+discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply to
+the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous
+trade?
+
+The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three
+weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen
+words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in
+the evening before going to bed.
+
+Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at Yonville.
+
+The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on
+end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses
+from the church to the inn. On the other side there were canvas booths,
+where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together
+with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends
+fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground
+between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky
+straw stuck out. Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks
+through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place
+and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the
+shop-front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and
+the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations, so great
+was Homais's reputation in the neighboring villages. His robust aplomb
+had fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than
+all the doctors.
+
+Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in
+the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, and she amused
+herself with watching the crowd of boors, when she saw a gentleman in a
+green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy
+gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant
+walking with bent head and quite a thoughtful air.
+
+"Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on the
+doorsteps with Félicité, and, taking him for a servant of the house:
+"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is here."
+
+It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of La
+Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known. La
+Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just bought
+the château and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however,
+troubling very much about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed
+to have at least fifteen thousand francs a year.
+
+Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his man, who
+wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over."
+
+"That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning.
+
+So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Justin to hold it.
+Then addressing the countryman, already pale--
+
+"Don't be afraid, my lad."
+
+"No, no, sir," said the other; "get on."
+
+And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the prick of
+the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass.
+
+"Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles.
+
+"Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain
+flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign isn't it?"
+
+"Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then
+syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution
+like this man."
+
+At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between
+his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. His
+hat fell off.
+
+"I thought as much," said Bovary, pressing his finger on the vein.
+
+The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin's hands; his knees shook,
+he turned pale.
+
+"Emma! Emma!" called Charles.
+
+With one bound she came down the staircase.
+
+"Some vinegar," he cried. "O dear! two at once!"
+
+And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress.
+
+"It is nothing," said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking Justin in his
+arms. He seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall.
+
+Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of his shirt had
+got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers
+about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her
+cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and
+then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope
+still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in their pale sclerotic like
+blue flowers in milk.
+
+"We must hide this from him," said Charles.
+
+Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the
+movement she made in bending down, her skirt (it was a summer frock with
+four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread
+out around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma, stooping,
+staggered a little as she stretched out her arms, the stuff here and
+there gave with the inflections of her bust. Then she went to fetch a
+bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the
+chemist arrived. The servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing
+his pupil with his eyes open he drew a long breath; then going round him
+he looked at him from head to foot.
+
+"Fool!" he said, "really a little fool! A fool in four letters! A
+phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid of
+anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous
+heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about
+yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for
+under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in
+order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to
+keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an
+imbecile."
+
+Justin did not answer. The chemist went on--
+
+"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doctor and madame.
+On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. There are
+now twenty people in the shop. I left everything because of the interest
+I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep an eye on
+the jars."
+
+When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a
+little while about fainting-fits. Madame Bovary said she had never
+fainted.
+
+"That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur Boulanger; "but some
+people are very susceptible. Thus, in a duel, I have seen a second lose
+consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols."
+
+"For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood
+doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would
+make me faint, if I reflected upon it too much."
+
+Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm
+himself, since his fancy was over.
+
+"It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added,
+and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then he put three francs on the
+corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out.
+
+He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La
+Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars,
+slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects.
+
+"She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this
+doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a
+Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from? Wherever did this fat
+fellow pick her up?"
+
+Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal
+temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to
+do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him;
+so he was thinking about her and her husband.
+
+"I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He has dirty
+nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is trotting after his
+patients, she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored! She would
+like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman!
+She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.
+With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be
+tender, charming! Yes; but how get rid of her afterwards?"
+
+Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by
+contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at Rouen, whom he
+kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in
+remembrance, he was satiated--
+
+"Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher.
+Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so finikin with her
+pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns."
+
+The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe heard only the regular
+beating of the grass striking against his boots, with the cry of the
+grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He again saw Emma in
+her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.
+
+"Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a
+clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political
+part of the enterprise. He asked himself--
+
+"Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be having the brat
+on our hands, and the servant, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of
+worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it."
+
+Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a
+gimlet. And that pale complexion; I adore pale women!"
+
+When he reached the top of the Argueil hills he had made up his mind.
+"It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in now and then.
+I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if need be. We
+shall become friends; I'll invite them to my place. By Jove!" added he,
+"there's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. I shall see
+her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A VILLAGE FESTIVAL.
+
+
+At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the
+solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the
+preparations. The pediment of the townhall had been hung with garlands
+of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the
+middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to
+announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful
+farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was
+none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet
+was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and,
+tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless
+that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into
+his legs; which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement.
+As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,
+both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw
+the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and repass
+alternately; there was no end to it, and it continually began again.
+There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had
+washed down their houses the evening before; tricolored flags hung from
+half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely
+weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the colored
+neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved
+with their motley colors the somber monotony of the frock-coats and blue
+smocks. The neighboring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses,
+pulled out a long pin that fastened round them their skirts, turned up
+for fear of mud; the husbands, on the contrary, in order to save their
+hats, kept their handkerchiefs round them, holding one corner between
+their teeth.
+
+The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village.
+People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time
+to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women
+with their gloves, who were going out to see the fête. What was most
+admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a
+platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were
+against the four columns of the townhall four kinds of poles, each
+bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with
+inscriptions in gold letters. On one was written, "To Commerce;" on the
+other, "To Agriculture;" on the third, "To Industry;" and on the fourth,
+"To the Fine Arts."
+
+But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of
+Madame Lefrançois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she
+muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas
+booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a
+tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place!
+Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchâtel for the keeper of a
+cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"
+
+The chemist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers,
+beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.
+
+"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked
+where he was going--
+
+"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, to see me, who am always more cooped
+up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese, taking a holiday?"
+
+"What cheese?" asked the landlady.
+
+"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey to
+you, Madame Lefrançois, that I usually live at home like a recluse.
+To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--"
+
+"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.
+
+"Yes, I am going," replied the chemist, astonished. "Am I not a member
+of the consulting commission?"
+
+Mère Lefrançois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying
+with a smile:
+
+"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?
+Do you understand anything about it?"
+
+"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist,--that is to say, a
+chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrançois, being the
+knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,
+it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in
+fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the
+analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is
+all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"
+
+The landlady did not answer. Homais went on:
+
+"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled
+the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the
+composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the
+atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,
+the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.
+And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to
+direct, criticise the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,
+the diet of the domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrançois, one must
+know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand,
+which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are
+unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and
+re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must
+keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be
+always on the alert to find out improvements."
+
+The landlady never took her eyes off the "Café Français," and the
+chemist went on:
+
+"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they
+would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus, lately I
+myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of more than seventy-two
+pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with
+some New Reflections on this Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural
+Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honor of being received
+among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if
+my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame
+Lefrançois seemed so preoccupied.
+
+"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop
+as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her
+breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands
+at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't
+last long," she added; "it'll be over before a week."
+
+Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and
+whispered in his ear:
+
+"What! you didn't know it? There'll be an execution in next week. It's
+Lheureux who is selling him up; he has killed him with bills."
+
+"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the chemist, who always found
+expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.
+
+Then the landlady began telling him this story, that she had heard from
+Théodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested
+Telher, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak."
+
+"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to
+Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur
+Boulanger's arm."
+
+"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my
+respects. Perhaps she'd be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure
+under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrançois, who was
+calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off
+rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing
+exuberantly right and left, and taking up much room with the large
+tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.
+
+Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame
+Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her,
+said in a rough tone:
+
+"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist."
+She pressed his elbow.
+
+"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out
+of the corner of his eyes.
+
+Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood
+out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it
+like the leaves of reeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked
+straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered
+by the cheekbones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the
+delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.
+Her head leaned towards her shoulder, and the pearly tips of her white
+teeth were seen between her lips.
+
+"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.
+
+Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur
+Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter
+into the conversation.
+
+"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!"
+
+And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, while at the
+slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your
+pardon!" and raised his hat.
+
+When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up
+to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him
+Madame Bovary. He called out:
+
+"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently."
+
+"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.
+
+"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as
+to-day I have the happiness of being with you----"
+
+Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine
+weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had
+sprung up again.
+
+"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to
+furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall
+I pick some? What do you think?"
+
+"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.
+
+"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.
+
+The meadow began to fill, and the housewives, hustled one with their
+great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get
+out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue
+stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who smelled of milk when one
+passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,
+and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to
+the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers one
+after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord
+supported on sticks.
+
+The beasts were there, their noses toward the cord, and making a
+confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in
+the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the
+cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,
+slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats
+that buzzed round them. Ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the
+halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils, looking
+toward the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and
+flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then
+came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded
+animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some
+sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart,
+outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,
+muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, who moved no more than if he
+had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.
+
+Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,
+examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One
+who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he
+walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de
+la Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe he came forward quickly,
+and smiling amiably, said:
+
+"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"
+
+Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had
+disappeared:
+
+"_Ma foi!_" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his."
+
+And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,
+showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in
+front of some fine beast which Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He
+noticed this and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses;
+then he apologized for the negligence of his own. He had that
+incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think
+they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations
+of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for
+social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric
+shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his
+waistcoat of gray ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at
+the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so
+polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses' dung with
+them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one
+side.
+
+"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country----"
+
+"It's waste of time," said Emma.
+
+"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people
+is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"
+
+Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,
+the illusions lost there.
+
+"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."
+
+"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."
+
+"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to
+wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the
+sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were
+not better to join those sleeping there!"
+
+"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."
+
+"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he
+accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.
+
+But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great
+pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen
+with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the
+ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,
+who was carrying the church chairs about among the people. Alive to all
+that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the
+show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew
+which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for
+these seats, whose straw smelled of incense, and they lent against the
+thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.
+
+Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to
+himself:
+
+"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim
+in life, if I had met some love, if I had found some one! Oh, how I
+would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted
+everything, overcome everything!"
+
+"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."
+
+"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.
+
+"For, after all," she went on, "you are free----" she hesitated,
+"rich----"
+
+"Do not mock me," he replied.
+
+And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a
+cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell
+toward the village.
+
+It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the
+members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to
+begin the meeting or still wait.
+
+At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by
+two thin horses, whom a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily.
+Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to
+imitate him. All ran toward the enclosure; every one pushed forward. A
+few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to
+anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their
+harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town
+hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,
+beating drums and marking time.
+
+"Present!" shouted Binet.
+
+"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."
+
+And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting
+loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns
+were lowered. Then were seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman
+in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft
+of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most
+benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were
+half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his
+sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognized the
+mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able
+to come. He himself was a councilor at the prefecture; then he added a
+few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the
+other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face,
+their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round,
+the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and
+the crowd. The councilor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast
+repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled,
+stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the
+monarchy and the honor that was being done to Yonville.
+
+Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the
+coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of
+the "Lion d'Or," where a number of peasants collected to look at the
+carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one
+by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet
+armchairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.
+
+All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned
+by the sun, were the color of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers
+emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows.
+All the waistcoats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had,
+at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; every one rested
+his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of his
+trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the
+leather of his heavy boots.
+
+The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between
+the pillars, while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting
+on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all
+those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back
+every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion
+with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to
+the small steps of the platform.
+
+"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his
+place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something
+rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty
+effect."
+
+"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took
+everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and
+he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art."
+
+Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first floor
+of the townhall, to the "council-room," and as it was empty, he declared
+that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three
+stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having
+carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other.
+
+There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying.
+At last the councilor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain,
+and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had
+collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began:
+
+"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on
+the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment, will, I am sure,
+be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to
+the higher administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentlemen,
+our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or
+private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a
+hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the
+incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace
+respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine
+arts."
+
+"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."
+
+"Why?" said Emma.
+
+But at this moment the voice of the councilor rose to an extraordinary
+pitch. He declaimed:
+
+"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined
+our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man
+himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled
+lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins,
+when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."
+
+"Well, some one down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I
+should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad
+reputation----"
+
+"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.
+
+"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."
+
+"But, gentlemen," continued the councilor, "if, banishing from my memory
+the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the
+actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there? Everywhere
+commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of
+communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state,
+establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centers have
+recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all
+hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France
+breathes once more!"
+
+"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they
+are right."
+
+"How so?" she asked.
+
+"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly
+tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions
+and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all
+sorts of fantasies, of follies."
+
+Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveler who has voyaged over
+strange lands, and went on:
+
+"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!"
+
+"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."
+
+"But is it ever found?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.
+
+"And this is what you have understood," said the councilor. "You
+farmers, agricultural laborers! you pacific pioneers of a work that
+belongs wholly to civilization! you men of progress and morality, you
+have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable
+than atmospheric disturbances!"
+
+"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one
+is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice
+cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your
+life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There
+is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen
+each other in dreams!" He looked at her. "In fine, here it is, this
+treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet
+one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if
+one went out from darkness into light!"
+
+And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his
+hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it
+fall on Emma's. She took hers away.
+
+"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who was so blind,
+so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of
+another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural
+populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the
+country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a
+word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain
+ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced
+intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus
+contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the
+support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of
+duty----"
+
+"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They
+are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with
+foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty,
+duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the
+beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the
+ignominy that it imposes upon us."
+
+"Yet--yet----" objected Madame Bovary.
+
+"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one
+beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of
+poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?"
+
+"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the
+world and accept its moral code."
+
+"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that
+of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that
+makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthy, like the mass of
+imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is about
+us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens
+that give us light."
+
+Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief.
+He continued:
+
+"And what should I do here, gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of
+agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of
+subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,
+who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country,
+brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by
+means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,
+and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the
+baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it
+not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks
+in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish
+ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even
+necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected
+on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the
+ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow
+for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should
+never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different
+products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother,
+lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the
+apple-tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax.
+Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of
+late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention."
+
+He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide
+open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him
+with starting eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed
+his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoléon between
+his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.
+The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in
+their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the
+platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with
+out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could
+hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his
+helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of
+Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on
+his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled
+beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little
+face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and
+sleepiness.
+
+The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk
+leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors,
+and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by
+the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur
+Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of
+phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the
+crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the
+bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In
+fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and
+these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down
+some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.
+
+Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,
+speaking rapidly:
+
+"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single
+sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest
+sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do
+meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend together. Yet they will
+make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon
+each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,
+they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they
+are born one for the other."
+
+His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face toward
+Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes
+small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelled the
+perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came
+over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at
+Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this hair an odor of vanilla
+and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to
+breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leaned back in her
+chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the
+old diligence the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of
+Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow
+carriage that Léon had so often come back to her, and by this route down
+there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his
+window; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that
+she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on the
+arm of the Viscount, and that Léon was not far away, that he was coming;
+and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head
+by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old
+desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to
+and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She
+opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the
+ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands,
+then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing
+of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the
+councilor intoning his phrases. He said:
+
+"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor
+to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. Apply yourselves, above
+all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the
+development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these
+shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold
+forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in the
+hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose
+hard labor no Government up to this day has taken into consideration,
+come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured
+that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages
+you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and
+alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices."
+
+Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning
+another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councilor,
+but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by
+more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise
+of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture
+more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had
+always contributed to civilization. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was
+talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of
+society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns
+in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had
+put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in
+this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur
+Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little
+Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing
+Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and the
+emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young
+man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible
+attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.
+
+"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance
+willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that
+flow but to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us toward each
+other."
+
+And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.
+
+"For good farming generally!" cried the president.
+
+"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."
+
+"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."
+
+"Did I know I should accompany you?"
+
+"Seventy francs."
+
+"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained."
+
+"Manures!"
+
+"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!"
+
+"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"
+
+"For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a
+charm."
+
+"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."
+
+"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."
+
+"For a merino ram!"
+
+"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."
+
+"To Monsieur Belot of Nôtre-Dame."
+
+"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I
+not?"
+
+"Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Lehérissé and Cullembourg,
+sixty francs!"
+
+Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering
+like a captive dove that tries to fly away; but, whether she was trying
+to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure, she made a
+movement with her fingers. He exclaimed--
+
+"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand
+that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"
+
+A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the
+table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women
+were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.
+
+"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on:
+"Flemish manure--flax-growing--drainage--long leases--domestic service."
+
+Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme
+desire made their dry lips tremble, and softly, without an effort, their
+fingers intertwined.
+
+"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerrière, for
+fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value,
+twenty-five francs!"
+
+"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councilor.
+
+She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering:
+
+"Go up!"
+
+"Don't be afraid!"
+
+"Oh, how stupid she is!"
+
+"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.
+
+"Yes; here she is."
+
+"Then let her come up!"
+
+Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid
+bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she
+wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her
+pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered
+russet apple, and from the sleeves of her red jacket hung down two large
+hands with knotty joints. The dust of barns, the potash of washings, and
+the grease of wools had so incrusted, roughened, hardened these, that
+they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by
+dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble
+witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of
+monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion
+weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had
+caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she
+found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by
+the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the
+councilor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run
+away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at
+her. Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of
+servitude.
+
+"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the
+councilor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;
+and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he
+repeated in a fatherly tone:
+
+"Approach! approach!"
+
+"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began
+shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!
+Twenty-five francs! For you!"
+
+Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude
+spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her
+muttering:
+
+"I'll give it to our curé up home, to say some masses for me!"
+
+"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.
+
+The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had
+been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into
+the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the
+animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green crown on
+their horns.
+
+The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the
+townhall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the
+battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's
+arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about
+alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.
+
+The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that
+they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for
+forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one
+stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a
+whitish steam, like the vapor of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
+above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the
+calico of the tent, was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard
+nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty
+plates; his neighbors were talking; he did not answer them; they filled
+his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing
+noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;
+her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the
+folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to
+all infinity before him in the vistas of the future.
+
+He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with
+her husband. Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the
+danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and
+give some advice to Binet.
+
+The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess
+of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not
+light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon
+biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meager Roman-candle
+went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
+cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma
+silently nestled gently against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her
+chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky.
+Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.
+
+They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few drops of rain began
+to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.
+
+At this moment the councilor's carriage came out from the inn. His
+coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the
+distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his
+body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.
+
+"Truly," said the chemist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against
+drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the
+townhall on a board _ad hoc_ the names of all those who during the week
+got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one
+would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in
+case of need. But excuse me!"
+
+And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to
+see his lathe again.
+
+"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your
+men, or to go yourself----"
+
+"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!"
+
+"Do not be uneasy," said the chemist, when he returned to his friends.
+"Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No
+sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."
+
+"_Ma foi!_ I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never
+mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fête."
+
+Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very
+beautiful."
+
+And having bowed to one another, they separated.
+
+Two days later, in the "Fanal de Rouen," there was a long article on the
+show. Homais had composed it with _verve_ the very next morning.
+
+"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this
+crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical
+sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"
+
+Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government
+was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand
+reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on the
+entry of the councilor, he did not forget "the martial air of our
+militia," nor "our most merry village maidens," nor the "bald-headed
+old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants
+of our immortal phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly
+sound of the drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of
+the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that
+Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural
+society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the
+joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced
+the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one
+showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his
+good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.
+
+"About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard
+brought together the principal personages of the fête. The greatest
+cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed. Monsieur Lieuvain,
+the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,
+Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin
+sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
+fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a
+veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our
+little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
+a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.'
+
+"Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And
+he added: "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the
+priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please,
+messieurs the followers of Loyola!"
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+A WOODLAND IDYLL.
+
+
+Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he
+appeared.
+
+The day after the show he had said to himself:
+
+"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake."
+
+And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he
+had thought he was too late, and then he reasoned thus:
+
+"If from the first day she loved me, she must, from impatience to see me
+again, love me more. Let's go on with it!"
+
+And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the
+room, he saw Emma turn pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The
+small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the
+gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in
+the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral.
+
+Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
+conventional phrases.
+
+"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."
+
+"Seriously?" she cried.
+
+"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it
+was because I did not want to come back."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Can you not guess?"
+
+He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.
+He went on:
+
+"Emma!"
+
+"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.
+
+"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not
+to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and
+that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world
+calls you thus! Besides it is not your name; it is the name of another!"
+he repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes, I
+think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah!
+forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that
+you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what force
+impelled me toward you. For one does not struggle against Heaven; one
+cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is
+beautiful, charming, adorable."
+
+It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself,
+and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly
+and fully at this glowing language.
+
+"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least
+I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night--every night--I
+arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its roof glimmering in the
+moonlight, the trees in the garden before your window, and the little
+lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you
+never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"
+
+She turned toward him with a sob.
+
+"Oh, you are good!" she said.
+
+"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one
+word--only one word!"
+
+And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the floor; but a
+sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and, he noticed the door
+of the room was not closed.
+
+"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humor a
+whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and
+Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles
+came in.
+
+"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.
+
+The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into
+obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself
+together a little.
+
+"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."
+
+Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's
+palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if
+riding would not be good.
+
+"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to
+follow it up."
+
+And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered
+one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit
+he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered
+from giddiness.
+
+"I'll call round," said Bovary.
+
+"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient
+for you."
+
+"Ah! very good! I thank you."
+
+And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur
+Boulanger's kind offer?"
+
+She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally
+declared that perhaps it would look odd.
+
+"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a
+pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."
+
+"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"
+
+"You must order one," he answered.
+
+The riding-habit decided her.
+
+When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his
+wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.
+
+The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two
+saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
+side-saddle.
+
+Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she
+had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his
+appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white
+corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.
+
+Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also
+came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.
+
+"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are
+mettlesome."
+
+She heard a noise above her; it was Félicité drumming on the
+window-panes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her
+mother answered with a wave of her whip.
+
+"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,
+prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.
+
+As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop.
+Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her
+figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out,
+she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in
+her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head;
+they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses
+stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
+
+It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds
+hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent
+asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the
+clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roofs of
+Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls,
+and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house,
+and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From
+the height on which they were, the whole valley seemed an immense pale
+lake sending off its vapor into the air. Clumps of trees here and there
+stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
+above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.
+
+Beside them, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in
+the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco,
+deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the
+horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.
+
+Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away
+from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine
+trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.
+The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.
+
+Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.
+
+"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.
+
+"Do you think so?" she said.
+
+"Forward! forward!" he continued.
+
+He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long
+ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward
+and removed them as they rode along. At other times to turn aside the
+branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing
+against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred.
+There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets
+alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were gray, fawn,
+or golden colored, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the
+thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry
+of the ravens flying off amid the oaks.
+
+They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front
+on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,
+although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,
+saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white
+stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.
+
+She stopped. "I am tired," she said.
+
+"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"
+
+Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her
+veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face
+appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure
+waves.
+
+"But where are we going?"
+
+He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round
+him biting his mustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice
+had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe
+began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her
+with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.
+
+Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on
+the ground with the tip of her foot.
+
+But at the words, "Are not our destinies now one?----"
+
+"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!"
+
+She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having
+gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said
+hurriedly:
+
+"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back."
+
+He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:
+
+"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"
+
+Then smiling a strange smile, his pupils fixed, his teeth set, he
+advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:
+
+"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let us go!"
+
+"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became
+respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He
+said:
+
+"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were
+mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a
+place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I want you for my life. I must have
+your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"
+
+And he put out his arm around her waist. She feebly tried to disengage
+herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.
+
+But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
+
+"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"
+
+He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness
+on the water. Faded waterlilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the
+noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves.
+
+"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"
+
+"Why? Emma! Emma!"
+
+"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.
+
+The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw
+back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with
+a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him.
+
+The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the
+branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or
+on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as if humming-birds flying
+about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something
+sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose
+beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a
+stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she
+heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she
+heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing
+nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his
+penknife one of the two broken bridles.
+
+They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again
+the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same
+stones in the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her
+something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved
+in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand
+to kiss it.
+
+She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee
+bent on the mane of her horse, her face something flushed by the fresh
+air in the red of the evening.
+
+On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People
+looked at her from the windows.
+
+At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to
+hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there
+with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.
+
+"'Emma!" he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob,
+still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, that could be bought, I am
+very sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might
+please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell
+me!"
+
+She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--
+
+"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"
+
+And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up
+in her room.
+
+At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches,
+Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves
+rustled and the reeds whistled.
+
+But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never
+had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
+subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover!
+a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.
+So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness
+of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all
+would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her,
+the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
+existence appeared remote, far below in the shade, through the
+interspaces of these heights.
+
+Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the
+lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with
+the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were,
+an actual part of these imaginings, and realized the love-dream of her
+youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so
+envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not
+suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up
+burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse,
+without anxiety, without trouble.
+
+The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one
+another. She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with
+kisses; and she, looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to
+call her again by her name--to say that he loved her. They were in the
+forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some wooden-shoe maker. The walls
+were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated
+side by side on a bed of dry leaves.
+
+From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening.
+Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a
+fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there,
+that she always found fault with as too short.
+
+One morning, when Charles had gone out before daybreak, she was seized
+with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La
+Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while every
+one was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she soon
+found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps,
+without looking behind her.
+
+Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognized her lover's house. Its
+two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn.
+
+Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must
+be the château. She entered it as if the doors at her approach had
+opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to
+the corridor, Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end
+of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.
+
+"You here? You here?" he repeated, "How did you manage to come? Ah! your
+dress is damp."
+
+"I love you," she answered, passing her arms round his neck.
+
+This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out
+early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led
+to the waterside.
+
+But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls
+alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she
+caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across
+ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling, and clogging her thin
+shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the
+meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out
+of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a
+fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe
+still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.
+
+The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter
+softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops
+of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around
+her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him and pressed her to his
+breast.
+
+Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables,
+combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his
+shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that
+lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a
+bottle of water.
+
+It took them a good quarter of an hour to say good-bye. Then Emma wept.
+She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than
+herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come
+unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!"
+
+At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming
+imprudent--that she was compromising herself.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+LOVERS' VOWS.
+
+
+Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had
+intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he
+was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or
+even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she
+looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the
+horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She
+listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped
+short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.
+
+One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the
+long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out
+sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the
+edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked
+on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had
+gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes,
+trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for
+wild ducks.
+
+"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed. "When one sees a
+gun, one should always give warning."
+
+The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a
+prefectorial order having prohibited duck-hunting except in boats,
+Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them,
+and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this
+anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he
+congratulated himself on his luck and on his cleverness.
+
+At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once
+entered upon a conversation.
+
+"It isn't warm; it's nipping."
+
+Emma answered nothing. He went on--
+
+"And you're out so early?"
+
+"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my
+child is."
+
+"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me,
+since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the
+bird at the mouth of the gun----"
+
+"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her
+heel.
+
+"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.
+
+Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he
+would form unfavorable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the
+worst possible excuse, every one at Yonville knowing that the little
+Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was
+living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet,
+then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he
+would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her
+brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before
+her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.
+
+Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of
+distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she
+caught sight of in the shop was the tax-collector again. He was standing
+in front of the counter, lighted by the gleams of the red bottle, and
+was saying:
+
+"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."
+
+"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to
+Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't
+worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the
+stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor" (for the chemist
+much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by
+it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now,
+take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from
+the little room; you know very well that the armchairs are not to be
+taken out of the drawing-room."
+
+And to put his armchair back in its place he was darting away from the
+counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.
+
+"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm
+ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid,
+isn't it?"
+
+Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some
+copper-water with which to remove rust from his hunting things.
+
+Emma shuddered. The chemist began, saying:
+
+"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp."
+
+"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are
+people who like it."
+
+She was stifling.
+
+"And give me----"
+
+"Will he never go?" thought she.
+
+"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and
+three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the
+varnished leather of my togs."
+
+The chemist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared,
+Irma in her arms, Napoléon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat
+down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a
+footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her
+papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on
+labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to
+time were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words
+from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.
+
+"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais.
+
+"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in
+his waste-book.
+
+"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.
+
+"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the chemist.
+
+But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard
+nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.
+
+"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.
+
+"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.
+
+The next day the lovers discussed how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma
+wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to
+find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one.
+
+All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night
+he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the
+gate, which Charles thought lost.
+
+To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She
+jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a
+mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild
+with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled
+him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up
+a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But
+Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.
+
+"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."
+
+"Yes, I am coming," she answered.
+
+Then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell asleep.
+She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed.
+
+Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm
+around her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden.
+
+It was in the arbor, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Léon
+had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought
+of him now.
+
+The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they
+heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of
+the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the
+darkness and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and
+swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The
+cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips
+seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger;
+and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their
+souls sonorous, crystalline, and reverberating in multiplied vibrations.
+
+When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room
+between the car-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen
+candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down
+there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the
+whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not
+refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.
+She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more
+dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of
+approaching steps in the alley.
+
+"Some one is coming!" she said.
+
+He blew out the light.
+
+"Have you your pistols?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.
+
+"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence
+with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger."
+
+She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort
+of indecency and a naïve coarseness that scandalized her.
+
+Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had
+spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for
+he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called
+devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had treated him to a
+lecture, which he did not think in the best taste.
+
+Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on
+exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was
+asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She
+often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then
+she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! Rodolphe
+had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled him with
+caressing words as one would soothe a forsaken child, and she sometimes
+even said to him, gazing at the moon:
+
+"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love."
+
+But she was so pretty! He had possessed so few women of such
+ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for
+him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride
+and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense
+disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was
+lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up
+appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.
+
+He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry,
+nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love,
+which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water
+of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it.
+She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe
+concealed his indifference less and less.
+
+She did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether she
+did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of
+feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their
+voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual
+seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.
+
+Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having
+succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the
+end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another
+like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.
+
+It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance
+of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter.
+Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following
+lines:--
+
+    "MY DEAR CHILDREN,--I hope this will find you in good health, and
+    that it will be as good as the others, for it seems to me a little
+    more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time,
+    for a change, I'll give you a turkey-cock, unless you have a
+    preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you
+    please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my
+    cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees.
+    The harvest has not been over-good either. Finally, I don't know
+    when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the
+    house since I am alone, my poor Emma."
+
+Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped
+his pen to dream a little while.
+
+    "For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other
+    day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd,
+    having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be
+    pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I
+    heard from a pedlar, who, traveling through your part of the country
+    this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual working
+    hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had
+    some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said
+    not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I
+    conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear
+    children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It
+    grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter,
+    Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the
+    garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it is to
+    have jam made for her by-and-bye, that I will keep in the cupboard
+    for when she comes.
+
+    "Good-bye my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my
+    son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best
+    compliments, your loving father,
+
+    "THÉODORE ROUAULT."
+
+She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The mistakes
+in spelling interwove with one another, but Emma followed the kindly
+thought that chattered through it all like a hen half hidden in a hedge
+of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a
+little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she
+almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the
+tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in
+the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in
+the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the summer evenings
+all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and
+galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes
+the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like
+rebounding balls of gold. What happiness she had had at that time, what
+freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of
+them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her
+successive conditions of life,--maidenhood, her marriage, and her
+love;--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a
+traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his
+road.
+
+But what, then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary
+catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking
+round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.
+
+An April ray was dancing on the china of the _étagère_; the fire burned;
+beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was
+bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.
+
+In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst
+of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach
+at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt.
+Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she
+leant forward, beating the air with both her arms.
+
+"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love
+you, my poor child! How I love you!"
+
+Then, noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at
+once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings,
+her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the
+return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a
+little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite
+thunder-stricken at this excess of tenderness.
+
+That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.
+
+"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim."
+
+And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed
+herself cold and almost contemptuous.
+
+"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"
+
+And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the
+handkerchief she took out.
+
+Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if
+it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no
+opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much
+embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the chemist came just in
+time to provide her with an opportunity.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+AN EXPERIMENT AND A FAILURE.
+
+
+He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and
+as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that
+Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations
+for strephopody or club-foot.
+
+"For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See" (and he enumerated on
+his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain
+relief and beautifying the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator.
+Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the
+'Lion d'Or'? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all
+the travellers, and then" (Homais lowered his voice and looked round
+him), "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the
+subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is
+talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?"
+
+In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was not
+clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by
+which his reputation and fortune would be increased! She only wished to
+lean on something more solid than love.
+
+Charles, urged by the chemist and by her, allowed himself to be
+persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every evening,
+holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it.
+
+While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say,
+_katastrephopody_, _endostrephopody_, and _exostrephopody_ (or better,
+the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with
+the _hypostrephopody_ and _anastrephopody_), otherwise torsion downwards
+and upwards, Monsieur Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting
+the lad at the inn to submit to the operation.
+
+"You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick,
+like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns."
+
+Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.
+
+"However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. It's for your
+sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of
+your hideous deformity, together with that waddling of the lumbar
+regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in
+the exercise of your calling."
+
+Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would
+feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more
+likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily.
+Then he attacked him through his vanity:--
+
+"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to
+go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!"
+
+And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this
+obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science.
+
+The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never
+interfered with other people's business, Madame Lefrançois, Artémise,
+the neighbors, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache--every one persuaded
+him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it
+would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for
+the operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles
+consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an
+angel.
+
+So, by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a
+kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that
+weighed about eight pounds, in which iron, wood, sheet-iron, leather,
+screws, and nuts had not been spared.
+
+But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first
+of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.
+
+He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which,
+however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an
+equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with
+a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus, wide in foot like a
+horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which
+the black nails looked as if made of iron, the club-foot ran about like
+a deer from morn till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place,
+jumping around the carts, thrusting his limping foot forward. He seemed
+even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had
+acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and of energy; and
+when he was doing some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its
+fellow.
+
+Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendo Achillis,
+and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to
+afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to
+risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of
+injuring some important region that he did not know.
+
+Neither Ambrose Paré, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an
+interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren,
+about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took
+away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook,
+minds so strained as had the doctor when he approached Hippolyte, his
+tenotome between his fingers. And, as at hospitals, near by on a table
+lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of
+bandages--every bandage to be found at the chemist's. It was Monsieur
+Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as
+much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles
+pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the
+operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over
+Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses.
+
+"Come, be calm," said the chemist; "later you will show your gratitude
+to your benefactor."
+
+And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were
+waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would reappear
+walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the
+machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door.
+She threw herself on his neck: they sat down to table; he ate much, and
+at dessert he even wished to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he permitted
+himself only on Sundays when there was company.
+
+The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They
+talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in
+their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts
+increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh
+herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some
+tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe
+for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to
+Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth.
+
+They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly
+entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It
+was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de Rouen." He brought it
+them to read.
+
+"Read it yourself," said Bovary.
+
+He read:
+
+"'Despite the prejudices that still cover a part of the face of Europe
+like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country
+places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the
+scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of
+loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished
+practitioners----"
+
+"Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with emotion.
+
+"No, no! not at all! What next!"
+
+"'----Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not used the
+scientific term, because you know in a newspaper every one would not
+perhaps understand. The masses must----"
+
+"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"
+
+"I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most
+distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man
+called Hippolyte Tautain, stable-man for the last twenty-five years at
+the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow Lefrançois, at the Place
+d'Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the
+subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a
+veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The
+operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few
+drops of blood appeared on the skin, as if to show that the rebellious
+tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient,
+strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain.
+His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired.
+Everything tends to show that his convalescence will be brief; and who
+knows whether, at our next village festivity, we shall not see our good
+Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of
+joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and
+his capers his complete cure? Honor, then, to the generous savants!
+Honor to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the
+amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honor, thrice honor!
+Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame
+walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science
+now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to
+the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'"
+
+                *     *     *
+
+This did not prevent Mère Lefrançois from coming five days after,
+scared, and crying out--
+
+"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"
+
+Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who caught sight of
+him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared
+himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking every one who was going up
+the stairs--
+
+"Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?"
+
+The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine
+in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to
+break it.
+
+With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb,
+the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines
+of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed
+about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous
+machine. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No
+attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not
+been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But hardly had
+the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit
+to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten
+matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it
+any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised
+at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with
+blisters here and there, whence oozed a black liquid. Matters were
+taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mère
+Lefrançois had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so
+that he might at least have some distraction.
+
+But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of
+such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. He
+lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale, with long beard,
+sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the
+dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him.
+She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted and encouraged
+him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days,
+when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him,
+fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled.
+
+"How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah! you're not
+up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You should do this! do
+that!" And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured
+by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added:--
+
+"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the
+same, old chap, you don't smell nice!"
+
+Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned
+sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him
+with eyes full of terror, sobbing--
+
+"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! how
+unfortunate I am!"
+
+And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself.
+
+"Don't listen to him, my lad," said Mère Lefrançois. "Haven't they
+tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker. Here! swallow
+this."
+
+And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of
+bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the
+strength to put to his lips.
+
+Abbé Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him. He
+began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he
+ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take
+advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven.
+
+"For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected
+your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is
+it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work,
+that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your
+salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have
+known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet at
+this point, I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in
+the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a
+good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying
+morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which
+art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won't cost
+you anything. Will you promise me?"
+
+The poor devil promised. The curé came back day after day. He chatted
+with the landlady, and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and
+puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he
+fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression
+of face.
+
+His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire
+to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur
+Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better
+than one; it was no risk.
+
+The chemist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the
+priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte's convalescence,
+and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrançois, "Leave him alone! leave him
+alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism."
+
+But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it
+all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the
+patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box.
+
+Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and
+the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the
+stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the
+poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last
+Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mère Lefrançois
+asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet
+of Neufchâtel, who was a celebrity.
+
+A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and
+self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing
+disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then
+having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the
+chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such
+a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted
+out in the shop:
+
+"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry
+of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of
+monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do
+the clever, and they cram you with remedies without troubling about the
+consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants,
+coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not
+dream of operating on any one who is in perfect health. Straighten
+club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished,
+for example, to make a hunchback straight!"
+
+Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his
+discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour Monsieur
+Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he
+did not take up the defense of Bovary; he did not even make a single
+remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the
+more serious interests of his business.
+
+This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the
+village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande
+Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as if
+an execution had been expected. At the grocer's they discussed
+Hippolyte's illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the
+mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to
+see the operator arrive.
+
+He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right
+side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it
+happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and
+on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red
+sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly.
+
+After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion d'Or," the
+doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he
+went into the stable to see that he was eating his oats all right; for
+on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his
+gig. People even said about this:
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Camvet's a character!"
+
+And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The
+universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed
+the smallest of his habits.
+
+Homais presented himself.
+
+"I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come along!"
+
+But the chemist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to
+assist at such an operation.
+
+"When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know,
+is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!"
+
+"Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined
+to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows
+are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your
+constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o'clock;
+I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don't wear flannels, and
+I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way,
+now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am
+not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a
+Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say,
+habit! habit!"
+
+Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with
+agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation,
+in which the chemist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a
+general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out
+on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon it as a sacred office,
+although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back
+to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same
+that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for some one to hold the
+limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having
+turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the chemist
+stayed with Artémise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons,
+and with ears strained towards the door.
+
+Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house. He kept
+downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless chimney, his
+chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. "What a
+mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Perhaps, after all, he had made
+some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the most
+famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever
+believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as
+far as Forges, as Neufchâtel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say if his
+colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would
+have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him. He saw
+himself dishonored, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a
+world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the
+sea and floating upon the waves.
+
+Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt
+another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if
+twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity.
+
+Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the
+floor.
+
+"Sit down," she said; "you fidget me."
+
+He sat down again.
+
+How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed
+herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had
+she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her
+instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of
+marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded
+swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself,
+all that she might have had! And for what? for what?
+
+In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending
+cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her brows
+with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this
+creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he
+was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name
+would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love
+him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another!
+
+"But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was
+meditating.
+
+At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a
+leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised her head in
+order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked one at the other
+in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they
+by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed at her with the dull look of a
+drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the
+sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by
+sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered.
+Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral
+that she had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes
+like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated
+her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his
+existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and
+what still remained of it crumbled away beneath the furious blows of her
+pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery. The
+memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she
+threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh
+enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as
+absent for ever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about
+to die and were passing under her eyes.
+
+There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up, and
+through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in the
+broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his
+handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his
+hand, and both were going towards the chemist's.
+
+Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Charles
+turned to his wife saying to her:
+
+"Oh, kiss me, my own!"
+
+"Leave me!" she said, red with anger.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; compose yourself.
+You know well enough that I love you. Come!"
+
+"Enough!" she cried with a terrible look.
+
+And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the
+barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.
+
+Charles sank back into his armchair overwhelmed, trying to discover
+what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping,
+and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round
+him.
+
+When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress
+waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw
+their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow
+beneath the warmth of that kiss.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT.
+
+
+They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the
+day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to
+Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe
+would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored; that
+her husband was odious, her life frightful.
+
+"But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently.
+
+"Ah! if you would--"
+
+She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look
+lost.
+
+"Why, what?" said Rodolphe.
+
+She sighed.
+
+"We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!"
+
+"You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be possible?"
+
+She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned
+the conversation.
+
+What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair
+as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her
+affection.
+
+Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her
+husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed
+the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such
+stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found
+themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing
+the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose
+black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once
+so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience
+in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she
+filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never
+enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs.
+She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he was
+coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and
+prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince.
+The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Félicité did
+not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her
+company, watched her at work.
+
+With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily
+watched all these women's clothes spread out about him, the dimity
+petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running
+strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.
+
+"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the
+crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
+
+"Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" Félicité answered laughing. "As
+if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the same."
+
+"Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a meditative air, "As
+if she were a lady like madame!"
+
+But Félicité grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six
+years older than he, and Théodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, was
+beginning to pay court to her.
+
+"Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You'd better be off
+and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you
+meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your
+chin."
+
+"Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots."
+
+And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's boots, all coated with
+mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his
+fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight.
+
+"How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so
+particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff
+of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.
+
+Emma had many shoes in her closet that she wore out one after the other,
+without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So also he
+disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper
+to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork, and it
+had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black
+trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring to
+use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him
+another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray
+the expense of this purchase.
+
+So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him
+running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar
+the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction.
+
+It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order;
+this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her
+about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made
+himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to
+this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have a
+very handsome riding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen, to
+give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her
+table.
+
+But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and
+seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed;
+all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a
+fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any
+quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur
+Derozerays' account, which he was in the habit of paying him every year
+about midsummer.
+
+She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost
+patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some
+in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received.
+
+"Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma.
+
+"I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the whip.
+My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me."
+
+"No, no!" she said.
+
+"Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux.
+
+And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an
+undertone, and with his usual low whistle:
+
+"Good! we shall see! we shall see!"
+
+She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in put
+on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from Monsieur
+Derozerays." Emma pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen
+napoleons; it was the account. She heard Charles on the stairs; threw
+the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key.
+
+Three days after Lheureux reappeared.
+
+"I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "If, instead of the
+sum agreed on, you would take----"
+
+"Here it is," she said, placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.
+
+The tradesman was astounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he was
+profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Emma
+declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her
+apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. She
+promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on.
+"Pshaw!" she thought, "he won't think about it again."
+
+                *     *     *
+
+Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had
+received a seal with the motto _Amor nel cor_; furthermore, a scarf for
+a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount's, that
+Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma had kept.
+These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she
+insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and
+over-exacting.
+
+Then she had strange ideas.
+
+"When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me."
+
+And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of
+reproaches that always ended with the eternal question:
+
+"Do you love me?"
+
+"Why, of course I love you," he answered.
+
+"A great deal?"
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+"You haven't loved any others?"
+
+"Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing.
+
+Emma wept, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with
+puns.
+
+"Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not live
+without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again,
+when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, where is he?
+Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he
+approaches. Oh no! no one else pleases you. There are some more
+beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your
+servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are
+beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!"
+
+He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as
+original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty,
+gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of
+passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did
+not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of
+sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine
+and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the
+candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be
+discounted; as if the fulness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in
+the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of
+his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human
+speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to
+make bears dance when we long to move the stars.
+
+But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him, who, in no
+matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights to be
+got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her
+quite _sans façon_. He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers was
+an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of
+voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank
+into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in
+his butt of Malmsey.
+
+By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's manners changed. Her
+looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the
+impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in her
+mouth, "as if to defy the people." At last those who still doubted
+doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the
+"Hirondelle" her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame
+Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken
+refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk.
+Many other things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to
+her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the house"
+annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were
+quarrels, especially one on account of Félicité.
+
+Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage, had
+surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about
+forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped
+through the kitchen. Then Emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew
+angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to
+look after those of one's servants.
+
+"Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so
+impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not perhaps
+defending her own case.
+
+"Leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a bound.
+
+"Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile them.
+
+But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping her feet as
+she repeated--
+
+"Oh! what manners! What a peasant!"
+
+He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered:
+
+"She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!"
+
+And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologize.
+
+So Charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he
+knelt to her; she ended by saying--
+
+"Very well! I'll go to her."
+
+And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity
+of a marchioness as she said:
+
+"Excuse me, madame."
+
+Then having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her bed
+and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow.
+
+She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary
+occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind,
+so that if by chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry to
+the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal; she had been waiting
+three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at
+the corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and call
+him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in despair.
+
+Soon, however, it seemed to her that some one was walking on the
+pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He
+was there outside. She threw herself into his arms.
+
+"Do take care!" he said.
+
+"Ah! if you knew!" she replied.
+
+And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly,
+exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses
+that he understood nothing of it.
+
+"Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!"
+
+"But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love like
+ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They torture me! I can
+bear it no longer! Save me!"
+
+She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames
+beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so
+that he lost his head and said:
+
+"What is it? What do you wish?"
+
+"Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh, I entreat you!"
+
+And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the
+unexpected consent it breathed forth in a kiss.
+
+"But----" Rodolphe resumed.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your little girl!"
+
+She reflected a few moments, then replied--
+
+"We will take her! It can't be helped!"
+
+"What a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. For she
+had run into the garden. Some one was calling her.
+
+On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much surprised at the
+change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact, was showing herself more
+docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for
+pickling gherkins.
+
+Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort of
+voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the
+things she was about to leave?
+
+But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as if lost in
+the anticipated delight of her coming happiness. It was an eternal
+subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She leant on his shoulder
+murmuring--
+
+"Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it be? It
+seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if
+we were rising in a balloon as if we were setting out for the clouds.
+Do you know that I count the hours? And you?"
+
+Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had
+that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from
+success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances.
+Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young
+illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers
+grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all
+the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for
+her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong
+inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner
+of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have
+thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair
+upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the
+changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her
+voice now took more mellow inflections, her figure also; something
+subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from
+the line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first married, thought
+her delicious and quite irresistible.
+
+When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake
+her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the
+ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed, as it were, a
+white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside Charles looked
+at them. He seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. She would
+grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw
+her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on
+her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to
+be sent to a boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be
+done? Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the
+neighborhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his
+patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the
+savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where;
+besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he
+wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play
+the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen,
+when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats
+in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters.
+He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath
+the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look
+after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her
+gaiety. At last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her
+some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy;
+this would last for ever.
+
+Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her
+side she awakened to other dreams.
+
+To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a
+new land, whence they would return no more. They went on and on, their
+arms entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a mountain there
+suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships,
+forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose
+pointed steeples were storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace because
+of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of
+flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the
+chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of
+guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps
+of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled
+beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing
+village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and
+in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live
+in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a
+gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and
+their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and
+star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the
+immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood
+forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and
+it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonized, azure, and bathed in
+sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored more
+loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn
+whitened the window, and when little Justin was already in the square
+taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop.
+
+She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him--
+
+"I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar."
+
+"You are going on a journey?" he asked.
+
+"No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--handy."
+
+"Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they
+are being made just now."
+
+"And a travelling bag."
+
+"Decidedly," thought Lheureux, "there's a row on here."
+
+"And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take this;
+you can pay yourself out of it."
+
+But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another;
+did he doubt her? What childishness!
+
+She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and Lheureux
+had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him
+back.
+
+"You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak"--she seemed
+to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's
+address, and tell him to have it ready for me."
+
+It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave
+Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen. Rodolphe would
+have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to
+Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as
+Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without
+stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux',
+whence it would be taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one
+would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion
+to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer
+thought about it.
+
+He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs;
+then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill;
+next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all
+these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the
+4th September--a Monday.
+
+At length the Saturday before arrived.
+
+Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.
+
+"Everything is ready?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the
+terrace on the curb-stone of the wall.
+
+"You are sad," said Emma.
+
+"No; why?"
+
+And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.
+
+"Is it because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are
+leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing
+in the world! You are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your
+people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!"
+
+"How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms.
+
+"Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me? Swear it
+then!"
+
+"Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love!"
+
+The moon, full and purple-colored, was rising right out of the earth at
+the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the branches of the
+poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with
+holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens
+that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the
+river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the
+silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a headless
+serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster
+candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together.
+The soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches.
+Emma, her eyes half-closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind
+that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of
+their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts,
+full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume
+of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense
+and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over
+the grass. Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on
+the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach
+falling all alone from the espalier.
+
+"Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe.
+
+"We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if speaking to herself,
+"Yes, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my heart be so
+heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or
+rather----? No; it is the excess of happiness. How weak I am, am I not?
+Forgive me!"
+
+"There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps you may repent!"
+
+"Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: "What ill
+could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not
+traverse with you. The longer we live together the more it will be like
+an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. There will be nothing
+to trouble us, no care, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves
+eternally. Oh, speak! Answer me!"
+
+At regular intervals he answered, "Yes--Yes--" She had passed her hands
+through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big
+tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little
+Rodolphe!"
+
+Midnight struck.
+
+"Midnight!" said she. "Come! it is to-morrow! One day more!"
+
+He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for
+their flight, Emma said, suddenly, assuming a gay air--
+
+"You have the passports?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are forgetting nothing?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"It is at the Hôtel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at
+mid-day?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Till to-morrow then!" said Emma, in a last caress; and she watched him
+go.
+
+He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's
+edge between the bulrushes--
+
+"To-morrow!" she cried.
+
+He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across
+the meadow.
+
+After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white
+gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with
+such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should
+fall.
+
+"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! she
+was a pretty mistress!"
+
+And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love,
+came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against
+her.
+
+"For, after all," he exclaimed gesticulating, "I can't exile
+myself--have a child on my hands."
+
+He was saying these things to give himself firmness.
+
+"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand
+times no! It would have been too stupid."
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+DESERTED.
+
+
+No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau
+under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had
+the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting
+on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded
+into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly
+placed a distance between them.
+
+To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the
+bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters
+from women, and from it came an odor of dry dust and withered roses.
+First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a
+handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he
+had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature
+given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her
+languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this
+image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little
+by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the
+painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other.
+Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations
+relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business
+notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In
+order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the
+others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and
+things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and
+hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box,
+broke when it was opened.
+
+Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style
+of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or
+jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love,
+others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain
+gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered
+nothing at all.
+
+In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each
+other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalized
+them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself
+for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into
+his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to
+the cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed
+up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard,
+had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that
+which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like
+them, leave a name carved upon the wall.
+
+"Come," said he, "let's begin."
+
+He wrote--
+
+     "Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life."
+
+"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her
+interest; I am honest."
+
+     "Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an
+     abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You
+     were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the
+     future. Ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!"
+
+Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.
+
+"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides that would stop
+nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one
+could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went
+on--
+
+     "I shall not forget you, oh! believe it; and I shall ever have a
+     profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this
+     ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no
+     doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I should
+     not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of
+     sharing it myself, since I should have been its cause? The mere
+     idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, Emma. Forget
+     me! Why did I ever know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my
+     fault? O my God! No, no! accuse only fate."
+
+"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.
+
+     "Ah! if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees,
+     certainly I might, through egotism, have made an experiment, in
+     that case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at
+     once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from
+     understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our
+     future position. Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I
+     rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the
+     manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences."
+
+"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much
+the worse; it must be stopped!"
+
+     "The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would
+     have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet
+     questions, calumny, contempt, insult, perhaps. Insult to you! Oh!
+     And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear with me your
+     memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish myself by exile for
+     all the ill I have done you. I am going away. Whither I know not. I
+     am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of the
+     unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name to your child; let her
+     repeat it in her prayers."
+
+The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to shut the window,
+and when he had sat down again--
+
+"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt
+me up."
+
+    "I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have
+    wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of
+    seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later we
+    shall talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!"
+
+And there was a last 'adieu' divided into two words: "A Dieu!" which he
+thought in very excellent taste.
+
+"Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "Yours devotedly?' No! 'Your
+friend?' Yes, that's it."
+
+     "YOUR FRIEND."
+
+He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.
+
+"Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me harder
+than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't
+cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water into a glass,
+Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the
+paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he
+came upon the one "_Amor nel cor_."
+
+"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!"
+
+After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.
+
+The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late),
+Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at the
+bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his
+ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this
+means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season
+fruits or game.
+
+"If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have gone on
+a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands.
+Get along and take care!"
+
+Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the
+apricots, and, walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound
+galoshes, made his way to Yonville.
+
+Madame Bovary, when he got to her house was arranging a bundle of linen
+on the kitchen-table with Félicité.
+
+"Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you from master."
+
+She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for
+some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he
+himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a
+present could so move any one. At last he went out. Félicité remained.
+Emma could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting-room as if to
+take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves,
+found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind
+her, she flew to her room terrified.
+
+Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and
+she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and
+ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her
+fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped
+before the attic-door, that was closed.
+
+Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish
+it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no!
+here," she thought, "I shall be all right."
+
+Emma pushed open the door and went in.
+
+The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples,
+stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew
+back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.
+
+Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country until it was lost
+to the sight. Underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones
+of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were
+motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower story, rose a kind
+of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning.
+
+She leant against the embrasure of the window, and re-read the letter
+with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the
+more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled
+him with her arms, and the throbs of her heart, that beat against her
+breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with
+uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth
+might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She
+was free. She advanced, looked at the paving-stones, saying to herself,
+"Come! come!"
+
+The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her
+body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the
+oscillating square went up the walls, and that the floor dipped on end
+like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging,
+surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air
+was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself
+be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice
+calling her.
+
+"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Wherever are you? Come!"
+
+The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint
+with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a
+hand on her sleeve; it was Félicité.
+
+"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table."
+
+And she had to go down to sit at table.
+
+She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as
+if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to
+this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance
+of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find
+it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent
+a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was
+afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced
+these words in a strange manner:
+
+"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems."
+
+"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.
+
+"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why,
+Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Café-Français. He has
+gone on a journey, or is to go."
+
+She gave a sob.
+
+"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time to
+time for a change, and, _ma foi_, I think he's right, when one has a
+fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend.
+He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--"
+
+He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put
+back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles,
+without noticing his wife's color, had them brought to him, took one,
+and bit into it.
+
+"Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!"
+
+And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.
+
+"Do just smell! What an odor!" he remarked, passing it under her nose
+several times.
+
+"I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the
+spasm passed; then--
+
+"It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down
+and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her,
+attending to her, that she should not be left alone.
+
+Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the
+apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate.
+
+Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma
+uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.
+
+In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for
+Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by
+Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognized him
+by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the
+twilight.
+
+The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house, ran thither.
+The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt,
+and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for
+help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and Félicité, whose hands trembled,
+was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively.
+
+"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the chemist.
+
+Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle:
+
+"I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for
+you!"
+
+"Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is I--your Charles,
+who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss
+her!"
+
+The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But
+turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice--
+
+"No, no! no one!"
+
+She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched
+at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open,
+motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from
+her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.
+
+Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist,
+near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the
+serious occasions of life.
+
+"Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the paroxysm
+is past."
+
+"Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching her
+sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She has gone off now!"
+
+Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that
+she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots.
+
+"Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the
+apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to
+certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both
+in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the
+importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their
+ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a
+thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more
+delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt
+hartshorn, of new bread--"
+
+"Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice.
+
+"And not only," the chemist went on, "are human beings subject to such
+anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly
+aphrodisiac effect produced by the _Nepeta cataria_, vulgarly called
+cat-mint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an
+example whose authenticity I can answer for, Bridaux (one of my old
+comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog
+that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him.
+He often even makes the experiment before his friends at his
+summer-house at Guillaume Wood. Would any one believe that a simple
+sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is
+extremely curious, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him.
+
+"This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign
+self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system.
+With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very
+susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear
+friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of
+attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless
+physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification.
+Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked
+upon?"
+
+"In what way? How?" said Bovary.
+
+"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as
+I lately read in a newspaper."
+
+But Emma, awaking, cried out--
+
+"The letter! the letter!"
+
+They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had
+set in.
+
+For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his
+patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse,
+putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as
+Neufchâtel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again.
+He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Larivière,
+his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was
+Emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even
+seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after
+all their troubles.
+
+About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by
+pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her
+strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon,
+and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his
+arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was
+disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along
+her slippers, and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the
+time.
+
+They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew
+herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked
+far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great
+bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.
+
+"You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And pushing her
+gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this seat; you'll be
+comfortable."
+
+"Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice.
+
+She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness
+recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more
+complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the
+head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the
+first signs of cancer.
+
+And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+RELIGIOUS FERVOR.
+
+
+To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais for all
+the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not
+obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an
+obligation. Then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was
+mistress, became terrible. Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen
+grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux especially harassed him. In fact, at the
+height of Emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the
+circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak,
+the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other
+things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them. The
+tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and
+that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her
+convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was
+resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his
+goods. Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop.
+Félicité forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more
+about them. Monsieur Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns
+threatening and whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a bill
+at six months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea
+occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux. So,
+with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them,
+adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. Lheureux
+ran off to his shop, brought back the money and dictated another bill,
+by which Bovary undertook to pay to his order on the 1st of September
+next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred
+and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus
+lending at six per cent, in addition to one-fourth for commission; and
+the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in
+twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. He
+hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not
+be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money,
+having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him
+one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.
+
+Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for a
+supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchâtel; Monsieur Guillaumin
+promised him some shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of
+establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil and Rouen, which no
+doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion
+d'Or," and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more
+luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.
+
+Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be
+able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such
+as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be
+deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that
+he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his
+mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his
+thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to
+be constantly thinking of her.
+
+The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When it was
+fine they wheeled her armchair to the window that overlooked the
+square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on
+that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she
+formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to
+the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the
+servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on the
+market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain
+began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for
+the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no
+relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle"
+in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices
+answered, while Hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the
+boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then
+he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five
+o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school,
+dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of
+the shutters with their rulers one after the other.
+
+It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He
+inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion in a
+coaxing little gossip that was not without its charm. The mere thought
+of his cassock comforted her.
+
+One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself
+dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the
+preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the
+night-table covered with sirups into an altar, and while Félicité was
+strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over
+her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all
+feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was
+beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would
+be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into
+vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew
+from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial
+joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour
+presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her
+like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table
+seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back,
+fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived
+in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green
+palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to
+earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms.
+
+This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing
+that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her
+sensation, that still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion
+and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length
+found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she
+saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a
+wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in
+the place of happiness, still greater joys,--another love beyond all
+loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She
+saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the
+earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become a
+saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her
+room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might
+kiss it every evening.
+
+The curé marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he thought,
+might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But
+not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a
+certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor, to
+send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." The
+bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off
+hardware to niggers, packed up, pell-mell, everything that was then the
+fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions
+and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur
+de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a
+honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent
+blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World at
+Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de * * *, _décoré_ with many Orders;" "The
+Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," &c.
+
+Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself
+seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much
+hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of
+the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking
+people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with
+religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that
+they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was
+looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from
+her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic
+melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive.
+
+As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of
+her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than a
+king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed
+love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the
+immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her
+Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that
+she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery.
+It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens,
+and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic
+dupery.
+
+This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more,
+and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to those grand
+ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La
+Vallière, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed
+trains of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet
+of Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded.
+
+Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes for the
+poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one day, on coming
+home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table
+eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her illness her
+husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach
+her to read; even when Berthe cried, she was not vexed. She had made up
+her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about
+everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, "Is
+your stomach-ache better, my angel?"
+
+Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania
+of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen;
+but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in
+this quiet house, and she even staid there till after Easter, to escape
+the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never failed on Good Friday to order
+chitterlings.
+
+Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a
+little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, Emma almost
+every day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron,
+Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock
+the excellent Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed any
+of the tittle-tattle about her neighbor. The little Homais also came to
+see her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom,
+and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even
+Madame Bovary, taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by
+taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he
+for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees
+unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden
+entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him.
+
+Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity.
+She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there,
+palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that
+youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she now
+enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so
+affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one
+could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from
+virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who
+had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.
+Then suddenly--
+
+"So you love him?" she said.
+
+And without waiting for any answer from Félicité, who was blushing, she
+added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!"
+
+In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end,
+despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last
+manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more
+wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mère Rollet, the nurse,
+who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too
+often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off
+for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family,
+successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented
+church less assiduously, to the great approval of the chemist, who said
+to her in a friendly way--
+
+"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"
+
+As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out
+after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the
+air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when
+Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and
+they drank together to madame's complete restoration.
+
+Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace
+wall, fishing for cray-fish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he
+thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.
+
+"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to
+the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on
+the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little
+thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at
+restaurants."
+
+But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their
+faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this
+joke--
+
+"It's goodness strikes the eye!"
+
+He was, in fact, a good fellow, and one day he was not even scandalised
+at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction by
+taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor,
+Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion,
+and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for
+morals than literature.
+
+But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he
+contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of
+pleasure, taught virtue.
+
+"_Castigat ridendo mores_, Monsieur Bournisien! Thus, consider the
+greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with
+philosophical reflections, that make them a very school of morals and
+diplomacy for the people."
+
+"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which
+there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T.
+He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the
+end----"
+
+"Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad
+pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts
+seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times
+that imprisoned Galileo."
+
+"I know very well," objected the curé, "that there are good works, good
+authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes
+together in a bewitching apartment, decorated with worldly pomp, and
+then, those pagan disguises, that rouge, those lights, those effeminate
+voices, all this must, in the long run, engender a certain mental
+libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts, and impure temptations.
+Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he
+added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice, while he rolled a pinch
+of snuff between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned the theatre,
+she must be right; we must submit to her decrees."
+
+"Why," asked the chemist, "should she excommunicate actors? For formerly
+they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of
+the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called
+'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency."
+
+The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the
+chemist went on--
+
+"It's just as it is in the Bible; for there, you know, are more than one
+piquant detail, matters really libidinous!"
+
+And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien--
+
+"Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young
+girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie----"
+
+"But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the other impatiently,
+"who recommend the Bible."
+
+"No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that in our days, in this
+century of enlightenment, any one should still persist in proscribing an
+intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes
+even hygienic; is it not, doctor?"
+
+"No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the
+same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any
+ideas.
+
+The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot
+a Parthian arrow.
+
+"I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers
+kicking about."
+
+"Come, come!" said the curé.
+
+"Ah! I've known some!" And separating the words of his sentence, Homais
+repeated, "I--have--known--some!"
+
+"Well, they did wrong," said Bournisien, resigned to anything.
+
+"By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the chemist.
+
+"Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that Homais was
+intimidated by them.
+
+"I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that toleration
+is the surest way to draw people to religion."
+
+"That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again
+on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.
+
+Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor--
+
+"That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a
+way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only
+for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If any
+one could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about
+it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to
+England at a high salary. From what I hear, he's a regular dog; he's
+rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with
+him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require
+a dissolute life, that stirs the imagination to some extent. But they
+die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay
+by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Good-bye till to-morrow."
+
+The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's head, for he at
+once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the
+fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give
+in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw
+nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs
+which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large,
+and the falling in of Lheureux's bills was still so far off that there
+was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was
+refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of
+worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight
+o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle."
+
+The chemist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought
+himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go.
+
+"Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that you
+are!"
+
+Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with
+four flounces--
+
+"You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen."
+
+The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in the Place Beauvoisine. It
+was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and
+small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens
+pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers;--a
+good old house with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on
+winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black
+tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow
+by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always
+smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sunday-clothes, has a
+café on the street, and towards the country-side a kitchen-garden.
+Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery,
+the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them;
+was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the
+inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole
+length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.
+
+Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was
+much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to
+swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the
+theatre, which were still closed.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+A NEW DELIGHT.
+
+
+The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between
+the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills
+repeated in quaint letters "Lucia de Lammermoor--Lagardy--Opera--&c."
+The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid
+the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red
+foreheads; and now and again a warm wind that blew from the river gently
+stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the
+public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a
+current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an
+exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black ware-houses
+where they make casks.
+
+For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a
+little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in
+his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his
+stomach.
+
+Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She
+involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the
+right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the
+reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger
+the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the dusty
+smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent
+forward with the air of a duchess.
+
+The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their
+cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing.
+They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of
+business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cotton,
+spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen,
+inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like
+silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting
+about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink
+or apple-green cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them
+leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their
+yellow gloves.
+
+Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the
+ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over
+the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first
+there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins
+squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three
+knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass
+instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a
+country-scene.
+
+It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to
+the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing
+a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked
+the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared;
+they went away, and the hunters started afresh.
+
+She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst
+of Walter Scott. She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the
+Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the
+novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story
+phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed
+at once again with the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the
+lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin
+bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the
+costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when any
+one walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary
+things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another
+world. But a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire
+in green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of
+a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucia attacked her cavatina in G
+major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma too,
+fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly
+Edgar-Lagardy appeared.
+
+He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of
+marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly
+clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against
+his left thigh, and he cast around laughing looks showing his white
+teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night
+on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love
+with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for other
+women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his
+artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
+his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person
+and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable
+coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis
+than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable, charlatan
+nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the
+toréador.
+
+From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucia in his arms,
+he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of
+rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes
+escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward
+to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was
+filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out
+to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the
+drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognized all the intoxication
+and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of the prima donna
+seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that
+charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had
+loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit
+night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!" The theatre rang with
+cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the
+flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they
+uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the
+vibrations of the last chords.
+
+"But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?"
+
+"No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!"
+
+"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on
+before said, 'I love Lucia and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with
+her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the
+ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?"
+
+Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in
+which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master
+Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucia,
+thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that
+he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered
+very much with the words.
+
+"What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!"
+
+"Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I like
+to understand things."
+
+"Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently.
+
+Lucia advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms
+in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of
+her marriage-day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the
+little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this
+woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous,
+without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in
+the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the
+disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some
+great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty
+blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that
+happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.
+She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So,
+striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this
+reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to
+please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when
+at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a
+black cloak.
+
+His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the
+instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury,
+dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal
+provocations at him in deep notes; Lucia, uttered her shrill plaint,
+Arthur, at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the
+bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the
+women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were
+all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and
+stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The
+outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with
+jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left
+with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of
+his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought, must have
+an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion.
+All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that
+absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the
+character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant,
+extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had
+willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With
+him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from
+capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the
+flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each
+evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work, she would
+have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung
+for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted he would have looked at
+her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was
+certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength,
+as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out,
+"Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour
+and all my dreams!"
+
+The curtain fell.
+
+The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the
+fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the crowd
+filled the corridors, and she fell back in her armchair with
+palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran
+to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water.
+
+He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were
+jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he
+even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short
+sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered
+cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband,
+who was a mill-owner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was
+with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome
+cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity,
+costs, reimbursement. At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her,
+quite out of breath:
+
+"_Ma foi!_ I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a
+crowd--_such_ a crowd!"
+
+He added--
+
+"Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Léon!"
+
+"Léon?"
+
+"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he finished
+these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.
+
+He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary
+extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will.
+She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon
+the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. But
+soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an
+effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a
+few hurried words.
+
+"Ah, good-day! What! you here?"
+
+"Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning.
+
+"So you are at Rouen?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And since when?"
+
+"Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They were
+silent.
+
+But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests,
+the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all
+were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous
+and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at
+the chemist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour,
+_tête-à-tête_ by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so
+protracted, so discreet, so tender and that she had nevertheless
+forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances
+had brought him back into her life. He was standing behind her, leaning
+with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt
+herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon
+her hair.
+
+"Does this amuse you?" he said, bending over her so closely that the end
+of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly:
+
+"Oh, dear me, no, not much."
+
+Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an
+ice somewhere.
+
+"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is
+going to be tragic."
+
+But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the
+singer seemed to her exaggerated.
+
+"She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of
+his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.
+
+Then with a sigh Léon said:
+
+"The heat is--"
+
+"Unbearable! Yes!"
+
+"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.
+
+"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."
+
+Monsieur Léon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and
+all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside
+the windows of a café.
+
+First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles from
+time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Léon; and the
+latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large
+office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different
+in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mère
+Lefrançois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to
+say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end.
+
+People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or
+shouting at the top of their voices, "_O bel ange, ma Lucie!_" Then Léon
+playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tamburini,
+Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and compared with them, Lagardy, despite his
+grand outbursts, was nowhere.
+
+"Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet,
+"they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving
+before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me."
+
+"Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance."
+
+But Charles replied that they were going back next day.
+
+"Unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone,
+pussy?"
+
+And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented
+itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the
+last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted--
+
+"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong
+not to stay if you feel that this is doing you the least good."
+
+The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood
+discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the
+clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of
+silver that he made chink on the marble.
+
+"I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you are----"
+
+The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat
+said--
+
+"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow, at six o'clock?"
+
+Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but
+that nothing prevented Emma----
+
+"But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure----"
+
+"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel." Then to
+Léon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are in our part of
+the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then."
+
+The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover,
+to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted
+before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the cathedral struck half-past
+eleven.
+
+
+
+
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page ix: "the elder Dumas or Eugene Sue." has been changed   |
+    | to "the elder Dumas or Eugène Sue."                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xiv: Emaux in "in his well-known Emaux et Camées"       |
+    | remains unchanged--without an accent                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Education in "Education Sentimentale" remains unchanged--    |
+    | without an accent on pages xvi, xvii, xviii, xxiv, xxx       |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xvi: "his son Napoleon" has been changed to "his son    |
+    | Napoléon" with an accent                                     |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xvii: Departement in "La Muse du Departement" remains   |
+    | unchanged--without an accent                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xxx: Legende in "La Legende de Saint Julien             |
+    | l'Hospitalier" remains unchanged--without an accent          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 2: "ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots." has been changed to |
+    | "ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots."                              |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 15: "Under the cartshed" has been changed to "Under     |
+    | the cart-shed"                                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 19: "than regularly twice a week," has been changed to  |
+    | "then regularly twice a week,"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 20: "on the roofs of the out-buildings" has been        |
+    | changed to "on the roofs of the outbuildings"                |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 28: "opposite the fire. on a little table" has been     |
+    | changed to "opposite the fire, on a little table"            |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 36: In the original, the word tutoyéd is unclear in     |
+    | 'He called her "my wife," _tutoyéd_ her'                     |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 40: "a second-hand dogcart," has been changed to        |
+    | "a second-hand dog-cart,"                                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 86: "a siesta by the water-side." has been changed to   |
+    | "a siesta by the waterside."                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 94: "Madame Lafrançois" has been changed to "Madame     |
+    | Lefrançois"                                                  |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 111: "Thus Napoleon represented glory" has been changed |
+    | to "Thus Napoléon represented glory"                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 117: "Yonville by the water-side." has been changed to  |
+    | "Yonville by the waterside."                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 121: "Seated in her arm-chair" has been changed to      |
+    | "Seated in her armchair"                                     |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 122: "falling asleep in the arm-chairs" has been        |
+    | changed to "falling asleep in the armchairs"                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 126: "The druggist had taken Napoleon" has been         |
+    | changed to "The druggist had taken Napoléon"                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 127: "Napoleon began to roar," has been changed to      |
+    | "Napoléon began to roar,"                                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 133: "the night-caps arranged in piles" has been        |
+    | changed to "the nightcaps arranged in piles"                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 133: "who came behind his arm-chair" has been           |
+    | changed to "who came behind his armchair"                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 144: "threw herself into an arm-chair." has been        |
+    | changed to "threw herself into an armchair."                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 148: "his three arm-chairs restuffed," has been         |
+    | changed to "his three armchairs restuffed,"                  |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 157: "an arm-chair at his bureau" has been changed to   |
+    | "an armchair at his bureau"                                  |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 166: "columns of the town-hall" has been changed to     |
+    | "columns of the townhall"                                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 169: "she had heard from Theodore," has been changed to |
+    | "she had heard from Théodore,"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 183: "and said to her it a low voice" has been changed  |
+    | to "and said to her in a low voice"                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 184: "decending" has been changed to "descending"       |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 186: "Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame." has been changed   |
+    | to "Monsieur Belot of Nôtre-Dame."                           |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 208: "the arm-chairs are not to be taken" has been      |
+    | changed to "the armchairs are not to be taken"               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 208: "to put his arm-chair back" has been changed to    |
+    | "to put his armchair back"                                   |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 230: "He sat down again" has been changed to            |
+    | "He sat down again."                                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 232: "into his arm-chair overwhelmed" has been changed  |
+    | to "into his armchair overwhelmed"                           |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 233: Closing quotation marks have been added to         |
+    | "Ah! if you would--"                                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 240: Closing quotation marks have been added to         |
+    | "Very well! I'll go to her."                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 252: "rumaging" has been changed to "rummaging"         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 266: "they wheeled her arm-chair" has been changed      |
+    | to "they wheeled her armchair"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 270: "with them to her bed-room," has been changed      |
+    | to "with them to her bedroom,"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 284: "her arm-chair with palpitations" has been changed |
+    | to "her armchair with palpitations"                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 288: "the tables round them, however, were emptying:"   |
+    | has been changed to "the tables round them, however, were    |
+    | emptying;"                                                   |
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Bovary, Volume 1 (of 2)
+by Gustave Flaubert
+
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Bovary, Volume 1 (of 2)
+by Gustave Flaubert
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Madame Bovary
+       A Tale of Provincial Life, Volume 1 (of 2)
+
+Author: Gustave Flaubert
+
+Release Date: December 20, 2008 [EBook #27575]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADAME BOVARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="notes">
+<p>Transcriber's Note: Amendments can be read by placing cursor over words with a dashed underscore like
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note">this</ins>.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii"></a></span>MADAME BOVARY</h1>
+
+<p class="center"><i>A TALE OF PROVINCIAL LIFE</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h3>GUSTAVE FLAUBERT</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h5>WITH A<br />
+CRITICAL INTRODUCTION<br />
+BY</h5>
+
+<h3>FERDINAND BRUNETI&Egrave;RE</h3>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Of the French Academy</i></p>
+
+<h5>AND A<br />
+BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE<br />
+BY</h5>
+
+<h3>ROBERT ARNOT, M. A</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="center"><i>VOLUME I.</i></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>SIMON P. MAGEE,</h4>
+
+<h5>PUBLISHER,<br />
+CHICAGO, ILL.</h5>
+
+<h5><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv"></a></span><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1904, by</span><br />
+M. WALTER DUNNE<br />
+<i>Entered at Stationers' Hall, London</i></h5>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr><td></td><td></td><td class="tocpg f1">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td>PART I.</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#The_New_Boy">I.</a></td><td><a href="#The_New_Boy">The New Boy</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_001">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#A_Good_Patient">II.</a></td><td><a href="#A_Good_Patient">A Good Patient</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_013">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#A_Lonely_Widower">III.</a></td><td><a href="#A_Lonely_Widower">A Lonely Widower</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_023">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Consolation">IV.</a></td><td><a href="#Consolation">Consolation</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_031">31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#The_New_Menage">V.</a></td><td><a href="#The_New_Menage">The New M&eacute;nage</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_038">38</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#A_Maidens_Yearnings">VI.</a></td><td><a href="#A_Maidens_Yearnings">A Maiden's Yearnings</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_043">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Disillusion">VII.</a></td><td><a href="#Disillusion">Disillusion</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_050">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Glimpses_Of_The_World">VIII.</a></td><td><a href="#Glimpses_Of_The_World">Glimpses Of The World</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_058">58</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Idle_Dreams">IX.</a></td><td><a href="#Idle_Dreams">Idle Dreams</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_071">71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td></td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td></td><td>PART II.</td><td></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#A_New_Field">I.</a></td><td><a href="#A_New_Field">A New Field</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_085">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#New_Friends">II.</a></td><td><a href="#New_Friends">New Friends</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_098">98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Added_Cares">III.</a></td><td><a href="#Added_Cares">Added Cares</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Silent_Homage">IV.</a></td><td><a href="#Silent_Homage">Silent Homage</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_121">121</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Smothered_Flames">V.</a></td><td><a href="#Smothered_Flames">Smothered Flames</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Spiritual_Counsel">VI.</a></td><td><a href="#Spiritual_Counsel">Spiritual Counsel</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#A_Womans_Whims">VII.</a></td><td><a href="#A_Womans_Whims">A Woman's Whims</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span>
+<a href="#A_Village_Festival">VIII.</a></td><td><a href="#A_Village_Festival">A Village Festival</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#A_Woodland_Idyll">IX.</a></td><td><a href="#A_Woodland_Idyll">A Woodland Idyll</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Lovers_Vows">X.</a></td><td><a href="#Lovers_Vows">Lovers' Vows</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#An_Experiment_And_A_Failure">XI.</a></td><td><a href="#An_Experiment_And_A_Failure">An Experiment And A Failure</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Preparations_For_Flight">XII.</a></td><td><a href="#Preparations_For_Flight">Preparations For Flight</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Deserted">XIII.</a></td><td><a href="#Deserted">Deserted</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#Religious_Fervor">XIV.</a></td><td><a href="#Religious_Fervor">Religious Fervor</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><a href="#A_New_Delight">XV.</a></td><td><a href="#A_New_Delight">A New Delight</a></td>
+<td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>CRITICAL INTRODUCTION</h3>
+
+<p><i>Domi mansit, lanam fecit:</i> "He remained at home
+and wrote," is the first thing that should be said of
+Gustave Flaubert. This trait, which he shares with
+many of the writers of his generation,&mdash;Renan, Taine,
+Leconte de Lisle and Dumas <i>fils</i>,&mdash;distinguishes them
+and distinguishes him from those of the preceding
+generation, who voluntarily sought inspiration in disorder
+and agitation,&mdash;Balzac and George Sand, for instance
+(to speak only of romance writers), and the
+elder Dumas or <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads Eugene without an accent">Eug&egrave;ne</ins> Sue. Flaubert, indeed, had
+no "outward life;" he lived only for his art.</p>
+
+<p>A second trait of his character, and of his genius
+as a writer, is that of seeing in his art only the art
+itself&mdash;and art alone, without the mingling of any
+vision of fortune or success. A competency,&mdash;which
+he had inherited from the great surgeon, his father,&mdash;and
+moderate tastes, infinitely more <i>bourgeois</i> than
+his literature,&mdash;permitted him to shun the great
+stumbling-block of the professional man of letters,
+which, in our day, and doubtless in the United States
+as well as in France, is the temptation to coin money
+with the pen. Never was writer more disinterested
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span>
+than Flaubert; and the story is that <i>Madame Bovary</i>
+brought him 300 francs&mdash;in debts.</p>
+
+<p>A third trait, which helps not only to characterise
+but to individualise him, is his subordination not only
+of his own existence, but of life in general, to his
+conception of art. It is not enough to say that he
+lived for his art: he saw nothing in the world or in
+life but material for that art,&mdash;<i>Hostis quid aliud quam
+perpetua materia glori&aelig;?</i>&mdash;and if it be true that others
+have died of their ambition, it could literally be said
+of Flaubert that he was killed by his art.</p>
+
+<p>It is this point that I should like to bring out in
+this Introduction,&mdash;where we need not speak of his
+Norman origin, or (as his friend Ducamp has written
+in his <i>Literary Souvenirs</i> with a disagreeable persistence,
+and so uselessly!) of his nervousness and
+epilepsy; of his loves or his friendships, but solely
+of his work. We know, in fact, to-day, that if all
+such details are made clear in the biography of a
+great writer, in no way do they explain his work.
+The author of <i>Gil Blas</i>, Alain Ren&eacute; Lesage, was a
+Breton, like the author of <i>Atala</i>; the Corneille brothers
+had almost nothing in common. Of all our great
+writers, the one nearest, perhaps, to Jean-Jacques
+Rousseau, who died a victim to delirium from persecution,
+was Madame Sand, who had, without doubt,
+the sanest and best balanced temperament.</p>
+
+<p>Other writers have sought,&mdash;for instance, our
+great classical authors, Pascal, Bossuet and perhaps
+Corneille,&mdash;to influence the thought of their time;
+some, like Moli&egrave;re, La Fontaine, and La Bruy&egrave;re, to
+correct customs. Others still,&mdash;such as our romantic
+writers, Hugo or De Musset,&mdash;desired only to express
+their personal conception of the world and of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span>
+life. And then Balzac, whose object,&mdash;almost scientific,&mdash;was
+to make a "natural history," a study and
+description, of the social species, as an animal or
+vegetable species is described in zoology or botany.
+Gustave Flaubert attempted only to work out his art,
+for and through the love of art. Very early in life,
+as we clearly see from his correspondence, his consideration
+for art was not even that of a social but
+of a <i>sacred</i> function, in which the artist was the
+priest. We hear sometimes, in metaphor and not
+without irony, of the "priesthood" of the artist and
+the "worship" of art. These expressions must be
+taken literally in Flaubert's case. He was cloistered
+in his art as a monk in his convent or by his discipline;
+and he truly lived only in meditation upon
+that art, as a Mystic in contemplation of the perfections
+of his God. Nothing outside of art truly interested
+him, neither science, nor things political or
+religious, nor men, nor women, nor anything in the
+world; and if, sometimes, it was his duty to occupy
+himself with them, it was never in a degree greater
+than could benefit his art. "The accidents of the
+world"&mdash;this is his own expression&mdash;appeared to
+him only as things permitted <i>for the sake of description</i>,
+so much so that his own existence, even,
+seemed to him to have no other excuse.</p>
+
+<p>It is that which explains the mixture of "romanticism,"
+"naturalism," and I will add, of "classicism"&mdash;which
+has been pointed out more than once
+in Flaubert's work. <i>Madame Bovary</i> is the masterpiece
+of naturalistic romance and has not been surpassed
+by the studies of Zola or the stories of De
+Maupassant. On the other hand, there is nothing in
+Hugo, even, more romantic than <i>The Temptation of</i>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span>
+<i>Saint Antony</i>. But it is necessary to look for many
+things in romanticism; and the romanticism of Hugo,
+which was one of the delights of Flaubert, did not
+resemble that of De Musset, (Lord de Musset, as
+Flaubert called him) which he strongly disliked.
+What he loved in romanticism was the "colour,"
+and nothing but the colour. He loved the romanticism
+of the Orientals, of Hugo and Chateaubriand,
+that plastic romanticism, whose object is to substitute
+in literature "sensations of art" for the "expression
+of ideas," or even of sentiments. It is precisely
+here that naturalism and romanticism&mdash;or at least
+French naturalism, which is very different from that
+of the Russians or the English&mdash;join hands. In the
+one case, as in the other, the attempt is made to
+"represent"&mdash;as he himself puts it; and when one
+represents nothing except the vulgar, the common,
+the mediocre, the everyday, commonplace, or grotesque,
+he is a "naturalist," like the author of <i>Madame
+Bovary</i>; but one is a "romanticist" when, like
+the author of <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>, he makes this world vanish,
+and recreates a strange land filled with Byzantine or
+Carthaginian civilization, with its barbaric luxury, its
+splendour of corruption, immoderate appetites, and
+monstrous deities.</p>
+
+<p>We have done wrong in considering Flaubert a
+naturalist impeded by his romanticism, or a romanticist
+impenitent, irritated with himself because of his
+tendency to naturalism. He was both naturalist and
+romanticist. And in both he was an artist, so much
+of an artist (I say this without fear of contradiction)
+that he saw nothing in his art but "representation,"
+the telling of the truth in all its depth and fidelity.
+<i>Les Fileuses</i> and <i>La Reddition de Br&eacute;da</i> are always
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span>
+by Velasquez; but the genius of the painter has nothing
+in common with the subject he has chosen or the
+circumstances that inspired him.</p>
+
+<p>From this source proceeds that insensibility in
+Flaubert with which he has so often been reproached,
+not without reason, and which divides his naturalism
+from that of the author of <i>Adam Bede</i> or that of the
+author of <i>Anna Karenina</i> by an abyss. Honest, as
+a man, a good citizen, a good son, a good brother,
+a good friend, Flaubert was indifferent, as an artist,
+to all that did not belong to his art. "I believe that
+it is necessary to love nothing," he has written somewhere,
+and even underscored it&mdash;that is to say, it
+is necessary to hover impartially above all objective
+points. And, in fact, as nothing passed before his
+eyes that he considered did not lie within the possibility
+of representation, he made it a law unto himself
+to look nothing in the face except from this point
+of view.</p>
+
+<p>In this regard one may compare his attitude in
+the presence of his model to that of his contemporaries,
+Renan, for example, or Taine, in the presence
+of the object of their studies. With them also critical
+impartiality resembles not only indifference but
+insensibility. Not only have they refused to confound
+their emotions with their judgments, but their
+judgments have no value in their eyes except as
+they separate them from their emotions,&mdash;as they
+emancipate themselves from them or even place themselves
+in opposition to them. In like manner did
+Flaubert. The first condition of an exact representation
+of things is to dominate them; and in order to
+dominate them, is it not necessary to begin by detaching
+yourself from them? We see dimly through
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span>
+tears, and we are too much absorbed in that which
+gives us pleasure to be good judges of it. "An ideal
+society would be one where each individual performed
+his duty according to his ability. Now, then, I do
+my duty as best I can; I am forsaken.... No
+one pities my misfortunes; those of others occupy
+their attention! I give to humanity what it gives to me&mdash;<i>indifference!</i>"
+Is not the link between Flaubert's
+"indifference" and his conception of art evident
+here?</p>
+
+<p>But Flaubert said besides: "Living does not concern
+me! It is only necessary to shun suffering."
+Should we not change the name of this to "egotism"
+or "insensibility?" We might, indeed, did we not
+know that this egotism germinated in Flaubert as a
+means of discipline. The object of this discipline
+was to concentrate, for the profit of his art, those
+qualities or forces which the ordinary man dissipates
+in the pursuit of useless pleasures, or squanders in
+intensity of life.</p>
+
+<p>We may take account at the same time of the
+nature of his pessimism. For there are many ways
+of being a pessimist, and Flaubert's was not at all
+like that of Schopenhauer or Leopardi. His pessimism,
+real and sincere, proceeded neither from personally
+grievous experiences of life, as did that of the
+recluse of Recanati, nor from a philosophic or logical
+view of the conditions of existence in which humanity
+is placed, like the pessimism of the Frankfort philosopher.
+Flaubert was rather a victim of what
+Th&eacute;ophile Gautier, in his well-known <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;maux remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Emaux</ins> et Cam&eacute;es</i>,
+calls by the singularly happy name of "the
+Luminous Spleen of the Orient." To tell the truth,
+what Flaubert could not pardon in humanity was that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[xv]</a></span>
+it did not make enough of art, and so his pessimism
+was a consequence of his &aelig;stheticism. "As lovers of
+the beautiful," he tells us, "we are all outlaws!
+Humanity hates us; we do not serve it; we hate it
+because it wounds us! Let us love, then, in art, as
+the Mystics love their God; and let all pale before
+this love."</p>
+
+<p>These lines are dated 1853, before he had published
+anything. Therefore, Flaubert did not express
+himself thus because he was not successful. His
+self-love was not in question! No one had yet criticised
+or discussed him. But he felt that his ideal of
+art, an art which he could not renounce, was opposed
+to the ideal methods, if they are ideal, held by
+his contemporaries; and the vision of the combats
+that he must face at once exalted and exasperated
+him. His pessimism was of the &eacute;lite, or rather the
+minority of one who feels himself, or at least believes
+himself to be, superior, and who, knowing
+well that he will always be in the minority, fears,
+and rightly too, that he will not be recognised. It is
+a form of pessimism less rare in our day than one
+would think, and Taine, among others, said practically
+the same thing when he averred that "one
+writes only for one or two hundred people in Europe,
+or in the world." It may be that this is too
+individual a case! A more liberal estimate would be
+that we write for all those who can comprehend us;
+that style has for its first object the increase of such
+a number; and, after that, if there still be those who
+cannot comprehend us, no reason for despair exists
+on our part or on theirs.</p>
+
+<p>Let us follow, now, the consequences of this
+principle in Flaubert's work, and see successively all
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[xvi]</a></span>
+that his work means, and the dogma of art which
+proceeds from it.</p>
+
+<p>At first you are tempted to believe that Flaubert's
+work is diverse, though inconsiderable in volume;
+and, primarily do not see clearly the threads which
+unite the <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Education</ins> Sentimentale</i> with the <i>Tentation
+de Saint Antoine</i> or <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i> with <i>Madame Bovary</i>.</p>
+
+<p>On the one side Christian Egypt, and on the other
+the France of 1848, Madame Arnoux, Rosanette, and
+Frederick Moreau, the Orleanist carnival, and the
+"underwood" of Fontainebleau. Here, Carthage,
+Hamilcar, Hannibal, Narr' Havas, the Numidian hero,
+and Spendius, the Greek slave, the lions in bondage,
+the pomegranate trees which they sprinkled with
+silphium, the whole a strange and barbaric world;
+then Charles Bovary, the chemist Homais, his son
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads &quot;Napoleon&quot; without an accent">Napol&eacute;on</ins> and his daughter Athalie, provincial life in
+the time of the Second Empire; <i>bourgeois</i> adultery,
+<i>diligences</i> and notaries' clerks. Then again Herodias,
+Salome, Saint Jean-Baptiste, or Saint Julien l'Hospitalier,
+the middle ages and antiquity,&mdash;all, at first sight,
+seem far removed, one from the other. At first one
+must admire, in such a contrast of subjects and
+colors, the extraordinary skill, let us say the <i>virtuosit&eacute;</i>,
+of the artist. But, if we look more closely, we
+shall not be slow to perceive that no work is more
+homogeneous than that of Flaubert, and that, in
+truth, the <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Education</ins> Sentimentale</i>, differs from <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>
+only as a Kermesse of Rubens, for example,
+or a Bacchante of Poussin differs from the apotheoses
+or the Church pictures of the painters themselves.
+The making is the same, and you immediately recognise
+the hand. The difference is in the choice of
+subjects, which is of no importance, since Flaubert is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[xvii]</a></span>
+only attempting to "represent" something, and in
+the choice of material, when he is "representing,"
+he is no longer free. That is the reason why, if one
+seek for lessons in "naturalism" in <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>, he
+will find them, and will also find all the "romanticism"
+he seeks in the <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Education</ins> Sentimentale</i> and
+in <i>Madame Bovary</i>.</p>
+
+<p>From the other lessons that flow from this work,
+I find some in rhetoric, in art, in invention, in composition,
+and two or three of great import, eloquent
+in their bearing upon the history of contemporary
+French literature.</p>
+
+<p>A master does not mingle or engage his personality
+in his subject; but, as a God creates from the
+height of his serenity, without passion, if without
+love, so the poet or the artist expands the thing he
+touches, and, on each occasion, brings to bear upon
+it all the faculties that are his by toil but not innate.
+Nothing is demanded of the workers, and they make
+no confessions or confidences. Literature and art are
+not, nor should be, the expression of men's emotions,
+and still less the history of their lives. That is the
+reason why, while from reading <i>Ren&eacute;</i>, for example,
+or <i>Fraziella</i>, <i>Delphine</i>, <i>Corinne</i>, <i>Adolphe</i>, <i>Indiana</i>,
+<i>Volupt&eacute;</i>, or some of the romances of Balzac&mdash;<i>La
+Muse du <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: D&eacute;partement remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Departement</ins></i>, or <i>Un Grand Homme de Province
+&agrave; Paris</i>,&mdash;you could induct Balzac's entire psychology,
+or Sainte-Beuve's, or Madame Sand's,
+Benjamin Constant's, Madame de Sta&euml;l's or Chateaubriand's,
+you would find in <i>Madame Bovary</i> or <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>
+nothing of Flaubert, except his temperament,
+his taste, and his ideals as an artist. Let us suppose
+another Flaubert, who did not live at Rouen, whose
+life is not that related in his correspondence, who
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[xviii]</a></span>
+was not the friend of Maxime Ducamp or of Louise
+Colet, and the <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Education</ins> Sentimentale</i> or the <i>Tentation
+de Saint Antoine</i> would not be in the least different
+from what they are now, nor should we see
+one line of change to be made. This is a triumph in
+objective art. "I do not wish to consider art as an
+overflow of passion," he wrote once, a little brutally.
+"I love my little niece as if she were my daughter,
+and I am sufficiently active in her behalf to prove
+that these are not empty phrases. But may I be
+flayed alive rather than exploit that kind of thing in
+style!" It has been but a short hundred years since,
+as he expressed it, romanticism "exploited its emotions
+in style," and made art from the heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! strike upon the heart, 'tis there that genius
+lies!" But, for a whole generation, <i>Madame Bovary</i>,
+<i>Salammb&ocirc;</i> and <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Education</ins> Sentimentale</i> have been
+teaching the contrary. "The author in his work
+should be like God in the universe, everywhere present
+but nowhere visible. Art being second nature,
+the creator of this nature should act through analogous
+procedure. He must be felt in each atom, under
+every aspect, concealed but infinite; the effect upon
+the spectator should be a kind of amazement." Furthermore,
+he remarks that this principle was the core
+of Greek art. I know not, or at least I do not recall,
+whether he had observed (as he should, since
+Anglo-Saxons have been quick to notice it) that this
+"principle" underlies the art of Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<p>To realize this principle in work you must proceed
+scientifically, and, in this connection, we may
+notice that Flaubert's idea is that of Leconte de Lisle
+in the preface to his <i>Po&egrave;mes Antiques</i>, and of Taine
+in his lectures upon <i>L'Id&eacute;al dans l'art</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[xix]</a></span>
+Romanticism had confounded the picturesque with
+the anecdotal; character with accident; colour with
+oddity. <i>Han d'Islande</i>, <i>N&ocirc;tre-Dame de Paris</i> and
+some romances of Balzac, the first and poorest, not
+signed with his name, may serve as an example.
+The classic writers on their side, had not always distinguished
+very profoundly the difference between the
+general and the universal, the principal and the accessory,
+the permanent and the superficial. We see
+this in the French comedies of the eighteenth century,
+even in some of Moli&egrave;re's&mdash;in his <i>L'Avare</i> and his
+<i>Le Misanthrope</i>, for example. Flaubert believed that a
+means of terminating this conflict is to be found in
+method; and that is the reason why, if we confine
+ourselves wholly to the consideration of the medium
+in his works, we shall find the <i>Tentation de Saint
+Antoine</i> entirely romantic; while, as a retaliation,
+nothing is more classic than <i>Madame Bovary</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The reason for this is, that in his subject, whatever
+it was, Carthaginian or low Norman, refined or
+<i>bourgeois</i>, modern or antique, he saw only the subject
+itself, with the eyes and after the manner of a
+naturalist, who is concerned only in knowing thoroughly
+the plant or the animal under observation.
+There is no sentiment in botany or in chemistry, and
+in them the desideratum is truth. Singleness of aim is
+the primary virtue in a <i>savant</i>. Things are what they
+are, and we demand of him that he show them to
+us as they are. We accuse him of lying if he disguises,
+weakens, alters or embellishes them.</p>
+
+<p>Likewise the artist! His function is ever to "represent:"
+and in order to accomplish this, he should,
+like the savant, mirror only the facts. After this,
+what do the names "romanticism" or "classicism"
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[xx]</a></span>
+signify? Their sole use is to indicate the side taken;
+they are, so to speak, an acknowledgment that the
+writer is adorning the occurrence he is about to represent.
+He may make it more universal or more
+characteristic than nature! But, inversely, if all art is
+concentrated upon the representation, what matters
+the subject? Is one animal or plant more interesting
+than another to the naturalist? Does a name matter?
+All demand the same attention. Art can make exception
+in its subjects no more than science.</p>
+
+<p>If we ask in what consists the difference between
+science and art, on this basis, Flaubert, with Leconte
+de Lisle and with Taine, will tell us that it is in the
+beauty which communicates prestige to the work, or
+in the power of form.</p>
+
+<p>"What I have just written might be taken for
+something of Paul de Kock's, had I not given it a
+profoundly literary form," wrote Flaubert, while he
+was at work on <i>Madame Bovary</i>; "but how, out of
+trivial dialogue, produce style? Yet it is absolutely
+necessary! It must be done!" He went further still,
+and persuaded himself that style had a value in itself,
+intrinsic and absolute, aside from the subject. In
+fact, if the subject had no importance of its own, and
+if there were no personal motives for choosing one
+subject rather than another, what reason would there
+be for writing <i>Madame Bovary</i> or <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>? One
+alone: and that to "make something out of nothing,"
+to produce a work of art from things of no import.
+For though everyone has some ideas, and everyone
+has had experience in some kind of life, it is given
+to few to be able to express their experience or their
+ideas in terms of beauty. This, precisely, is the goal
+of art.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[xxi]</a></span>
+Form, then, is the great preoccupation of the artist,
+since, if he is an artist, it is through form, and
+in the perfection or originality of that form, that his
+triumph comes. Nothing stands out from the general
+mediocrity except by means of form; nothing becomes
+concrete, assuming immortality, save through form.
+Form in art is queen and sovereign. Even truth
+makes itself felt only through the attractiveness of
+form. And further, we cannot part one from the
+other; they are not opposed to each other; they are
+at one; and art in every phase consists only in this
+union. It is the end of art to give the superior life
+of form to that which has it not; and finally, this
+superior life of form, this magic wand of style, rhythmic
+as verse and terse as science, by firmly establishing
+the thing it touches, withdraws it from that law
+of change, constant in its inconstancy, which is the
+miserable condition of existence.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">All passes; art in its strength<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Alone remains to all eternity;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The bust<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Survives the city.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This it is that makes up the charm, the social
+dignity, and the lasting grandeur of art.</p>
+
+<p>This is not the place to discuss the "&aelig;sthetic"
+quality, and I shall content myself with indicating
+briefly some of the objections it has called forth.</p>
+
+<p>Has form indeed all the importance in literature
+that Flaubert claimed for it? And what importance
+has it in sculpture, for example, or in painting? Let us
+grant its necessity. Colour and line, which are, so to
+speak, the primal elements in the alphabet of painting
+and of sculpture, have not in themselves determined
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[xxii]</a></span>
+and precise significance. Yellow and red,
+green and blue are only general and confused sensations.
+But words express particular sentiments and
+well-defined ideas, and have a value that does not
+depend upon the form or the quality of the words.
+You cannot, then, in using them, distinguish between
+significance and form, or combine them independently
+of the idea they are intended to convey, as is possible
+with colours and with lines, solely for the beauty
+that results from combination. If literary art is a
+"representation," it is also something more; and the
+lapse in Flaubert, as in all those who have followed
+him in the letter, lies in having missed this distinction.
+You cannot write merely to represent; you
+write also to express ideas, to determine or to modify
+convictions; you write that you may act, or impel
+others to act: these are effects beyond the power of
+painting or of sculpture. A statue or a picture never
+brought about a revolution; a book, a pamphlet, nay,
+a few fiery words, have overturned a dynasty.</p>
+
+<p>It is no longer true, as a whole generation of
+writers has believed, that art and science may be
+one and the same thing; or that the first, as Taine
+has said, may be an "anticipation of the second."
+We could not in the presence of our fellow-creatures
+and their suffering affect the indifference of a naturalist
+before the plant or the animal he is studying.
+Whatever the nature of "human phenomena" may
+be, we in our quality as man can only look at them
+with human eyes, and could temptation make us
+change our point of view, it would properly be called
+inhuman.</p>
+
+<p>One might add that, if it is not certain that nature
+was made for man, and if, for that reason,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[xxiii]</a></span>
+science is wholly independent of conscience, as we
+take it, it is otherwise with art. We know that
+man was not made for art, but that art was made
+for man. We forget each time we speak of "art for
+art's sake" that there is need precisely to define the
+meaning of the expression and to recall that but for
+truth art could not have for its object the perfecting
+of political institutions, the uplifting of the masses,
+the correction of customs, the teachings of religion,
+and that although this may lead finally to the realization
+of beauty, it nevertheless remains the duty of
+man, and consequently, is human in its origin, human
+in its development, and human in its aim.</p>
+
+<p>Upon all these points, it is only necessary to think
+sensibly, as also upon the question&mdash;which we have
+not touched upon,&mdash;of knowing under what conditions,
+in what sense, and in what degree the person
+of the artist can or should remain foreign to his work.</p>
+
+<p>But a peculiarity of Flaubert's,&mdash;and one more
+personal, which even most of the naturalists have not
+shared with him, neither the Dutch in their paintings,
+nor the English in the history of romance (the
+author of <i>Tom Jones</i> or of <i>Clarissa Harlowe</i>), nor the
+Russians, Tolstoi or Dostoiefski,&mdash;is to despise the
+r&ocirc;le of irony in art. "My personages are profoundly
+repugnant to me," he wrote, <i>&agrave; propos</i> of <i>Madame
+Bovary</i>. But they were not always repugnant to him,
+at least not all of them, and, in verification of this,
+we find that he has not for Spendius, Matho, Hamilcar,
+and Hanno, the boundless scorn that he affects
+for Homais or for Bournisien, for Bouvard or for
+Pecuchet.</p>
+
+<p>We recognise here the particular and special form
+of Flaubert's pessimism. That there could be people
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[xxiv]</a></span>
+in the world, among his contemporaries, who were
+not wholly absorbed and preoccupied with art, surpassed
+his comprehension, and when this indifference
+did not arouse an indignation which exasperated him
+even to blows, it drew from him a scornful laughter
+that one might call Homeric or Rabelaisian, since it
+incited more to anger than to gaiety. And this is
+the reason why <i>Madame Bovary</i>, <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Education</ins> Sentimentale</i>,
+<i>Un C&oelig;ur Simple</i>, and <i>Bouvard et Pecuchet</i>
+would be more truly named were they called satires
+and not representations.</p>
+
+<p>The exaggeration of the principle here recoils
+upon itself. That disinterestedness, that impartiality,
+that serenity which permitted him to "hover impartially
+above all objects" deserted him. A satirist, or
+to be more exact, a caricaturist, awoke within the
+naturalist. He raged at his own characters. He
+railed at them and mocked them. The interest of
+the representation had undergone a change. He was
+no longer in the attitude of mere fidelity to facts, but
+in a state of scorn and violent derision. Homais and
+Bournisien are no longer studies in themselves, but a
+burden to Flaubert. His <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: &Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Education</ins> Sentimentale</i>, in
+spite of him, became, to use his own expression, an
+overflow of rancour. In <i>Bouvard et Pecuchet</i> he
+gave way to his hatred of humanity; here, as a
+favour, and under the mask of irony, he brings himself
+into his work, and, like a simple Madame Sand,
+or a vulgar De Musset, we perceive Flaubert himself,
+bull-necked and ruddy, with the moustaches of a
+Gallic chief, agonizing at each turn in the romance.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary to exaggerate Flaubert's influence.
+In his time there were ten other writers,
+none of whom equalled him,&mdash;Parnassians in poetry,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[xxv]</a></span>
+positivists in criticism, realists in romance or in
+dramatic writing,&mdash;who laboured at the same work.
+His &aelig;stheticism is not his alone, yet <i>Madame Bovary</i>
+and <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i> shot like unexpected meteors out of a
+grey sky, the dull, low sky of the Second Empire.
+In 1860 the sky was not so grey or so low; and the
+<i>Po&egrave;mes Antiques</i> of Leconte de Lisle, the <i>&Eacute;tudes
+d'histoire religieuse</i> of Renan, and the <i>Essais de Critique</i>
+of Taine, are possibly not unworthy to be
+placed in parallel or comparison with the first writings
+of Flaubert. An exquisite judge of things of the
+mind, J. J. Weiss, very clearly saw at that time what
+there was in common in all these works, in the
+glory of which he was not deceived when he added
+the <i>Fleurs du Mai</i> by Charles Baudelaire, and the
+first comedies of Alexandre Dumas <i>fils</i>. But the
+truth is, not one of these works was marked with
+signs of masterly maturity in like degree with <i>Madame
+Bovary</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is, then, natural that, from day to day, Flaubert
+should become a guide, and here, if we consider the
+nature of the lessons he gives, we cannot deny their
+towering excellence.</p>
+
+<p>If there was need to agitate against romanticism,
+<i>Madame Bovary</i> performed the duty; and if in this
+agitation there was need to save what was worth
+salvation, <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i> saved it. If it was fitting to recall
+to poets and to writers of romance, to Madame
+Sand herself and Victor Hugo, that art was not invented
+as a public carrier for their confidences, it is
+still Flaubert who does it. He taught the school of
+hasty writers that talent, or even genius, is in need
+of discipline,&mdash;the discipline of a long and painful
+prenticehood in the making and unmaking of their
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[xxvi]</a></span>
+work. He has widened, and especially has he hollowed
+and deepened, the notion that romanticism
+was born of nature, and, in doing this, has brought
+art back to the fountain-head of inspiration. His
+rhetoric and &aelig;stheticism brought him face to face
+with Nature, enabled him to see her, a gift as rare as
+it is great, and to "represent" her&mdash;the proof of the
+preceding. It is the artist that judges the model.
+Poets and romance-writers, like painters, we value
+only in as much as they represent life&mdash;by and for
+the fidelity, the originality, the novelty, the depth,
+the distinction, the perfection with which they represent
+it. It is the rule of rules, the principle of principles!
+And if Flaubert had no other merit than to
+have seen this better than any other writer of his
+age, it would be enough to assure for him a place,
+and a very exalted place, in the Pantheon of French
+Literature.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 266px;">
+<img src="images/i022.jpg" width="266" height="100" alt="Signature: F. Bruneti&egrave;re" title="Signature: F. Bruneti&egrave;re" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[xxvii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE</h3>
+
+<p>Gustave Flaubert was born at Rouen, December
+12, 1821. His father was a physician, who later became
+chief surgeon in the H&ocirc;tel Dieu of that city, and
+his mother, Anne-Justine-Carline Fleuriot, was of
+Norman extraction.</p>
+
+<p>Fourth of a family of six children, as a child Flaubert
+exhibited marked fondness for stories, and, with
+his favourite sister, Caroline, would invent them for
+pastime. As a youth, he was exceedingly handsome,
+tall, broad-shouldered and athletic, of independent
+turn of mind, fond of study, and caring little for the
+luxuries of life. He attended the college of Rouen,
+but showed no marked characteristic save a pronounced
+taste for history. After graduating, he went
+to Paris to read law, at the &Eacute;cole de Droit. At this
+time disease, the nature of which he always endeavored
+to conceal from the world, attacked him and
+compelled a return to Rouen. The complaint, as revealed
+after his death by Maxime Ducamp, was epilepsy,
+and the constant fear of suffering an attack in
+public led Flaubert to live the life of a recluse.</p>
+
+<p>The death of his father occurring at this critical
+period, Flaubert abandoned the study of law, which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[xxviii]</a></span>
+he had begun only in obedience to the formally expressed
+wish of his family. Having a comfortable income,
+he turned his thoughts to literature, and from
+that time all other work was distasteful. He read and
+wrote incessantly, although at this period he never
+completed anything. Among his papers were found
+several fragments written between his eighteenth and
+twentieth years. Some bear the stamp of his individuality,
+if not in the substance, which is romantic,&mdash;at
+least in the form, which is peculiarly lucid and concise,&mdash;for
+instance, the slight, romantic, autobiographic
+sketch entitled <i>Novembre</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Flaubert wrote neither for money nor for fame.
+To him, art was religion, and to it he sacrificed his
+life. Perfection of style was his goal; and unremitting
+devotion to his ideal slew him. That he was
+never satisfied with what he wrote, his letters show;
+and all who knew him marvelled at his laborious and
+pathetic application to his work. He settled first in
+Croisset, near Rouen, with his family, but shortly afterwards
+went to Brittany with Maxime Ducamp. On
+his return he planned <i>La Tentation de Saint Antoine</i>,
+which grew out of a fragmentary sketch entitled
+<i>Smarh</i> (a medi&aelig;val Mystery, the manuscript
+tells us), written in early youth. <i>La Tentation</i>
+proved a source of labor, for he never ceased revising
+it until it appeared in book form in 1874. In 1847,
+he wrote a modern play, entitled <i>Le Candidat</i>, produced
+in 1874 at the Vaudeville. It was not his first
+dramatic effort, as he had already written a sort of
+lyric fairy-play, <i>Le Ch&acirc;teau des C&oelig;urs</i>, which was
+published in his <i>&OElig;uvres Posthumes</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In 1849 Flaubert visited Greece, Egypt, and Syria,
+again accompanied by his friend Maxime Ducamp.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[xxix]</a></span>
+After his return he planned a book of impressions
+similar to <i>Par les Champs et par les Gr&egrave;ves</i>, which
+was the result of the trip to Brittany; but the beginning
+only was achieved. Still he gathered many data
+for his future great novel, <i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>. The year 1851
+found him back in Croisset, working at <i>La Tentation
+de Saint Antoine</i>, which he dropped suddenly, when
+half finished, for an entirely different subject&mdash;<i>Madame
+Bovary</i>, a novel of provincial life, published first
+in 1857 in the <i>Revue de Paris</i>. For this Flaubert
+was prosecuted, on the charge of offending against
+public morals, but was acquitted after the remarkable
+defense offered by Ma&icirc;tre Senard.</p>
+
+<p>Flaubert's fame dates from <i>Madame Bovary</i>, which
+was much discussed by press and public. Many, including
+his friend, Maxime Ducamp, condemned it, but
+Sainte-Beuve gave it his decisive and courageous approval.
+It was generally considered, however, as the
+starting point of a new phase in letters, frankly realistic,
+and intent on understanding and expressing
+everything. Such success might have influenced Flaubert's
+artistic inclinations but did not, for while <i>Madame
+Bovary</i> was appearing in the <i>Revue de Paris</i>,
+the <i>Artiste</i> was publishing fragments of <i>La Tentation
+de Saint Antoine</i>.</p>
+
+<p>In 1858 Flaubert went to Tunis, visited the site of
+ancient Carthage, and four years afterwards wrote
+<i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>, a marvellous reconstitution, more than half
+intuitive, of a civilisation practically unrecorded in
+history. This extraordinary book did not call forth
+the enthusiasm that greeted <i>Madame Bovary</i>. Flaubert,
+in whom correctness of detail was a passion,
+was condemned, even by Sainte-Beuve, for choosing
+from all history a civilisation of which so little is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[xxx]</a></span>
+known. The author replied, and a lengthy controversy
+ensued, but it was not a subject that could be
+settled definitely in one way or another.</p>
+
+<p>In <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: L'&Eacute;ducation remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">L'Education</ins> Sentimentale, roman d'un jeune
+homme</i>, published in 1869, Flaubert returns momentarily
+to the style which brought him such rapid and
+deserved celebrity. In 1877 appeared <i>Trois Contes</i>,
+three short stories written in the impersonal style of
+<i>Salammb&ocirc;</i>, contrasting strangely with <i>La <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: L&eacute;gende remains as it appears in the original, without an accent">Legende</ins> de
+Saint Julien l'Hospitalier</i> and <i>Herodias</i>, wherein Flaubert
+shows himself supreme in the art of word-painting.</p>
+
+<p>Death came to him on May 8, 1880, as he was
+writing the last chapters of a new work, <i>Bouvard et
+Pecuchet</i>, which was published in part after he died
+and later appeared in book form (1881).</p>
+
+<p>At the age of twenty-five, Flaubert met the only
+woman who in any way entered his sentimental life.
+She was an author, the wife of Lucien Colet, and the
+"Madame X" of the Correspondence. Their friendship
+lasted eight years and ended unpleasantly, Flaubert
+being too absorbed by his worship for art to let
+passion sway him.</p>
+
+<p>He remained unmarried because his love for his
+mother and family made calls upon him that he
+would not neglect. He was indifferent to women,
+treated them with paternal indulgence, and often
+avowed that "woman is the undoing of the just."
+Yet a warm friendship existed between him and
+George Sand, and many of his letters are addressed
+to her, touching upon various questions in art, literature,
+and politics.</p>
+
+<p>The misanthropy which haunted Flaubert, of which
+so much has been said, was not innate, but was acquired
+through the constant contemplation of human
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[xxxi]</a></span>
+folly. It was natural for him to be cheerful and kind-hearted,
+and of his generosity and disinterestedness
+not enough can be said. At the close of his life financial
+difficulties assailed him, for he had given a
+great part of his fortune to the support of a niece,
+restricting his own expenses and living as modestly
+as possible. In 1879, M. Jules Ferry, then Minister of Public
+Instruction, offered him a place in the Biblioth&egrave;que
+Mazarine, but the appointment was not confirmed.</p>
+
+<p>Flaubert's method of production was slow and
+laborious. Sometimes weeks were required to write
+a few pages, for he accumulated masses of notes and,
+it must be said, so much erudition as at times to impede
+action. He thought no toil too great, did it but
+aid him in his pursuit of literary perfection, and when
+the work that called for such expenditure of strength
+and thought was finished, he looked for no reward
+save that of a satisfied soul. Alien to business wisdom,
+he believed that to set a price upon his work
+disparaged it.</p>
+
+<p>In Flaubert, a Romanticist and a Naturalist at first
+were blended. But the latter tendency was fostered
+and acknowledged, while the former was repressed.
+He was an ardent advocate of the impersonal in art,
+declaring that an author should not in a page, a line,
+or a word, express the smallest part of an opinion.
+To him a writer was a mirror, but a mirror that reflected
+life while adding that divine effulgence which
+is Art. Of him a French Romanticist still living
+says:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">
+"Imagination was espoused by Unremitting-Toil-in-Faith and bore
+Flaubert. France fed the child, but Art stepped in and gave him to
+the Nations as a Beacon for the worshippers of Truth-in-Letters-and-in-Life."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[xxxii]</a></span>
+The city of Rouen reared a monument to Flaubert's
+memory, but on the spot where he breathed
+his last are reared the chimneys and the buildings of
+a factory, a tribute&mdash;possibly unconscious&mdash;to reality
+in life.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Before writing <i>Madame Bovary</i> Flaubert had tested
+himself, and an idea of the scope and variety of his
+ideas may be gained from the following list of inedited
+and unfinished fragments:</p>
+
+<p class="center">HISTORICAL</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">The Death of the Due de Guise, 1835<br />
+Norman Chronicle of the Tenth Century, 1836<br />
+Two Hands on a Crown, or, During the Fifteenth Century, 1836.<br />
+Essay on the Struggle between Priesthood and Empire, 1838.<br />
+Rome and the C&aelig;sars, 1839.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">TRAVELS</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">Various notes on Travels to the Pyrenean Mountains, Corsica,
+Spain and the Orient, from 1840 to 1850.</p>
+
+<p class="center">TALES AND NOVELS</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">The Plague in Florence, 1836<br />
+Rage and Impotence, 1836<br />
+The Society Woman, fantastic verses, 1836<br />
+Bibliomania, 1836<br />
+An Exquisite Perfume, or, The Buffoons, 1836.<br />
+Dreams of the Infernal Regions, 1837<br />
+Passion and Chastity, 1837<br />
+The Funeral of Dr. Mathurin, or, During the XVth Century, 1839.<br />
+Frenzy and Death, 1843<br />
+Sentimental Education (not the novel published under same title).
+1843.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii">[xxxiii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">PLAYS</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">Louis XI, Drama, 1838<br />
+Discovery of Vaccination, a parody of tragic style; one act only
+was written.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="center">CRITICISMS</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">On Romantic Literature in France</p>
+
+<p class="center">MISCELLANY</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">Quidquid volueris? A psychological study, 1837.<br />
+Agony (Sceptical Thoughts), 1838<br />
+Art and Commerce, 1839.<br />
+Several nameless sketches.<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, nearly all the works of Flaubert's
+youth were mere sketches, laid aside by him. Their
+publication would have added nothing to his fame.
+Still, the loss of some would have been deplorable,
+to wit, such gems as <i>Novembre</i>, <i>The Dance of Death</i>,
+<i>Rabelais</i>, and the travels, <i>Over Strand and Field</i>. These
+sketches will be found in this edition.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 263px;">
+<img src="images/i029.jpg" width="263" height="70" alt="Signature: Robert Arnot" title="Signature: Robert Arnot" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_001" id="Page_001">[1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>MADAME BOVARY</h1>
+
+<h3>PART I.</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="The_New_Boy" id="The_New_Boy"></a><span class="smcap">The New Boy.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap030"><span class="dropcap">W</span></span><br />E WERE in class when the head-master
+came in, followed by a
+"new fellow," not wearing the
+school uniform, and a school servant
+carrying a large desk. Those
+who had been asleep woke up, and
+every one rose as if just surprised at his work.</p>
+
+<p>The head-master made a sign to us to sit down.
+Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in
+a low voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend
+to your care; he'll be in the second. If his
+work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one
+of the upper classes, as becomes his age."</p>
+
+<p>The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind
+the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a
+country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us.
+His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village
+chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease.
+Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short
+school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_002" id="Page_002">[2]</a></span>
+have been tight about the armholes, and showed at
+the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being
+bare. His legs, in blue stockings, looked out
+from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces.
+He wore stout, ill-cleaned, <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: hob-nailed">hobnailed</ins> boots.</p>
+
+<p>We began repeating the lesson. He listened with
+all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring
+even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and
+when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was
+obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>When we came back to work, we were in the
+habit of throwing our caps on the floor so as to
+have our hands more free; we used from the door to
+toss them under the form, so that they hit against
+the wall and made a lot of dust: it was "the thing."</p>
+
+<p>But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did
+not dare to attempt it, the "new fellow" was still
+holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were
+over. It was one of those head-gears of composite
+order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin,
+shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton nightcap;
+one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb
+ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's
+face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with
+three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges
+of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;
+after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon
+covered with complicated braiding, from which
+hung, at the end of a long, thin cord, small twisted
+gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was
+new; its peak shone.</p>
+
+<p>"Rise," said the master.</p>
+
+<p>He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began
+to laugh. He stooped to pick it up. A neighbor
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_003" id="Page_003">[3]</a></span>
+knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked
+it up once more.</p>
+
+<p>"Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who
+was a bit of a wag.</p>
+
+<p>There was a burst of laughter from the boys,
+which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance
+that he did not know whether to keep his cap
+in his hand, leave it on the floor, or put it on his
+head. He sat down again and placed it on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>"Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your
+name."</p>
+
+<p>The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an
+unintelligible name.</p>
+
+<p>"Again!"</p>
+
+<p>The same sputtering of syllables was heard,
+drowned by the tittering of the class.</p>
+
+<p>"Louder!" cried the master; "louder!"</p>
+
+<p>The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution,
+opened an inordinately large mouth, and shouted at
+the top of his voice as if calling some one the word,
+"Charbovari."</p>
+
+<p>A hubbub broke out, rose in <i>crescendo</i> with bursts
+of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated
+"Charbovari! Charbovari!"), then died away into
+single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty,
+and now and again suddenly recommencing
+along the line of a form whence rose here and there,
+like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.</p>
+
+<p>However, amid a rain of impositions, order was
+gradually re-established in the class; and the master
+having succeeded in catching the name of "Charles
+Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out,
+and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go
+and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_004" id="Page_004">[4]</a></span>
+the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you looking for?" asked the master.</p>
+
+<p>"My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting
+troubled looks round him.</p>
+
+<p>"Five hundred verses for all the class!" shouted
+in a furious voice, stopped, like the <i>Quos ego</i>, a fresh
+outburst "Silence!" continued the master indignantly,
+wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which
+he had just taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new
+boy,' you will conjugate '<i>ridiculus sum</i>' twenty
+times." Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll find
+your cap again; it hasn't been stolen."</p>
+
+<p>Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and
+the "new fellow" remained for two hours in an exemplary
+attitude, although from time to time some
+paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang
+in his face. But he wiped his face with one hand
+and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his
+pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings,
+and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him working
+conscientiously, looking out every word in the dictionary,
+and taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no
+doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to
+go down to the class below. But though he knew
+his rules passably, he had little finish in composition.
+It was the cur&eacute; of his village who had taught him
+his first Latin; his parents, from motives of economy,
+having sent him to school as late as possible.</p>
+
+<p>His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolom&eacute; Bovary,
+retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised
+about 1812 in certain conscription scandals, and forced
+at that time to leave the service, had then taken advantage
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_005" id="Page_005">[5]</a></span>
+of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of
+sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a
+hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his
+good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his
+spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran
+into his moustache, his fingers always garnished with
+rings, and dressed in loud colors, he had the dash of
+a military man with the easy air of a commercial
+traveller. Once married, he lived for three or four years
+on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking
+long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after
+the theater, and haunting caf&eacute;s. The father-in-law
+died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went
+in for the business," lost some money in it, then retired
+to the country, where he thought he would make
+money. But, as he knew no more about farming
+than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending
+them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of
+selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard,
+and greased his hunting-boots with the fat of
+his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he
+would do better to give up all speculation.</p>
+
+<p>For two hundred francs a year he managed to live
+on the border of the provinces of Caux and Picardy,
+in a kind of place half farm, half private house; and
+here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his luck,
+jealous of every one, he shut himself up at the age
+of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to
+live in peace.</p>
+
+<p>His wife had adored him once on a time; she had
+bored him with a thousand servilities that had only
+estranged him the more. Lively once, expansive and
+affectionate, in growing older she had become (after
+the fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_006" id="Page_006">[6]</a></span>
+vinegar) ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. She had
+suffered so much without complaint at first, when
+she had seen him going after all the village drabs,
+and when a score of bad houses sent him back to
+her at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride
+revolted. After that she was silent, burying her anger
+in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her
+death. She was constantly going about looking after
+business matters. She called on the lawyers, the
+president, remembered when bills fell due, got them
+renewed, and at home, ironed, sewed, washed, looked
+after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he,
+troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in
+sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to
+say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the
+fire and spitting into the cinders.</p>
+
+<p>When she had a child, it had to be sent out to
+nurse. When he came home, the lad was spoiled as
+if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with
+jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing
+the philosopher, even said he might as well go
+about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed
+to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile
+idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his
+son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a
+Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent
+him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off
+large draughts of rum, and to jeer at religious processions.
+But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered
+only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept
+him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told
+him tales, entertained him with endless monologues
+full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. In
+her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_007" id="Page_007">[7]</a></span>
+her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of
+high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome,
+clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She
+taught him to read, and even on an old piano she
+had taught him two or three little songs. But to all
+this Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said:
+"It is not worth while. Shall we ever have the
+means to send him to a public school, to buy him a
+practice, or to start him in business? Besides, with
+cheek a man always gets on in the world." Madame
+Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked about the
+village.</p>
+
+<p>He went after the laborers, drove away with clods
+of earth the ravens that were flying about. He ate
+blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with
+a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran
+about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the
+church porch on rainy days, and at great f&ecirc;tes begged
+the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might
+hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself
+borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he
+grew like an oak; he was strong of hand, fresh of
+color.</p>
+
+<p>When he was twelve years old his mother had
+her own way; he began his lessons. The cur&eacute; took
+him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular
+that they could not be of much use. They
+were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing
+up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or
+else the cur&eacute;, if he had not to go out, sent for his
+pupil after the <i>Angelus</i>. They went up to his room
+and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round
+the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep and
+the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_008" id="Page_008">[8]</a></span>
+his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide
+open. On other occasions, when Monsieur le Cur&eacute;,
+on his way back after administering the viaticum to
+some sick person in the neighborhood, caught sight
+of Charles playing about the fields, he called him,
+lectured him for a quarter of an hour, and took advantage
+of the occasion to make him conjugate his
+verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them
+or an acquaintance passed. All the same he was always
+pleased with him, and even said the "young
+man" had a very good memory.</p>
+
+<p>Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary
+took strong steps. Ashamed, or rather tired out,
+Monsieur Bovary gave in without a struggle, and
+they waited one year longer, so that the lad should
+take his first communion.</p>
+
+<p>Six months more passed, and the year after Charles
+was finally sent to school at Rouen, whither his
+father took him towards the end of October, at the
+time of the St. Romain fair.</p>
+
+<p>It would now be impossible for any of us to remember
+anything about him. He was a youth of
+even temperament, who played in playtime, worked
+in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well
+in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory. He
+had <i>in loco parentis</i> a wholesale ironmonger in
+the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month
+on Sundays after his shop was shut, sent him for a
+walk on the quay to look at the boats, and then
+brought him back to college at seven o'clock before
+supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long
+letter to his mother with red ink and three wafers;
+then he went over his history note-books, or read an
+old volume of "Anarchasis" that was knocking about
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_009" id="Page_009">[9]</a></span>
+the study. When we went for walks he talked to
+the servant who, like himself, came from the country.</p>
+
+<p>By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle
+of the class; once even he got a certificate in natural
+history. But at the end of his third year his parents
+withdrew him from the school to make him study
+medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree
+by himself.</p>
+
+<p>His mother chose a room for him on the fourth
+floor of a dyer's she knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec.
+She made arrangements for his board, got
+him furniture, a table and two chairs, sent home for
+an old cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a
+small cast-iron stove with the supply of wood that
+was to warm the poor child. Then at the end of a
+week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to be
+good, now that he was going to be left to himself.</p>
+
+<p>The syllabus that he read on the notice-board
+stunned him: lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology,
+lectures on physiology, lectures on pharmacy,
+lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,
+without counting hygiene and materia medica&mdash;all
+names of whose etymologies he was ignorant,
+and that were to him as so many doors to sanctuaries
+filled with magnificent darkness.</p>
+
+<p>He understood nothing of it all; it was all very
+well to listen&mdash;he did not follow. Still he worked; he
+had bound note-books, he attended all the courses,
+never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily
+task like a mill-horse, who goes round and round
+with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work
+he is doing.</p>
+
+<p>To spare him expense his mother sent him every
+week by the carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_010" id="Page_010">[10]</a></span>
+on which he lunched when he came back from
+the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the
+wall. After this he had to run off to lectures, to the
+operation-room, to the hospital, and return to his
+home at the other end of the town. In the evening,
+after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back
+to his room and set to work again in his wet clothes,
+that smoked as he sat in front of the hot stove.</p>
+
+<p>On the fine summer evenings, at the time when
+the close streets are empty, when the servants are
+playing shuttlecock at the doors, he opened his window
+and leaned out. The river, that makes of this
+quarter of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath
+him, between the bridges and the railings, yellow,
+violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling on the
+banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On
+poles projecting from the attics, skeins of cotton were
+drying in the air. Opposite, beyond the roofs, spread
+the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How
+pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the
+beech-tree! And he expanded his nostrils to breathe
+in the sweet odors of the country which did not
+reach him.</p>
+
+<p>He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face
+took a saddened look that made it almost interesting.
+Naturally, through indifference, he abandoned all the
+resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture;
+the next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness,
+little by little he gave up work altogether. He
+got into the habit of going to the public-house, and
+had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up
+every evening in the dirty public room, to push about
+on marble tables the small sheep-bones with black
+dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_011" id="Page_011">[11]</a></span>
+which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning
+to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures;
+and when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle
+with a joy almost sensual. Then many things
+hidden within him come out; he learnt couplets by
+heart and sang them to his boon companions, became
+enthusiastic about B&eacute;ranger, learnt how to make
+punch, and, finally, how to make love.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks to these preparatory labors, he failed completely
+in his examination for an ordinary degree. He
+was expected home the same night to celebrate his
+success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
+of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all.
+She excused him, threw the blame of his failure on
+the injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little,
+and took upon herself to set matters straight. It was
+only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the
+truth; it was old then, and he accepted it. Moreover,
+he could not believe that a man born of him
+could be a fool.</p>
+
+<p>So Charles set to work again and crammed for his
+examination, ceaselessly learning all the old questions
+by heart. He passed pretty well. What a happy day
+for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Where should he go to practise? To Tostes,
+where there was only one old doctor. For a long
+time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for
+his death, and the old fellow had barely been packed
+off when Charles was installed, opposite his place, as
+his successor.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not everything to have brought up a
+son, to have had him taught medicine, and discovered
+Tostes, where he could practise it; he must have a
+wife. She found him one&mdash;the widow of a bailiff at
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_012" id="Page_012">[12]</a></span>
+Dieppe, who was forty-five and had an income of
+twelve hundred francs. Though she was ugly, as dry
+as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the
+spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors.
+To attain her ends Madame Bovary had to oust
+them all, and she even succeeded in very cleverly
+baffling the intrigues of a pork-butcher backed up by
+the priests.</p>
+
+<p>Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an
+easier life, thinking he would be more free to do as
+he liked with himself and his money. But his wife
+was master; he had to say this and not say that in
+company, to fast every Friday, dress as she liked,
+harass at her bidding those patients who did not
+pay. She opened his letters, watched his comings
+and goings, and listened at the partition-wall when
+women came to consult him in his surgery.</p>
+
+<p>She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions
+without end. She constantly complained of
+her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps
+made her ill; when people left her, solitude became
+odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless
+to see her die. When Charles returned in the evening,
+she stretched forth two long thin arms from
+beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and
+having made him sit down on the edge of the bed,
+began to talk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting
+her, he loved another. She had been warned she
+would be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for
+a dose of medicine and a little more love.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_013" id="Page_013">[13]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_Good_Patient" id="A_Good_Patient"></a><span class="smcap">A Good Patient.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap042"><span class="dropcap">O</span></span><br />NE night toward eleven o'clock they
+were awakened by the noise of a
+horse pulling up outside their door.
+The servant opened the garret-window
+and parleyed for some
+time with a man in the street below.
+He came for the doctor, had a letter for him.
+Nastasie came downstairs shivering and undid the bars
+and bolts one after the other. The man left his horse,
+and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind
+her. He pulled out from his wool cap with grey
+top-knots a letter wrapped up in a rag and presented
+it gingerly to Charles, who rested his elbow on the
+pillow to read it. Nastasie, standing near the bed,
+held the light. Madame in modesty had turned to
+the wall and showed only her back.</p>
+
+<p>This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax,
+begged Monsieur Bovary to come immediately to the
+farm of the Bertaux to set a broken leg. Now from
+Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles
+across country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor.
+It was a dark night; Madame Bovary junior
+was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was
+decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_014" id="Page_014">[14]</a></span>
+would start three hours later when the moon rose.
+A boy was to be sent to meet him, and show him
+the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.</p>
+
+<p>Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles,
+well wrapped up in his cloak, set out for the Bertaux.
+Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed, he
+let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse.
+When it stopped of its own accord in front of those
+holes surrounded with thorns that are dug on the
+margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly
+remembered the broken leg, and tried to call
+to mind all the fractures he knew. The rain had
+stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of
+the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little
+feathers bristling in the cold morning wind. The
+flat country stretched as far as eye could see, and
+the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals
+seemed like dark violet stains on the vast gray surface,
+that on the horizon faded into the gloom of the
+sky, Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his
+mind grew weary, and sleep coming upon him, he
+soon fell into a doze wherein his recent sensations
+blending with memories, he became conscious of a
+double self, at once student and married man, lying
+in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation
+theater as of old. The warm smell of poultices mingled
+in his brain with the fresh odor of dew; he
+heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of
+the bed, and saw his wife sleeping. As he passed
+Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the grass
+at the edge of a ditch.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you the doctor?" asked the child.</p>
+
+<p>And on Charles's answer he took his wooden
+shoes in his hands and ran on in front of him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_015" id="Page_015">[15]</a></span>
+The general practitioner, riding along, gathered
+from his guide's talk that Monsieur Rouault must be
+one of the well-to-do farmers. He had broken his
+leg the evening before on his way home from a
+Twelfth-night feast at a neighbor's. His wife had
+been dead for two years. There was only his daughter,
+who helped him to keep house, with him.</p>
+
+<p>The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching
+the Bertaux. The little lad, slipping
+through a hole in the hedge, disappeared; then he
+came back to the end of a courtyard to open the
+gate. The horse slipped on the wet grass; Charles
+had to stoop to pass under the branches. The
+watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their
+chains. As he entered the Bertaux the horse took
+fright and stumbled.</p>
+
+<p>It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables,
+over the top of the open doors, one could see great
+cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. Right
+along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill,
+from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls
+and turkeys five or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois
+farmyards, were foraging on the top of it. The
+sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth
+as your hand. Under the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: the original reads cartshed">cart-shed</ins> were two large
+carts and four ploughs, with their whips, shafts, and
+harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool were
+getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the
+granaries. The courtyard sloped upwards, planted
+with trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering
+noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.</p>
+
+<p>A young woman in a blue merino dress with
+three flounces came to the threshold of the door to
+receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_016" id="Page_016">[16]</a></span>
+kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servants'
+breakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of
+all sizes. Some damp clothes were drying inside the
+chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of
+the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished
+steel, while along the walls hung many pots and
+pans in which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling
+with the first rays of the sun coming in through
+the window, was mirrored fitfully.</p>
+
+<p>Charles went up to the first floor to see the patient.
+He found him in his bed, sweating under his
+bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap far
+away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty,
+with white skin and blue eyes, the fore part of his
+head was bald, and he wore ear-rings. Near him on a
+chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he
+poured himself out a little from time to time to keep
+up his spirits; but as soon as he caught sight of the
+doctor his elation subsided, and instead of swearing,
+as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, he
+began to groan feebly.</p>
+
+<p>The fracture was a simple one, without any kind
+of complication. Charles could not have hoped for
+an easier case. Then calling to mind the devices of
+his masters at the bedside of patients, he comforted
+the sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those
+caresses of the surgeon that are like the oil they put
+on bistouries. In order to make some splints a bundle
+of laths was brought up from the cart-house.
+Charles selected one, cut it into two pieces and
+planed it with a fragment of window-pane, while the
+servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and Mademoiselle
+Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was
+a long time before she found her workcase, her father
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_017" id="Page_017">[17]</a></span>
+grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed
+she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her
+mouth to suck. Charles was much surprised at the
+whiteness of her nails. They were shiny, delicate at
+the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and
+almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps
+not white enough, and a little hard at the
+knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections
+in the outlines. Her real beauty was in her
+eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of
+the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a
+candid boldness.</p>
+
+<p>The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by
+Monsieur Rouault himself to "pick a bit" before he
+left.</p>
+
+<p>Charles went down into the room on the ground-floor.
+Knives and forks and silver goblets were laid
+for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that
+had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing
+Turks. There was an odor of iris-root and damp
+sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite
+the window. On the floor in corners were sacks of
+flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow
+from the neighboring granary, to which three stone
+steps led. By way of decoration for the apartment,
+hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose
+green paint had scaled off from the effects of saltpeter,
+was a crayon head of Minerva in a gold frame, underneath
+which was written in Gothic letters "To
+dear Papa."</p>
+
+<p>First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather,
+of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the
+fields at night. Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all
+like the country, especially now that she had to look
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_018" id="Page_018">[18]</a></span>
+after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly,
+she shivered as she ate. This showed something of
+her full lips, that she had a habit of biting when
+silent.</p>
+
+<p>Her neck stood out from a white turned-down
+collar. Her hair, whose two black folds seemed each
+of a single piece, so smooth were they, was parted
+in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly
+with the curve of the head; and, just showing the
+tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon,
+with a wavy movement at the temples that the
+country doctor saw now for the first time in his life.
+The upper part of her cheek was rose-colored. She
+had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of
+her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.</p>
+
+<p>When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault,
+returned to the room before leaving, he found
+her standing, her forehead against the window, looking
+into the garden, where the bean props had been
+knocked down by the wind. She turned round.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you looking for anything?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"My whip, if you please," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>He began rummaging on the bed, behind the
+doors, under the chairs. It had fallen to the floor,
+between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle Emma
+saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. Charles, out
+of politeness, made a dash also, and as he stretched
+out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast
+brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath
+him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked
+at him over her shoulder as she handed him his
+whip.</p>
+
+<p>Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days
+as he had promised, he went back the very next
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_019" id="Page_019">[19]</a></span>
+day, <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'than'">then</ins> regularly twice a week, without counting
+the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.</p>
+
+<p>Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed
+favorably; and when, at the end of forty-six
+days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk alone in
+his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon
+as a man of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he
+could not have been cured better by the first doctor
+of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.</p>
+
+<p>As to Charles, he did not stay to ask himself why
+it was a pleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had
+he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his
+zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the
+money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this,
+however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful
+exception to the meagre occupations of his
+life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop,
+urging on his horse, then got down to wipe his
+boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering.
+He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing
+the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow
+on the wall, the lads run to meet him. He liked the
+granary and the stables; he liked old Rouault, who
+pressed his hand and called him his savior; he liked
+the small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on
+the scoured flags of the kitchen&mdash;her high heels made
+her a little taller; and when she walked in front of
+him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck
+with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots.</p>
+
+<p>She always reconducted him to the first step of
+the stairs. When his horse had not yet been brought
+round she stayed there. They had said "Good-bye;"
+there was no more talking. The open air wrapped
+her round, playing with the soft down on the back
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_020" id="Page_020">[20]</a></span>
+of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips her
+apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once,
+during a thaw, the bark of the trees in the yard was
+oozing, the snow on the roofs of the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: out-buildings">outbuildings</ins>
+was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went
+to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade,
+of silk of the color of pigeons' breasts, through which
+the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the
+white skin of her face. She smiled under the tender
+warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling
+one by one on the stretched silk.</p>
+
+<p>During the first period of Charles's visits to the
+Bertaux, Madame Bovary, junior, never failed to inquire
+after the invalid, and she had even chosen in
+the book that she kept on a system of double entry
+a clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when
+she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries,
+and she learnt that Mademoiselle Rouault,
+brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received
+what is called "a good education;" and so knew
+dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider and
+play the piano. That was the last straw.</p>
+
+<p>"So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his
+face beams when he goes to see her, and that he
+puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it
+with the rain. Ah! that woman! that woman!"</p>
+
+<p>And she detested her instinctively. At first she
+solaced herself by allusions that Charles did not understand,
+then by casual observations that he let pass
+for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to
+which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he
+go back to the Bertaux now that Monsieur Rouault
+was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah!
+it was because a young lady was there, some one
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_021" id="Page_021">[21]</a></span>
+who knew how to talk, to embroider, to be witty.
+That was what he cared about; he wanted town
+misses." And she went on:</p>
+
+<p>"The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get
+out! Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they
+have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes
+for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while
+making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on
+Sundays in a silk gown, like a countess. Besides, the
+poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year,
+would have had much ado to pay up his arrears."</p>
+
+<p>For very weariness Charles left off going to the
+Bertaux. H&eacute;loise made him swear, his hand on the
+prayer-book, that he would go there no more, after
+much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst
+of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire
+protested against the servility of his conduct; and
+he thought, with a kind of na&iuml;ve hypocrisy, that this
+interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love
+her. And then the widow was thin; she had long
+teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the
+edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades;
+her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes
+as if they were a scabbard; they were too short,
+and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large
+boots crossed over gray stockings.</p>
+
+<p>Charles's mother came to see them from time to
+time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed
+to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives,
+they scarified him with their reflections and observations.
+It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why
+did he always offer a glass of something to every one
+who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels!</p>
+
+<p>In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_022" id="Page_022">[22]</a></span>
+the holder of the widow Dubuc's property, one
+fine day went off, taking with him all the money in
+his office. H&eacute;loise, it is true, still possessed, besides
+a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her
+house in the Rue St. Fran&ccedil;ois; and yet, with all this fortune
+that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting
+perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had
+appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone
+into. The house at Dieppe was found to be eaten up
+with mortgages to its foundations; what she had
+placed with the notary God only knew, and her share
+in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns.
+She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation,
+Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the
+flags, accused his wife of having caused the misfortune
+of their son by harnessing him to such a harridan,
+whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They
+came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were
+scenes. H&eacute;loise in tears, throwing her arms about
+her husband, conjured him to defend her from his
+parents. Charles tried to speak up for her. They
+grew angry and left the house.</p>
+
+<p>But the blow had struck home. A week after,
+as she was hanging up some washing in her yard,
+she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next
+day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing
+the window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a
+sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise!</p>
+
+<p>When all was over at the cemetery, Charles went
+home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to
+the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging
+at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against
+the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried
+in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him, after all!</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_023" id="Page_023">[23]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>III.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_Lonely_Widower" id="A_Lonely_Widower"></a><span class="smcap">A Lonely Widower.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap052"><span class="dropcap">O</span></span><br />NE morning old Rouault brought
+Charles the money for setting his
+leg&mdash;seventy-five francs in forty-sou
+pieces, and a turkey. He
+had heard of his loss, and consoled
+him as well as he could.</p>
+
+<p>"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on
+the shoulder; "I've been through it. When I lost
+my dear departed, I went into the fields to be quite
+alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called
+on God; I talked nonsense to him. I wanted to be
+like the moles that I saw on the branches, their insides
+swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it.
+And when I thought that there were others at that
+very moment with their nice little wives holding
+them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the
+earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with
+not eating; the very idea of going to a caf&eacute; disgusted
+me&mdash;you wouldn't believe it. Well, quite
+softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter,
+and an autumn after a summer, this wore away,
+piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it
+is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always
+remains at the bottom, as one would say&mdash;a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_024" id="Page_024">[24]</a></span>
+weight here, at one's heart. But since it is the lot
+of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and,
+because others have died, want to die too. You
+must pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will
+pass away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of
+you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you
+are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll
+have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse
+you a bit."</p>
+
+<p>Charles followed his advice. He went back to
+the Bertaux. He found all as he had left it, that is
+to say, as it was five months ago. The pear trees
+were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his
+legs again, came and went, making the farm more
+full of life.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention
+upon the doctor because of his sad position, he
+begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in
+an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended
+to be angry because nothing rather lighter
+had been prepared for him than for the others, such
+as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He told
+stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance
+of his wife suddenly coming back to him
+depressed him. Coffee was brought in; he thought
+no more about her.</p>
+
+<p>He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to
+living alone. The new delight of independence soon
+made his loneliness bearable. He could now change
+his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and
+when he was very tired stretch himself full length on
+his bed. So he nursed and coddled himself and accepted
+the consolations that were offered him. On
+the other hand, the death of his wife had not served
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_025" id="Page_025">[25]</a></span>
+him ill in his business, since for a month people had
+been saying, "The poor young man! what a loss!"
+His name had been talked about, his practice had
+increased; and, moreover, he could go to the Bertaux
+just as he liked. He had an aimless hope, and
+was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking
+as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.</p>
+
+<p>One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody
+was in the fields. He went into the kitchen,
+but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the outside
+shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the
+wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays
+that were broken at the corners of the furniture and
+trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table
+were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and
+buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of
+the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney
+made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace,
+and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the
+window and the hearth Emma was sewing; she wore
+no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on
+her bare shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>After the fashion of country folks she asked him to
+have something to drink. He said no; she insisted
+and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur
+with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of cura&ccedil;oa
+from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses,
+filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into
+the other, and, after clinking their glasses, carried
+hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she
+bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips
+pouting, her neck on the strain. She laughed at getting
+none of it, while with the tip of her tongue
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_026" id="Page_026">[26]</a></span>
+passing between her small teeth she licked drop by
+drop the bottom of her glass.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down again and took up her work, a
+white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked
+with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor
+did Charles. The air coming in under the door blew
+a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along,
+and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and
+the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in
+the yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks
+with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again
+on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.</p>
+
+<p>She complained of suffering since the beginning of
+the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would
+do her any good; she began talking of her convent,
+Charles of his school; words came to them. They
+went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old
+music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the
+oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard.
+She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country,
+and even showed him the bed in the garden where,
+on the first Friday of every month, she gathered
+flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But their gardeners
+had understood nothing about it; servants
+were so careless. She would have dearly liked, if
+only for the winter, to live in town, although the
+length of the fine days made the country perhaps
+even more wearisome in the summer. And, according
+to what she was saying, her voice was clear,
+sharp, or, on a sudden, all languor, lingering out in
+modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she
+spoke to herself; now joyous, opening big, na&iuml;ve
+eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full
+of boredom, her thoughts wandering.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_027" id="Page_027">[27]</a></span>
+Going home at night, Charles went over her words,
+one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their
+sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived
+before he knew her. But he never saw her in his
+thoughts other than he had seen her the first time,
+or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself
+what would become of her&mdash;if she would be married,
+and to whom? Alas! old Rouault was rich, and
+she!&mdash;so beautiful! But Emma's face always rose before
+his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of
+a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry,
+after all! if you should marry!" At night he could
+not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst.
+He got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened
+the window. The night was covered with stars, a
+warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were
+barking. He turned his head toward the Bertaux.</p>
+
+<p>Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing,
+Charles promised himself to ask her in marriage as
+soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion
+did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed
+his lips.</p>
+
+<p>Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid
+of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the
+house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her too
+clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven,
+since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far from
+having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing
+every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in
+which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the
+other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal
+management of the farm, suited him less than
+most people. He did not willingly take his hands out
+of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_028" id="Page_028">[28]</a></span>
+concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good
+fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider, underdone
+legs of mutton, <i>glorias</i><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> well beaten up. He
+took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'fire.' with a period">fire,</ins>
+on a little table brought to him all ready laid, as on
+the stage.</p>
+
+<p>When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks
+grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he
+would propose for her one of these days, he chewed
+the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly
+thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law
+he would have liked, but he was said to be
+well-conducted, economical, very learned, and no
+doubt would not make too many difficulties about
+the dowry. Now, as old Rouault would soon be
+forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property," as
+he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker,
+and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing,
+"If he asks for her," he said to himself,
+"I'll give her to him."</p>
+
+<p>At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days
+at the Bertaux. The last had passed like the others,
+in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old Rouault
+was seeing him off; they were walking along the
+road full of ruts; they were about to part. This was
+the time. Charles gave himself as far as to the corner
+of the hedge, and at last, when past it:</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like
+to say something to you."</p>
+
+<p>They stopped. Charles was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about
+it?" said old Rouault, laughing softly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_029" id="Page_029">[29]</a></span>
+"Monsieur Rouault&mdash;Monsieur Rouault," stammered
+Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"I ask nothing better," the farmer went on. "Although,
+no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still
+we must ask her opinion. So you get off&mdash;I'll go
+back home. If it is 'yes,' you needn't return because
+of all the people about, and besides it would upset
+her too much. But so that you mayn't be eating
+your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter of the
+window against the wall; you can see it from the
+back by leaning over the hedge."</p>
+
+<p>And he went off.</p>
+
+<p>Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into
+the road and waited. Half-an-hour passed, then he
+counted nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a
+noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had
+been thrown back; the hook was still swinging.</p>
+
+<p>The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm.
+Emma blushed as he entered, and she gave a little
+forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. Old
+Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion
+of money matters was put off; moreover, there
+was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could
+not decently take place till Charles was out of mourning,
+that is to say, about the spring of the next year.</p>
+
+<p>The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle
+Rouault was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was
+ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and
+nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed.
+When Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for
+the wedding were talked over; they wondered in
+what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of
+the number of dishes that would be wanted, and
+what should be the entr&eacute;es.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_030" id="Page_030">[30]</a></span>
+Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to
+have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault
+could not understand such an idea. So there was
+a wedding at which forty-three persons were present,
+at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began
+again the next day, and to some extent on the days
+following.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a>A mixture of coffee and spirits.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 99px;">
+<img src="images/i059.jpg" width="99" height="50" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_031" id="Page_031">[31]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>IV.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Consolation" id="Consolation"></a><span class="smcap">Consolation.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap060"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />HE guests arrived early in carriages,
+in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
+cars, old open gigs, wagonettes
+with leather hoods, and the young
+people from the nearer villages in
+carts, in which they stood up in
+rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going
+at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a
+distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville,
+and from Cany. All the relatives of both
+families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged,
+acquaintances long since lost sight of written
+to.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time one heard the crack of a whip
+behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered.
+Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped
+short and emptied its load. They got down from all
+sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies
+wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion,
+gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked
+into belts, or little colored fichus fastened down behind
+with a pin, that left the back of the neck
+bare. The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable
+in their new clothes (many that day
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_032" id="Page_032">[32]</a></span>
+handselled their first pair of boots), and by their sides,
+speaking never a word, wearing the white dress of
+their first communion lengthened for the occasion,
+were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or
+elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their
+hair greasy with rose-pomade, and very much afraid
+of soiling their gloves. As there were not enough
+stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen
+turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves.
+According to their different social positions,
+they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting-jackets, cutaway-coats:
+fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability,
+that came out of the wardrobe only on
+state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in
+the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks;
+shooting-jackets of coarse cloth, usually worn with
+a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats
+with two small buttons in the back, close together
+like a pair of eyes, the tails of which seemed
+cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. Some,
+too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the
+bottom of the table), wore their best blouses&mdash;that is
+to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders,
+the back gathered into small plaits and the waist
+fastened very far down with a worked belt.</p>
+
+<p>And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses!
+Every one had just had his hair cut; ears
+stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaven;
+a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak,
+and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal
+gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc
+piece along the jaws, which the fresh air <i>en
+route</i> had inflamed, so that the great, white, beaming
+faces were mottled here and there with red dabs.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_033" id="Page_033">[33]</a></span>
+The <i>mairie</i> was a mile and a half from the farm,
+and they went thither on foot, returning in the same
+way after the ceremony in the church. The procession,
+first united like one long colored scarf that
+undulated across the fields, along the narrow path
+winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out,
+and broke up in different groups that loitered to talk.
+The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with
+ribbons in its pegs. Then came the married pair,
+the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the
+children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking
+the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing among
+themselves unseen. Emma's skirt, too long, trailed a
+little on the ground; from time to time she stopped
+to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved
+hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,
+while Charles, empty handed, waited till she
+had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and
+the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to
+the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary, senior.
+As to Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising
+all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat
+of military cut with one row of buttons&mdash;he was
+passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant.
+She bowed, blushed, and did not know what
+to say. The other wedding guests talked of their
+business or played tricks behind each other's backs,
+egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those
+who listened could always catch the squeaking of the
+fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When
+he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to
+take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the
+strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again,
+by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_034" id="Page_034">[34]</a></span>
+mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument
+drove the little birds far away.</p>
+
+<p>The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it
+were four sirloins, six chicken fricass&eacute;es, stewed veal,
+three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast
+sucking-pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel.
+At the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet
+bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the
+glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand.
+Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled
+with the least shake of the table, had designed on
+their smooth surface the initials of the newly wedded
+pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot
+had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As
+he had only just set up in the place, he had taken
+great trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a
+set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To
+begin with, at its base was a square of blue cardboard,
+representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades,
+and stucco statuettes all round, and in the niches
+were constellations of gilt paper stars; on the second
+stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by
+many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds,
+raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the
+upper layer was a green field with rocks set in lakes
+of jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing
+himself in a chocolate swing, whose two uprights
+ended in real roses for balls at the top.</p>
+
+<p>Until night they ate. When any of them were
+too tired of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the
+yard, or for a game with corks in the granary, and
+then returned to table. Toward the finish some went
+to sleep and snored. But with the coffee every one
+woke up. Then they began songs, showed off tricks,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_035" id="Page_035">[35]</a></span>
+raised heavy weights, performed feats with their
+fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders,
+made broad jokes, kissed the women. At night when
+they left, the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with
+oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked,
+reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or
+swore; and all night in the light of the moon along
+country roads there were runaway carts at full gallop
+plunging into the ditches, jumping over yard after
+yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women
+leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.</p>
+
+<p>Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night
+drinking in the kitchen. The children had fallen
+asleep under the seats.</p>
+
+<p>The bride had begged her father to be spared the
+usual marriage pleasantries. However, a fishmonger,
+one of their cousins (who had even brought a pair of
+soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water
+from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault
+came up just in time to stop him, and explain
+to him that the distinguished position of his son-in-law
+would not allow of such liberties. The cousin
+all the same did not give in to these reasons readily.
+In his heart he accused old Rouault of being proud,
+and he joined four or five other guests in a corner,
+who having, through mere chance, been several times
+running served with the worst helps of meat, also
+were of opinion they had been badly used, and were
+whispering about their host, and with covered hints
+hoping he would ruin himself.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth
+all day. She had been consulted neither as to the
+dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement
+of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_036" id="Page_036">[36]</a></span>
+instead of following her, sent to Saint-Victor
+for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking
+kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company.
+This added greatly to the consideration in which he
+was held.</p>
+
+<p>Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not
+shine at the wedding. He answered feebly to the
+puns, <i>doubles entendres</i>, compliments, and chaff that
+it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the
+soup appeared.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another
+man. It was he who might rather have been
+taken for the virgin of the evening before, whilst the
+bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The
+shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and they
+looked at her when she passed near them with an
+unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed
+nothing. He called her "my wife," <i><ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: the word tutoy&eacute;d is unclear in the original">tutoy&eacute;d</ins></i>
+her, asked for her of every one, looked for her everywhere,
+and often he dragged her into the yards
+where he could be seen from afar, among the trees
+putting his arm round her waist, and walking half
+bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice
+with his head.</p>
+
+<p>Two days after the wedding the married pair left.
+Charles, on account of his patients, could not be
+away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back in
+his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as
+Vassonville. Here he embraced his daughter for the
+last time, got down, and went his way. When he
+had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as
+he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels turning in
+the dust, he gave a deep sigh. Then he remembered
+his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_037" id="Page_037">[37]</a></span>
+of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day
+when he had taken her from her father to his home,
+and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through
+the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
+country was all white. She held him by one arm, her
+basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the
+long lace of her Cauchois head-dress so that it sometimes
+flapped across his mouth, and when he turned
+his head he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little
+rosy face, smiling silently under the gold bands of
+her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
+time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was!
+Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he
+looked back and saw nothing on the road. He felt
+dreary as an empty house; and tender memories
+mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled
+by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment
+to take a turn towards the church. As he was
+afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet
+more sad, he went directly home.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes
+about six o'clock. The neighbors came to the windows
+to see their doctor's new wife.</p>
+
+<p>The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her,
+apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested
+that madame, in the meantime, should look over her
+house.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 102px;">
+<img src="images/i066.jpg" width="102" height="50" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_038" id="Page_038">[38]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>V.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="The_New_Menage" id="The_New_Menage"></a><span class="smcap">The New M&eacute;nage.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap067"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />HE brick front was just in a line
+with the street, or rather the road.
+Behind the door hung a cloak
+with a small collar, a bridle, and a
+black leather cap, and on the floor
+in a corner, were a pair of leggings
+still covered with dry mud. On the right was the
+one apartment that was both dining and sitting
+room. A canary-yellow paper, relieved at the top by
+a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere
+over the badly-stretched canvas; white calico curtains
+with a red border hung crosswise the length of the
+window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock
+with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between
+two plate candlesticks under oval shades. On
+the other side of the passage was Charles's consulting-room,
+a little room about six paces wide, with a
+table, three chairs, and an office-chair. Volumes of
+the "Dictionary of Medical Science," uncut, but the
+binding rather the worse for the successive sales
+through which they had gone, occupied almost alone
+the six shelves of a deal bookcase. The smell of
+melted butter penetrated the thin walls when he
+saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_039" id="Page_039">[39]</a></span>
+the people coughing in the consulting-room and recounting
+their whole histories. Then, opening on the
+yard, where the stable was, came a large dilapidated
+room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar,
+and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks,
+agricultural implements past service, and a mass of
+dusty things whose use it was impossible to guess.</p>
+
+<p>The garden, longer than wide, ran between two
+mud walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn
+hedge that separated it from the field. In the middle
+was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower-beds
+with eglantines surrounded symmetrically the
+more useful kitchen-garden bed. At the bottom, under
+the spruce bushes, was a cur&eacute; in plaster reading
+his breviary.</p>
+
+<p>Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished,
+but in the second, which was their bedroom,
+was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red
+drapery. A shell-box adorned the chest of drawers,
+and on the secretary near the window a bouquet of
+orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood
+in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the
+other one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he
+took it and carried it up to the attic, while Emma,
+seated in an armchair (they were putting her things
+down around her) thought of her bridal flowers
+packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming,
+what would be done with them if she were to die.</p>
+
+<p>During the first days she occupied herself in thinking
+about changes in the house. She took the shades
+off the candlesticks, had new wall-paper put up, the
+staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden
+round the sundial; she even inquired how she could
+get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. Finally,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_040" id="Page_040">[40]</a></span>
+her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
+picked up a second-hand <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: &quot;dogcart&quot; without a hyphen">dog-cart</ins>, which, with new
+lamps and a splash-board in striped leather, looked
+almost like a tilbury.</p>
+
+<p>He was happy then, and without a care in the
+world. A meal together, a walk in the evening on
+the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her hair,
+the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener,
+and many another thing in which Charles
+had never dreamed of pleasure, now made up the
+endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning,
+by her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight
+sinking into the down on her fair cheek, half
+hidden by the lappets of her nightcap. Seen thus
+closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially
+when, on waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly
+many times. Black in the shade, dark blue in
+broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different
+colors, that, darker in the center, grew paler toward
+the surface of the eye. His own eyes lost
+themselves in these depths; he saw himself in miniature
+down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief
+round his head and the top of his shirt open. He
+rose. She came to the window to see him off, and
+stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium,
+clad in her dressing-gown hanging loosely
+about her. Charles in the street buckled his spurs,
+his foot on the mounting stone, while she talked to
+him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap
+of flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then
+this, eddying, floating, described semicircles in the air
+like a bird, and was caught before it reached the
+ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare
+standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_041" id="Page_041">[41]</a></span>
+threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod;
+she shut the window, and he set off. And then along
+the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust,
+along the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in
+arbors, along paths where the corn reached to the
+knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air
+in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past
+night, his mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on,
+re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner
+taste again the truffles which they are digesting.</p>
+
+<p>Until now what good had he had of his life? His
+time at school, when he remained shut up within
+the high walls, alone, in the midst of companions
+richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed
+at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose
+mothers came to the school with cakes in their
+muffs? Or later, when he studied medicine, and
+never had his purse full enough to treat some little
+work-girl who would have become his mistress?
+Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
+widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles.
+But now he had for life this beautiful woman whom
+he adored. For him the universe did not extend beyond
+the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached
+himself with not loving her. He wanted to
+see her again; he turned back quickly, ran up the
+stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room,
+was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her
+back; she gave a cry.</p>
+
+<p>He could not keep from continually touching her
+comb, her rings, her fichu; sometimes he gave
+her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
+her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her
+bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_042" id="Page_042">[42]</a></span>
+and she put him away half-smiling, half-vexed,
+as you do a child who hangs about you.</p>
+
+<p>Before marriage she thought herself in love; but
+the happiness that should have followed this love not
+having come, she must, she thought, have been
+mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one
+meant exactly in life by the words <i>felicity</i>, <i>passion</i>,
+<i>rapture</i>, that had seemed to her so beautiful in
+books.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 155px;">
+<img src="images/i071.jpg" width="118" height="50" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_043" id="Page_043">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>VI.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_Maidens_Yearnings" id="A_Maidens_Yearnings"></a><span class="smcap">A Maiden's Yearnings.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap072"><span class="dropcap">S</span></span><br />HE had read "Paul and Virginia,"
+and she had dreamed of the little
+bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo,
+the dog Fid&egrave;le, but above
+all the sweet friendship of some
+dear little brother, who seeks red
+fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who
+runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's
+nest.</p>
+
+<p>When she was thirteen, her father himself took
+her to town to place her in the convent. They
+stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter, where,
+at their supper, they used painted plates that set
+forth the story of Mademoiselle de la Valli&egrave;re. The
+explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the
+scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses
+of the heart, and the pomps of court.</p>
+
+<p>Far from being bored at first at the convent, she
+took pleasure in the society of the good sisters who,
+to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered
+from the refectory by a long corridor. She
+played very little during recreation hours, knew her
+catechism well, and it was she who always answered
+Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus,
+without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_044" id="Page_044">[44]</a></span>
+class-rooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing
+rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled
+by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
+altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights
+of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she
+looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders
+in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
+heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus
+sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by
+way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day.
+She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill.</p>
+
+<p>When she went to confession, she invented little
+sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling
+in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against
+the grating beneath the whispering of the priest.
+The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover,
+and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred
+within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, before prayers, there was some
+religious reading in the study. On week-nights it
+was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures
+of the Abb&eacute; Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages
+from the "G&eacute;nie du Christianisme," as a recreation.
+How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations
+of its romantic melancholies re-echoing through the
+world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent
+in the shop-parlor of some business quarter, she
+might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical
+invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only
+through translation in books. But she knew the
+country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the
+milking, the plow. Accustomed to calm aspects of
+life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement.
+She loved the sea only for the sake of its
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_045" id="Page_045">[45]</a></span>
+storms, and the green fields only when broken up by
+ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of
+things, and she rejected as useless all that did not
+contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being
+of a temperament more sentimental than artistic,
+looking for emotions, not landscapes.</p>
+
+<p>At the convent there was an old maid who came
+for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized
+by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient
+family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she
+dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters,
+and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before
+going back to her work. The girls often slipped out
+from the study to go and see her. She knew by
+heart the love-songs of the last century, and sang
+them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told
+stories, gave them news, went errands in the town,
+and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that
+she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and
+of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters
+in the intervals of her work. They were all love,
+lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely
+pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden
+to death on every page, somber forests, heartaches,
+vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
+moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen"
+brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one
+ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like
+fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen
+years of age, made her hands dirty with books from
+old lending libraries. With Walter Scott, later on,
+she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old
+chests, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have
+liked to live in some old manor-house, like those
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_046" id="Page_046">[46]</a></span>
+long-waisted ch&acirc;telaines who, in the shade of pointed
+arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in
+hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping
+on his black horse from the distant fields. At this
+time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic
+veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of
+Arc, H&eacute;loise, Agn&egrave;s Sorel, the beautiful Ferronni&egrave;re,
+and Cl&eacute;mence Isaure stood out to her like comets
+in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were
+seen, lost in shadow and all unconnected, St. Louis
+with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of
+Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's, the plume of
+the B&eacute;arnais, and always the remembrance of the
+plates painted in honor of Louis XIV.</p>
+
+<p>In the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there
+was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas,
+lagunes, gondoliers;&mdash;mild compositions that
+allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
+of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive
+phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of
+her companions brought "keepsakes" given them as
+New Year's gifts to the convent. These had to be
+hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read
+in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful
+satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
+the names of the unknown authors, who had signed
+their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts.</p>
+
+<p>She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper
+over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall
+gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade
+of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak,
+holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress
+wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless
+portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_047" id="Page_047">[47]</a></span>
+looked at you from under their round straw hats with
+their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in
+their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound
+bounding along in front of the equipage, driven at a
+trot by two small postilions in white breeches. Others,
+dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the
+moon through a slightly open window half draped by
+a black curtain. The na&iuml;ve ones, a tear on their
+cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a
+Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side,
+were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their
+taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes.
+And you too were there, Sultans with long pipes, reclining
+beneath arbors in the arms of Bayad&egrave;res;
+Djiaours, Turkish sabers, Greek caps; and you especially,
+pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often
+show us at once palm-trees and firs, tigers on the
+right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon;
+the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest,
+and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in
+the water, where, standing out in relief like white
+excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming
+about.</p>
+
+<p>And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the
+wall above Emma's head lighted up all these pictures
+of the world, that passed before her one by one in
+the silence of the dormitory, to the distant noise of
+some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.</p>
+
+<p>When her mother died she cried much the first
+few days. She had a funeral picture made with the
+hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux
+full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
+buried some day in the same grave. The goodman
+thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_048" id="Page_048">[48]</a></span>
+was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt
+the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by
+mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with
+Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to
+all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the
+leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the
+voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys.
+She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued
+from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself
+soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than
+wrinkles on her brow.</p>
+
+<p>The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation,
+perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle
+Rouault seemed to be slipping from them.
+They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
+novenas, and sermons, they had so often
+preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and
+given so much good advice as to the modesty of the
+body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as
+tightly reined horses: she pulled up short and the
+bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in
+the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church
+for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words
+of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus,
+rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated
+by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution.
+When her father took her from school, no
+one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even
+thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent
+to the community.</p>
+
+<p>Emma at home once more, first took pleasure in
+looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with
+the country and missed her convent. When Charles
+came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_049" id="Page_049">[49]</a></span>
+herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to
+learn, and nothing more to feel.</p>
+
+<p>But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps
+the disturbance caused by the presence of this
+man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at
+last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like
+a great bird with rose-colored wings, had hung in the
+splendor of the skies of poesy; and now she could
+not think that the calm in which she lived was the
+happiness she had dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 155px;">
+<img src="images/i078.jpg" width="105" height="100" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_050" id="Page_050">[50]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>VII.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Disillusion" id="Disillusion"></a><span class="smcap">Disillusion.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap079"><span class="dropcap">S</span></span><br />HE thought sometimes that, after all,
+this was the happiest time of her
+life&mdash;the honeymoon, as people
+called it. To taste the full sweetness
+of it, it would have been
+necessary doubtless to fly to those
+lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage
+are full of laziness most suave. In post-chaises
+behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep
+roads, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed
+by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the
+muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores
+of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon-trees;
+then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand
+in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the
+future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth
+must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the
+soil, that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not
+she lean over balconies in Swiss ch&acirc;lets, or enshrine
+her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband
+dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and
+thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills?</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these
+things to some one. But how tell an undefinable
+uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_051" id="Page_051">[51]</a></span>
+winds? Words failed her&mdash;the opportunity, the
+courage.</p>
+
+<p>If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it,
+if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed
+to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out
+from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when
+shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of their life
+became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated
+her from him.</p>
+
+<p>Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street
+pavement, and every one's ideas trooped through it
+in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion,
+laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity,
+he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre
+to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim,
+nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain
+some term of horsemanship to her that she had
+come across in a novel.</p>
+
+<p>A man, on the contrary, should he not know
+everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you
+into the energies of passion, the refinements of life,
+all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew
+nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy;
+and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness,
+the very happiness she gave him.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she would draw; and it was great
+amusement to Charles to stand there bolt upright and
+watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed
+the better to see her work, or rolling, between
+her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the
+more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he
+wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and
+ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a
+break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_052" id="Page_052">[52]</a></span>
+strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of
+the village when the window was open, and often
+the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bareheaded
+and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet
+of paper in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after
+her house. She sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased
+letters that had no suggestion of a bill. When
+they had a neighbor to dinner on Sundays, she managed
+to have some dainty dish&mdash;piled up pyramids of
+green-gages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned
+out into plates&mdash;and even spoke of buying finger-glasses
+for dessert. From all this, much consideration
+was extended to Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for
+possessing such a wife. He showed with pride in
+the sitting-room two small pencil sketches by her
+that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung
+up against the wall-paper by long green cords. People
+returning from mass saw him at his door in his
+wool-work slippers.</p>
+
+<p>He came home late&mdash;at ten o'clock, at midnight
+sometimes. Then he asked for something to eat, and
+as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on him.
+He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He
+told her, one after the other, the people he had met,
+the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he
+had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished
+the remainder of the boiled beef and onions,
+picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied
+his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay
+on his back and snored.</p>
+
+<p>As he had been for a time accustomed to wear
+nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_053" id="Page_053">[53]</a></span>
+his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled
+pell-mell about his face and whitened with the
+feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during
+the night. He always wore thick boots that had two
+long creases over the instep running obliquely towards
+the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in
+a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He
+said that was "quite good enough for the country."</p>
+
+<p>His mother approved of his economy, for she came
+to see him as formerly when there had been some
+violent scene at her place; and yet Madame Bovary
+senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law.
+She thought "her ways too fine for their position;"
+the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as
+at "a grand establishment," and the amount of firing
+in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five
+courses. She put her linen in order for her in
+the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the
+butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up
+with these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of
+them; and the words "daughter" and "mother"
+were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little
+quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words
+in a voice trembling with anger.</p>
+
+<p>In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that
+she was still the favorite; but now the love of Charles
+for Emma seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness,
+an encroachment upon what was hers, and she
+watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined
+man looks through the windows at people dining in
+his old house. She recalled to him as remembrances
+her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these
+with Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that
+it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_054" id="Page_054">[54]</a></span>
+Charles knew not what to answer: he respected
+his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered
+the judgment of the one infallible, and yet
+he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable.
+When Madame Bovary had gone he tried timidly and
+in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more
+anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma
+Emma proved to him with a word that he was mistaken,
+and sent him off to his patients.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, in accord with theories she believed right,
+she desired to make herself in love with him. By
+moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate
+rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him
+many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as
+calm after this as before, and Charles seemed no more
+amorous and no more moved.</p>
+
+<p>When she had thus for a while struck the flint of
+her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover,
+of understanding what she did not experience
+as of believing anything that did not present itself in
+conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty
+that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant.
+His outbursts became regular; he embraced
+her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
+other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to
+after the monotony of dinner.</p>
+
+<p>A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation
+of the lungs, had given madame a little Italian
+greyhound; she took her out walking, for she went
+out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and
+not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the
+dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of
+Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an
+angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amid
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_055" id="Page_055">[55]</a></span>
+the vegetation of the ditch there are long reeds with
+leaves that cut.</p>
+
+<p>She began by looking round her to see if nothing
+had changed since last she had been there. She found
+again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers,
+the beds of nettles growing round the big stones,
+and the patches of lichen along the three windows,
+whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on
+their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first,
+wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran
+round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow
+butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the
+poppies on the edge of a cornfield. Then gradually
+her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass
+that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade,
+Emma repeated to herself, "Good heavens! why did
+I marry?"</p>
+
+<p>She asked herself if by some other chance combination
+it would not have been possible to meet
+another man; and she tried to imagine what would
+have been these unrealized events, this different life,
+this unknown husband. All, surely, could not be like
+this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished,
+attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions
+of the convent had married. What were they
+doing now? In town, with the noise of the streets,
+the buzz of the theaters, and the lights of the ball-room,
+they were living lives where the heart expands, the
+senses bourgeon out. But she&mdash;her life was cold as
+a garret whose dormer-window looks on the north,
+and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in
+the darkness in every corner of her heart. She recalled
+the prize-days, when she mounted the platform to
+receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_056" id="Page_056">[56]</a></span>
+In her white frock and open prunella shoes she had
+a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat,
+the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the
+courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called
+to her through their windows; the music-master with
+his violin-case bowed in passing by. How far off all
+this! How far away!</p>
+
+<p>She called Djali, took her between her knees, and
+smoothed the long, delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss
+mistress; you have no troubles."</p>
+
+<p>Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful
+animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing
+her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody
+in trouble whom one is consoling.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally there came gusts of wind, breezes from
+the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau
+of the Caux country, which brought even to these
+fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
+whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling,
+while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a
+deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl round her
+shoulders and rose.</p>
+
+<p>In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves
+lighted the short moss that crackled softly beneath her
+feet. The sun was setting; the sky showed red between
+the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,
+and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade
+standing out against a background of gold. A fear took
+hold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly returned
+to Tostes by the highroad, threw herself into an armchair,
+and for the rest of the evening did not speak.</p>
+
+<p>But towards the end of September something extraordinary
+fell upon her life; she was invited by the
+Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_057" id="Page_057">[57]</a></span>
+Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis,
+anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing
+for his candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long
+beforehand. In the winter he distributed a great deal
+of wood, and in the Conseil G&eacute;n&eacute;ral always enthusiastically
+demanded new roads for his arrondissement.
+During the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess,
+which Charles had cured as if by miracle by giving a
+timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent
+to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening
+that he had seen some superb cherries in the
+doctor's little garden. Now cherry-trees did not thrive
+at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some
+slips; made it his business to thank him personally;
+saw Emma; thought she had a pretty figure, and that
+she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not
+think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension,
+nor, on the other hand, making a mistake, in
+inviting the young couple.</p>
+
+<p>One Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and
+Madame Bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for
+Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind
+and a bonnet-box in front on the apron. Besides these
+Charles held a bandbox between his knees.</p>
+
+<p>They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the
+park were being lighted to show the carriage-drive.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 115px;">
+<img src="images/i086.jpg" width="115" height="75" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_058" id="Page_058">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>VIII.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Glimpses_Of_The_World" id="Glimpses_Of_The_World"></a><span class="smcap">Glimpses of the World.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap087"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />HE ch&acirc;teau, a modern building in
+Italian style, with two projecting
+wings and three flights of steps,
+lay at the foot of an immense
+green-sward, on which some cows
+were grazing among groups of large
+trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of
+arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses
+bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the
+curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a
+bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings
+with thatched roofs scattered over the field
+bordered by two gently-sloping well-timbered hillocks,
+and in the background amid the trees rose in two
+parallel lines the coach-houses and stables, all that
+was left of the ruined old ch&acirc;teau.</p>
+
+<p>Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle
+flight of steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came
+forward, and offering his arm to the doctor's wife,
+conducted her to the vestibule.</p>
+
+<p>It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty,
+and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed
+through it as in a church. Opposite rose a straight
+staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the
+garden led to the billiard-room, through whose door
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_059" id="Page_059">[59]</a></span>
+one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she
+crossed it to go to the drawing-room, Emma saw
+standing round the table men with grave faces, their
+chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders,
+and smiled silently as they made their strokes. On
+the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames
+bore at the bottom names written in black letters.
+She read:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yverbonville, Count de la Vaubyessard
+and Baron de la Fresnaye, killed at the battle of Coutras on
+the 20th of October 1587."</p>
+
+<p>And on another:</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral
+of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded
+at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May 1692;
+died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693."
+</p>
+
+<p>One could hardly make out those that followed,
+for the light of the lamps lowered over the green
+cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing
+the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these
+in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish,
+and from all these great black squares framed
+in with gold stood out here and there some lighter
+portion of the painting&mdash;a pale brow, two eyes that
+looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering
+red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above
+a well-rounded calf.</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis opened the drawing-room door; one of
+the ladies (the Marchioness herself) came to meet
+Emma. She made her sit down by her on an ottoman,
+and began talking to her as amicably as if she
+had known her a long time. She was about forty
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_060" id="Page_060">[60]</a></span>
+years old, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a
+drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over
+her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a
+point at the back. A fair young woman was by her
+side in a high-backed chair, and gentlemen with
+flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies
+round the fire.</p>
+
+<p>At seven dinner was served. The men, who were
+in the majority, sat down at the first table in the
+vestibule; the ladies at the second in the dining-room
+with the Marquis and Marchioness.</p>
+
+<p>Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by
+the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers
+and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and
+the odor of the truffles. The silver dish-covers reflected
+the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the
+cut crystal covered with light steam reflected pale rays
+from one to the other; bouquets were placed in a row
+the whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered
+plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of
+a bishop's miter, held between its two gaping folds a
+small oval-shaped roll. The red claws of lobsters
+hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open baskets was
+piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage;
+smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches,
+white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward,
+grave as a judge, offered ready-carved dishes between
+the shoulders of the guests, and with a touch of the
+spoon gave the piece chosen. On the large stove of
+porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a
+woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the
+room full of life.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not
+put their gloves in their glasses.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_061" id="Page_061">[61]</a></span>
+But at the upper end of the table, alone among
+all those women, bent over his full plate, with his napkin
+tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat
+eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth.
+His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue
+tied with a black ribbon. He was the Marquis's
+father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdi&egrave;re, once on a
+time favorite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the
+Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans',
+and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie
+Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur
+de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch,
+full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered
+his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant
+behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear
+the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly
+Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old
+man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary.
+He had lived at court and slept in the bed
+of queens!</p>
+
+<p>Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered
+all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had
+never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples. The
+powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer
+than elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies afterward went to their rooms to prepare
+for the ball.</p>
+
+<p>Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of
+an actress on her d&eacute;but. She did her hair according
+to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the
+bar&egrave;ge dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers
+were tight across the belly.</p>
+
+<p>"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for
+dancing," he said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_062" id="Page_062">[62]</a></span>
+"Dancing?" repeated Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun
+of you; keep your place. Besides, it is more becoming
+for a doctor," she added.</p>
+
+<p>Charles was silent. He walked up and down
+waiting for Emma to finish dressing.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her from behind in the glass between two
+lights. Her black eyes seemed blacker than ever.
+Her hair, undulating toward the ears, shone with a
+blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile
+stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tips of the
+leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed
+with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
+green.</p>
+
+<p>Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling
+me."</p>
+
+<p>One could hear the flourish of the violin and the
+notes of a horn. She went downstairs restraining
+herself from running.</p>
+
+<p>Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There
+was some crushing. She sat down on a form near
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by
+groups of men standing up and talking and servants
+in livery bearing large trays. Along the line of seated
+women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid
+smiling faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles
+were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white
+gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
+at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches,
+medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on
+breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair, well
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_063" id="Page_063">[63]</a></span>
+smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape,
+bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine,
+pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and cornflowers.
+Calmly seated in their places, mothers with
+forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.</p>
+
+<p>Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner
+holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her
+place in a line with the dancers, and waited for the
+first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished,
+and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she
+glided forward with slight movements of the neck.
+A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of
+the violin, that sometimes played alone while the
+other instruments were silent; one could hear the
+clear clink of the louis-d'or that were being thrown
+down upon the card-tables in the next room; then all
+struck in again, the cornet-&agrave;-piston uttered its sonorous
+note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and
+rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes
+falling before you met yours again.</p>
+
+<p>A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to
+forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or
+talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves
+from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever
+their differences in age, dress, or face.</p>
+
+<p>Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth,
+and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the
+temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They
+had the complexion of wealth,&mdash;that clear complexion
+that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer
+of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an
+ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its
+best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats,
+their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_064" id="Page_064">[64]</a></span>
+they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs, with
+embroidered initials, that gave forth a subtle perfume.
+Those who were beginning to grow old had an air
+of youth, while there was something mature in the
+faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks was
+the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all
+their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality,
+the result of a command of half-easy things, in
+which force is exercised and vanity amused&mdash;the
+management of thoroughbred horses and the society
+of loose women.</p>
+
+<p>A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat
+was talking of Italy with a pale young woman wearing
+a parure of pearls.</p>
+
+<p>They were praising the breadth of the columns of
+St. Peter's, Tivoli, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines,
+the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight.
+With her other ear Emma was listening to a
+conversation full of words she did not understand.
+A circle gathered round a very young man who the
+week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romulus,"
+and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch
+in England. One complained that his racehorses
+were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
+that had disfigured the name of his horse.</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps
+were growing dim. Guests were flocking to the
+billiard-room. A servant got upon a chair and
+broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass
+Madame Bovary turned her head and saw in the garden
+the faces of peasants pressed against the window
+looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux
+came back to her. She saw the farm again, the
+muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple-trees,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_065" id="Page_065">[65]</a></span>
+and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming
+with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in
+the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour
+her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely,
+and she almost doubted having lived it. She
+was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading
+all the rest. She was just eating a maraschino
+ice that she held with her left hand in a
+silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon
+between her teeth.</p>
+
+<p>A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentleman
+was passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to
+pick up my fan that has fallen behind the sofa?"</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch
+out his arm, Emma saw the hand of the young
+woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,
+into his hat. The gentleman picking up the fan,
+offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him
+with an inclination of the head, and began smelling
+her bouquet.</p>
+
+<p>After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and
+Rhine wines, soups <i>&agrave; la bisque</i> and <i>au lait d'amandes</i>,
+puddings <i>&agrave; la Trafalgar</i>, and all sorts of cold meats
+with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages
+one after the other began to drive off. Raising the
+corner of the muslin curtain, one could see the light
+of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness.
+The seats began to empty, some card-players were
+still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their
+fingers on their tongues. Charles was half asleep,
+his back propped against a door.</p>
+
+<p>At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did
+not know how to waltz. Every one was waltzing,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_066" id="Page_066">[66]</a></span>
+Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the Marquis
+only the guests staying at the castle were still there
+about a dozen persons.</p>
+
+<p>One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly
+called Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed
+moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask
+Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would
+guide her, and that she would get through it very
+well.</p>
+
+<p>They began slowly, then went more rapidly.
+They turned; all around them was turning&mdash;the
+lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
+a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the
+bottom of Emma's dress caught against his trousers.
+Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she
+raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she
+stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid
+movement; the Viscount, dragging her along, disappeared
+with her to the end of the gallery, where,
+panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her
+head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but
+more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She
+leant back against the wall and covered her eyes
+with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>When she opened them again, in the middle of
+the drawing-room three waltzers were kneeling before
+a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the Viscount,
+and the violin struck up once more.</p>
+
+<p>Every one looked at them. They passed and re-passed,
+she with rigid body, her chin bent down,
+and he always in the same pose, his figure curved,
+his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That
+woman knew how to waltz! They kept up a long
+time, and tired out all the others.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_067" id="Page_067">[67]</a></span>
+Then they talked a few moments longer, and after
+the good-nights, or rather good-mornings, the guests
+of the ch&acirc;teau retired to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His
+knees were going up into his body. He had
+spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at
+the card-tables, watching them play whist, without
+understanding anything about it, and it was with a
+deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots.</p>
+
+<p>Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened
+the window, and leant out.</p>
+
+<p>The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling.
+She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed
+her eyelids. The music of the ball was still murmuring
+in her ears, and she tried to keep herself awake
+in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life
+that she would soon have to give up.</p>
+
+<p>Day began to break. She looked long at the windows
+of the ch&acirc;teau, trying to guess which were the
+rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before.
+She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,
+blended with them. But she was shivering
+with cold. She undressed, and cowered down between
+the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>There were a great many people to luncheon.
+The repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served,
+which astonished the doctor. Next, Mademoiselle
+d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small
+basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental
+waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses,
+where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in
+pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from overfilled
+nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.
+The orangery, which was at the other end, led
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_068" id="Page_068">[68]</a></span>
+by a covered way to the outhouses of the ch&acirc;teau.
+The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her
+to see the stables. Above the basket-shaped racks
+porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black
+letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when
+any one went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The
+boards of the harness-room shone like the flooring of
+a drawing-room. The carriage harness was piled up
+in the middle against two twisted columns, and the
+bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in
+a line all along the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put
+his horse to. The dog-cart was brought to the foot
+of the steps, and all the parcels being crammed in,
+the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and
+Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.</p>
+
+<p>Emma watched the turning wheels in silence.
+Charles, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the
+reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little
+horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for
+him. The loose reins hanging over his crupper were
+wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the
+chaise gave great regular bumps against it.</p>
+
+<p>They were on the heights of Thibourville when
+suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their
+lips passed, laughing. Emma thought she recognized
+the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon
+only the movement of the heads rising or falling with
+the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop.</p>
+
+<p>A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with
+some string the traces that had broken.</p>
+
+<p>But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw
+something on the ground between the horse's legs,
+and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_069" id="Page_069">[69]</a></span>
+and blazoned in the center like the door of a
+carriage.</p>
+
+<p>"There are even two cigars in it," said he;
+"they'll do for this evening after dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes, when I get a chance."</p>
+
+<p>He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the
+nag.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached home the dinner was not
+ready. Madame lost her temper. Nastasie answered
+rudely.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting
+yourself. I give you warning."</p>
+
+<p>For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of
+veal with sorrel. Charles, seated opposite Emma,
+rubbed his hands gleefully.</p>
+
+<p>"How good it is to be at home again!"</p>
+
+<p>Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather
+fond of the poor girl. She had formerly, during the
+wearisome time of his widowerhood, kept him company
+many an evening. She had been his first patient,
+his oldest acquaintance in the place.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked
+at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.</p>
+
+<p>Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen
+while their room was being made ready. Charles
+began to smoke. He smoked with his lips protruded,
+spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a
+glass of cold water at the pump. Emma seizing hold
+of the cigar-case threw it quickly to the back of the
+cupboard.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_070" id="Page_070">[70]</a></span>
+The next day was a long one. She walked above
+her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping
+before the beds, before the espalier, before the
+plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these
+things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well.
+How far off the ball seemed already! What was it
+that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before
+yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey
+to Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like
+one of those great crevasses that a storm will sometimes
+make in one night in mountains. Still she was
+resigned. She devoutly put away in her closets her
+beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose sole
+were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing
+floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction
+against wealth something had come over it that could
+not be effaced.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation
+for Emma. Whenever the Wednesday came
+round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah! I was
+there a week&mdash;a fortnight&mdash;three weeks ago." And
+little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.
+She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no
+longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly;
+some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 116px;">
+<img src="images/i099.jpg" width="116" height="70" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_071" id="Page_071">[71]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>IX.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Idle_Dreams" id="Idle_Dreams"></a><span class="smcap">Idle Dreams.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap100"><span class="dropcap">O</span></span><br />FTEN when Charles was out she
+took from the cupboard, between
+the folds of the linen where she
+had left it, the green silk cigar-case.
+She looked at it, opened it,
+and even smelt the odor of the lining&mdash;a
+mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was
+it? The Viscount's? Perhaps it was a present from
+his mistress. It had been embroidered on some rosewood
+frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all
+eyes, that had occupied many hours, and over which
+had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. A
+breath of love had passed over the stitches on the
+canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a
+hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads
+of silk were but the continuity of the same silent
+passion. And then one morning the Viscount had
+taken it away with him. Of what had they spoken
+when it lay upon the wide-manteled chimneys between
+flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was
+at Tostes; he was at Paris now, far away! What
+was this Paris like? What a vague name! She repeated
+it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it;
+it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_072" id="Page_072">[72]</a></span>
+shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her
+pomade-pots.</p>
+
+<p>At night, when the carriers passed under her
+windows in their carts singing the "Marjolaine," she
+awoke, and listened to the noise of the iron-bound
+wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was
+soon deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!"
+she said to herself.</p>
+
+<p>And she followed them in thought up and down
+the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads
+by the light of the stars. At the end of some
+indefinite distance there was always a confused spot,
+into which her dream died.</p>
+
+<p>She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of
+her finger on the map she walked about the capital.
+She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning,
+between the lines of the streets, in front of the
+white squares that represented the houses. At last
+she would close the lids of her weary eyes, and see
+in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind and
+the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before
+the peristyles of theatres.</p>
+
+<p>She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and
+the "Sylphe des Salons." She devoured, without
+skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races,
+and soir&eacute;es, took an interest in the d&eacute;but of a singer,
+in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest
+fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of
+the Bois and the Opera. In Eug&egrave;ne Sue she studied
+descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and George
+Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her
+own desires. Even at table she had her book by her,
+and turned over the pages while Charles ate and talked
+to her. The memory of the Viscount always returned
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_073" id="Page_073">[73]</a></span>
+as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages
+she made comparisons. But the circle of which
+he was the centre gradually widened round him, and
+the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened
+out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before
+Emma's eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. The
+many lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however,
+divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures.
+Emma perceived only two or three that hid from her
+all the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity.
+The world of ambassadors moved over polished
+floors in drawing-rooms lined with mirrors, round
+oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths.
+There were skirts with trains; deep mysteries, anguish
+hidden beneath smiles. Then came the society
+of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four
+o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore English point
+on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses
+under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses
+to death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season
+at Baden, and towards the forties married heiresses.
+In the private rooms of restaurants, where one sups
+after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed
+the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They
+were prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic
+frenzy. This was an existence outside that of all
+others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of
+storms, having something of the sublime. For the
+rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place,
+and as if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover,
+the more her thoughts turned away from them.
+All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country,
+the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_074" id="Page_074">[74]</a></span>
+existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance
+that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched
+as far as eye could see an immense land of joys and
+of passions. She confused in her desire the sensualities
+of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance
+of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love,
+like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular
+temperature? Sighs by moonlight, long embraces,
+tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the
+flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be
+separated from the balconies of great castles full of
+indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and
+thick carpets, well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a
+raised dais, nor from the flashing of precious stones
+and the shoulder-knots of liveries.</p>
+
+<p>The lad from the posting-house, who came to
+groom the mare every morning, passed through the
+passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were
+holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers.
+And this was the groom in knee-breeches with whom
+she had to be content! His work done, he did not
+come back again all day, for Charles on his return put
+up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the
+halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw
+and threw it as best she could into the manger.</p>
+
+<p>To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents
+of tears) Emma took into her service a young
+girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. She
+forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address
+her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on
+a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron,
+starch, and to dress her,&mdash;tried to make a lady's-maid
+of her. The new servant obeyed without a
+murmur, so as not to be sent away; and, as madame
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_075" id="Page_075">[75]</a></span>
+usually left the key in the sideboard, F&eacute;licit&eacute; every
+evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone
+in her bed after she had said her prayers.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with
+the postilions. Madame was in her room upstairs.
+She wore an open dressing-gown, that showed between
+the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated
+chemisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a
+corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet-colored
+slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell
+over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting-book,
+writing-case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although
+she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not,
+looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and
+then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her
+knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her
+convent. She wished at the same time to die and to
+live in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>Charles in snow and rain trotted across country.
+He ate omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm
+into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings
+in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
+basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every
+evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs,
+and a well-dressed woman, charming with an
+odor of freshness, though no one could say whence
+the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made
+odorous her chemise.</p>
+
+<p>She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it
+was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the
+candles, a flounce that she altered on her gown, or
+an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that
+the servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed
+with pleasure to the last mouthful. At Rouen she saw
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_076" id="Page_076">[76]</a></span>
+some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on their
+watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted
+for her mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and
+some time after an ivory <i>n&eacute;cessaire</i> with a silver-gilt
+thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements
+the more they seduced him. They added something
+to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort
+of his fireside. It was like a golden dust sanding all
+along the narrow path of his life.</p>
+
+<p>He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly
+established. The country-folk loved him because he
+was not proud. He petted the children, never went
+to the public-house, and, moreover, his morals inspired
+confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs
+and chest complaints. Being much afraid of killing
+his patients, Charles, in fact, prescribed only sedatives,
+from time to time an emetic, a footbath, or leeches.
+It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled
+people copiously like horses, and for the taking out of
+teeth he had the "devil's own wrist."</p>
+
+<p>Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in
+"La Ruche M&eacute;dicale," a new journal whose prospectus
+had been sent him. He read it a little after dinner,
+but in about five minutes, the warmth of the
+room added to the effect of his dinner sent him to
+sleep; and he sat there, his chin on his two hands
+and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the
+lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders.
+Why, at least, was not her husband one of
+those men of taciturn passions who work at their
+books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age
+when rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on
+their ill-fitting black coats? She could have wished
+this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been illustrious,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_077" id="Page_077">[77]</a></span>
+to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated
+in the newspapers, known to all France. But
+Charles had no ambition. An Yvetot doctor whom
+he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated
+him at the very bedside of the patient, before
+the assembled relatives. When, in the evening, Charles
+told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed loudly against
+his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed
+her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was
+angered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike
+him; she went to open the window in the passage
+and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.</p>
+
+<p>"What a man! what a man!" she said in a low
+voice, biting her lips.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him.
+As he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert
+he cut the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he
+cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he
+made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as
+he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed
+to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his
+under-vest into his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat,
+and threw away the soiled gloves he was going to
+put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself;
+it was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous
+irritation. Sometimes, too, she told him of what
+she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new
+play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had
+seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something,
+an ever-open ear, an ever-ready approbation.
+She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She
+would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to
+the pendulum of the clock.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_078" id="Page_078">[78]</a></span>
+At bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting
+for something to happen. Like shipwrecked
+sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude
+of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the
+mists of the horizon. She did not know what this
+chance would be, what wind would bring it her, toward
+what shore it would drive her, if it would be a
+shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full
+of bliss to the port-holes. But each morning, as she
+awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened
+to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered
+that it did not come; then at sunset, always
+more saddened, she longed for the morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Spring came round. With the first warm weather,
+when the pear-trees began to blossom, she suffered
+from dyspn&oelig;a.</p>
+
+<p>From the beginning of July she counted how
+many weeks there were to October, thinking that
+perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give another
+ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without
+letters or visits.</p>
+
+<p>After the ennui of this disappointment her heart
+once more remained empty, and then the same series
+of days recommenced. So now they would thus follow
+one another, always the same, immovable, and
+bringing nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at
+least the chance of some event. One adventure sometimes
+brought with it infinite consequences, and the
+scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God
+had willed it so! The future was a dark corridor,
+with its door at the end shut fast.</p>
+
+<p>She gave up music. What was the good of playing?
+Who would hear her? Since she could never,
+in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_079" id="Page_079">[79]</a></span>
+her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert,
+feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a
+breeze, it was not worth while boring herself with
+practising. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery
+she left in the cupboard. What was the good?
+what was the good? Sewing irritated her. "I have
+read everything," she said to herself. And she sat
+there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain
+falling.</p>
+
+<p>How sad she was on Sundays when vespers
+sounded! She listened with dull attention to each
+stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking
+over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of
+the sun. The wind on the highroad blew up clouds
+of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and the
+bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing
+that died away over the fields.</p>
+
+<p>But the people came out from church. The women
+in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the
+little bareheaded children skipping along in front of
+them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five
+or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks
+in front of the large door of the inn.</p>
+
+<p>The winter was severe. The windows every
+morning were covered with rime, and the light shining
+through them, dim as through ground-glass,
+sometimes did not change the whole day long. At
+four o'clock the lamp had to be lighted.</p>
+
+<p>On fine days she went down into the garden.
+The dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with
+long transparent threads spreading from one to the
+other. No birds were to be heard; everything
+seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and
+the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_080" id="Page_080">[80]</a></span>
+of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw
+the many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the
+spruce by the hedgerow, the cur&eacute; in the three-cornered
+hat reading his breviary had lost his right
+foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost,
+had left white scabs on his face.</p>
+
+<p>Then she went up again, shut her door, put on
+coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, felt
+her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. She
+would have liked to go down and talk to the servant,
+but a sense of shame restrained her.</p>
+
+<p>Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a
+black skull-cap opened the shutters of his house, and
+the rural policeman, wearing his sabre over his
+blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses,
+three by three, crossed the street to water at the
+pond. From time to time the bell of a public-house
+door rang, and when it was windy one could hear
+the little brass basins that served as signs for the
+hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. This
+shop had as decoration an old engraving of a fashion-plate
+stuck against a window-pane and the wax bust
+of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser,
+lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless
+future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town&mdash;at
+Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbor, near
+the theater&mdash;he walked up and down all day from
+the mairie to the church, sombre, and waiting for
+customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she
+always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with
+his skull-cap over his ears and his waistcoat of lasting.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes in the afternoon, outside the window
+of her room, the head of a man appeared, a swarthy
+head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_081" id="Page_081">[81]</a></span>
+broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A
+waltz immediately began, and on the organ, in a little
+drawing-room, dancers the size of a finger, women
+in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in
+frock-coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and
+turned between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in
+the bits of looking-glass held together at their corners
+by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle,
+looking to the right and left, and up at the windows.
+Now and again, while he shot out a long
+squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his
+knee he raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired
+his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay
+and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning
+through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass
+claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other
+places at the theaters, sung in drawing-rooms, danced
+to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world
+that reached even to Emma. Endless sarabands ran
+through her head, and, like an Indian dancing-girl on
+the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leaped with the
+notes, swung from dream to dream, from sadness to
+sadness. When the man had caught some coppers in
+his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth,
+hitched his organ on to his back, and went off with
+a heavy tread. She watched him going.</p>
+
+<p>But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable
+to her, in this small room on the ground-floor,
+with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the
+walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness
+of life seemed served up on her plate, and with the
+smoke of the boiled beef arose from her secret
+soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow eater;
+she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_082" id="Page_082">[82]</a></span>
+amused herself with drawing lines along the oil-cloth
+table-cover with the point of her knife.</p>
+
+<p>She now let everything in her household take care
+of itself, and Madame Bovary senior, when she came
+to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much surprised
+at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so
+dainty, now passed whole days without dressing,
+wore gray cotton stockings, and burnt tallow candles.
+She kept saying they must be economical since they
+were not rich, adding that she was very contented,
+very happy, that Tostes pleased her very much, with
+other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law.
+Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to
+follow her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having
+thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep
+an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered
+with so angry a look and so cold a smile
+that the good woman did not mention it again.</p>
+
+<p>Emma was growing <i>difficile</i>, capricious. She ordered
+dishes for herself, then she did not touch them;
+one day drank only pure milk, and the next cups of
+tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going
+out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put
+on light frocks. After she had well scolded her servant,
+she gave her presents or sent her out to see the
+neighbors, just as she sometimes threw beggars all
+the silver in her purse, although she was by no means
+tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of
+others, like most country-bred people, who always
+retain in their souls something of the horny hardness
+of the paternal hands.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of February old Rouault, in memory
+of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb
+turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes. Charles
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_083" id="Page_083">[83]</a></span>
+being with his patients, Emma kept him company.
+He smoked in the room, spat on the fire-dogs, talked
+farming, calves, cows, poultry, and municipal council,
+so that when he left she closed the door on him with
+a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself.
+Moreover, she no longer concealed her contempt for
+anything or anybody, and at times she set herself to
+express singular opinions, finding fault with that
+which others approved, and approving things perverse
+and immoral, all which made her husband open his
+eyes widely.</p>
+
+<p>Would this misery last forever? Would she never
+issue from it? Yet she was as good as all the women
+who were living happily. She had seen duchesses at
+Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner
+ways, and she execrated the injustice of God. She
+leant her head against the walls to weep; she envied
+lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent
+pleasures, with all the wildness, that she did not
+know, but that these must surely yield.</p>
+
+<p>She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of
+the heart. Charles prescribed valerian and camphor
+baths. Everything that was tried only seemed to irritate
+her the more.</p>
+
+<p>On certain days she chattered with feverish rapidity,
+and this over-excitement was suddenly followed
+by a state of torpor, in which she remained without
+speaking, without moving. What then revived
+her was pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>As she was constantly complaining about Tostes,
+Charles fancied that her illness was no doubt due to
+some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to
+think seriously of setting up elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_084" id="Page_084">[84]</a></span>
+From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted
+a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite.</p>
+
+<p>It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living
+there four years and when he was "beginning
+to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her
+to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous
+complaint: change of air was needed.</p>
+
+<p>After looking about him on this side and on that,
+Charles learnt that in the Neufch&acirc;tel arrondissement
+there was a considerable market-town called Yonville
+l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped
+a week before. Then he wrote to the
+chemist of the place to ask the number of the population,
+the distance from the nearest doctor, what his
+predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the
+answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to
+move towards the spring, if Emma's health did not
+improve.</p>
+
+<p>One day when, in view of her departure, she was
+tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was
+a wire of her wedding-bouquet. The orange blossoms
+were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin
+ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the
+fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw.
+Then it was like a red bush in the cinders, slowly
+devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard
+berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace
+melted; and the shrivelled paper corollas, fluttering
+like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last
+flew up the chimney.</p>
+
+<p>When they left Tostes in the month of March,
+Madame Bovary was pregnant.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_085" id="Page_085">[85]</a></span></p>
+
+<h3>PART II.</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_New_Field" id="A_New_Field"></a><span class="smcap">A New Field.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap114"><span class="dropcap">Y</span></span><br />ONVILLE-L'ABBAYE (so called from
+an old Capuchin abbey of which not
+even the ruins remain) is a market-town
+twenty-four miles from
+Rouen, between the Abbeville and
+Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley
+watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs
+into the Andelle after turning three water-mills near
+its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads
+amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.</p>
+
+<p>We leave the highroad at La Boissi&egrave;re and keep
+straight on to the top of the Leux hill, whence the
+valley is seen. The river that runs through it makes
+of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies,&mdash;all
+on the left is pasture land, all on the
+right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of
+low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of
+the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain,
+gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can
+follow its blond cornfields. The water, flowing by
+the grass, divides with a white line the color of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_086" id="Page_086">[86]</a></span>
+roads and of the plains, and the country is like a
+great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered
+with a fringe of silver.</p>
+
+<p>Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the
+oaks of the forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the
+Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to bottom with red
+irregular lines; they are rain-tracks, and these brick-tones
+standing out in narrow streaks against the
+gray color of the mountain are due to the quantity
+of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring
+country.</p>
+
+<p>Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy,
+and the &Icirc;le-de-France, a bastard land, whose
+language is without accent as its landscape is without
+character. It is there that they make the worst
+Neufch&acirc;tel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on
+the other hand, farming is costly because so much
+manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of
+sand and flints.</p>
+
+<p>Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for
+getting to Yonville, but about this time a cross-road
+was made which joins that of Abbeville to that of
+Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners
+on their way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye
+has remained stationary in spite of its "new outlet."
+Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping
+up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may
+be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away
+from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It is
+seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd
+taking a siesta by the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: water-side">waterside</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins
+a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in
+a straight line to the first houses in the place. These,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_087" id="Page_087">[87]</a></span>
+fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards
+full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds,
+and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders,
+poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The
+thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach
+down over about a third of the low windows, whose
+coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like
+the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall, diagonally
+crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree
+sometimes leans, and the ground floors have at their
+door a small swing-gate, to keep out the chicks that
+come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on
+the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower,
+the houses closer together, and the fences disappear;
+a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the
+end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge
+and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new
+carts outside that partly block up the way. Then
+across an open space appears a white house beyond
+a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger
+on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a
+flight of steps; scutcheons<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> blaze upon the door. It
+is the notary's house, and the finest in the place.</p>
+
+<p>The church is on the other side of the street, twenty
+paces farther down, at the entrance of the square.
+The little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a
+wall breast-high, is so full of graves that the old stones,
+level with the ground, form a continuous pavement,
+on which the grass of itself has marked out regular
+green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last
+years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_088" id="Page_088">[88]</a></span>
+beginning to rot from the top, and here and there
+has black hollows in its blue color. Over the door,
+where the organ should be, is a loft for the men,
+with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their
+wooden shoes.</p>
+
+<p>The daylight coming through the plain glass windows
+falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along
+the walls, which are adorned here and there with a
+straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters,
+"Monsieur So-and-so's pew." And at the spot
+where the building narrows, the confessional forms a
+pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin
+robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver
+stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich
+Islands; and, finally, a copy of the "Holy Family,
+presented by the Minister of the Interior," overlooking
+the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes
+in the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood,
+have been left unpainted.</p>
+
+<p>The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported
+by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the
+public square of Yonville. The town hall, constructed
+"from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of
+Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's
+shop. On the ground floor are three Ionic columns,
+and on the first floor a semicircular gallery,
+while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic
+cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding
+in the other the scales of Justice.</p>
+
+<p>But that which most attracts the eye is, opposite
+the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Monsieur
+Homais. In the evening especially its argand lamp
+is lighted, and the red and green jars that embellish
+his shop-front throw far across the street their two
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_089" id="Page_089">[89]</a></span>
+streams of color; then across them, as if in Bengal
+lights, is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over
+his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded
+with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand,
+printed hand: "Vichy, Seltzer, Bar&egrave;ge waters, blood
+purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout,
+Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic
+chocolate," &amp;c. And the signboard, which takes
+up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters,
+"Homais, Chemist." Then at the back of the shop,
+behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word
+"Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door,
+which about half-way up once more repeats "Homais"
+in gold letters on a black ground.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville.
+The street (the only one) a gunshot in length, and
+flanked by a few shops on either side, stops short at
+the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right
+hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed, the
+cemetery is soon reached.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge
+this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres
+of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion
+is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue
+to crowd together toward the gate. The keeper,
+who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus
+making a double profit out of the parish corpses),
+has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to
+plant potatoes there. From year to year, however,
+his small field grows smaller, and when there is an
+epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the
+deaths or regret the burials.</p>
+
+<p>"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the cur&eacute; at
+last said to him one day. This grim remark made
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_090" id="Page_090">[90]</a></span>
+him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to
+this day he carries on the cultivation of his little
+tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow
+naturally.</p>
+
+<p>Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in
+fact has changed at Yonville. The tin tricolor flag
+still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two
+chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linendraper's;
+the chemist's f&oelig;tuses, like lumps of white
+amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol,
+and above the big door of the inn the old golden
+lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle
+mane.</p>
+
+<p>On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive
+at Yonville, Widow Lefran&ccedil;ois, the landlady of this
+inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops
+as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day.
+The meat had to be cut beforehand, the
+fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. Moreover,
+she had the boarders' meals to see to, and that of
+the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room
+was echoing with bursts of laughter; three
+millers in the small parlor were calling for brandy;
+the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing,
+and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of
+raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the
+shaking of the block on which the spinach was being
+chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the
+screaming of the fowls which the servant was chasing
+in order to wring their necks.</p>
+
+<p>A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green
+leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold
+tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His
+face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_091" id="Page_091">[91]</a></span>
+appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended
+over his head in its wicker cage: this was the
+chemist.</p>
+
+<p>"Art&eacute;mise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some
+wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look
+sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests
+you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers
+are beginning their racket in the billiard-room
+again; and their van has been left before the front
+door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when it
+draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up.
+Only to think, Monsieur Homais, that since morning
+they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight
+jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me,"
+she went on, looking at them from a distance, her
+strainer in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur
+Homais. "You would buy another."</p>
+
+<p>"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.</p>
+
+<p>"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois.
+I tell you again you are doing yourself
+harm, much harm! And besides, players now want
+narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played
+now; everything is changed! One must keep pace
+with the times! Just look at Tellier!"</p>
+
+<p>The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist
+went on:</p>
+
+<p>"You may say what you like; his table is better
+than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of
+getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or the sufferers
+from the Lyons floods"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted
+the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders.
+"Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as long as the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_092" id="Page_092">[92]</a></span>
+'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've
+feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll
+find the 'Caf&eacute; Fran&ccedil;ais' closed with a big placard
+on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she
+went on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes
+in so handy for folding the washing, and on which,
+in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But
+that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's
+dinner?"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet?
+As the clock strikes six you'll see him come in,
+for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality.
+He must always have his seat in the small parlor.
+He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so
+squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider!
+Not like Monsieur L&eacute;on; he sometimes comes at
+seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as
+look at what he eats. Such a nice young man!
+Never speaks a rough word!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, there's a great difference between
+an educated man and an old carabineer who is now
+a tax-collector."</p>
+
+<p>Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.</p>
+
+<p>He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight
+line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with
+its lappets knotted over the top of his head with
+string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,
+flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet.
+He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, gray
+trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots,
+that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking
+out of his big toes. Not a hair stood out from the
+regular line of fair whiskers, which encircling his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_093" id="Page_093">[93]</a></span>
+jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border,
+his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the
+nose hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good
+hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a
+lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin-rings,
+with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy
+of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the small parlor, but the three millers
+had to be got out first, and during the whole time
+necessary for laying the cloth, Binet remained silent
+in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door
+and took off his cap in his usual way.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear
+out his tongue," said the chemist, as soon as he was
+alone with the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week
+two travelers in the cloth line were here&mdash;such
+clever chaps, who told such jokes in the evening,
+that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there
+like a dab fish and never said a word."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination,
+no sallies, nothing that makes the society man."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he parts! In
+his own line it is possible," he added in a calmer
+tone. And he went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that a merchant, who has large connections,
+a juris-consult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus
+absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or
+even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited
+in history. But at least it is because they are thinking
+of something. Myself, for example, how often
+has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_094" id="Page_094">[94]</a></span>
+pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had
+put it behind my ear?"</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois just then went to the door to
+see if the "Hirondelle" were not coming. She
+started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into
+the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one
+could see that his face was rubicund and his form
+athletic.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Cur&eacute;?"
+asked the landlady, as she reached down from the
+chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with
+their candles in a row. "Will you take something?
+A thimbleful of <i>cassis</i>? A glass of wine?"</p>
+
+<p>The priest declined very politely. He had come
+for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day
+at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame
+Lefran&ccedil;ois to have it sent to him at the presbytery
+in the evening, he left for the church, from which
+the Angelus was ringing.</p>
+
+<p>When the chemist no longer heard the noise of
+his boots along the square, he thought the priest's
+behavior just now very unbecoming. This refusal to
+take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious
+hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were
+trying to bring back the days of the tithe.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady took up the defense of her cur&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, he could double up four men like you
+over his knee. Last year he helped our people to
+bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses
+at once, he is so strong."</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send
+your daughters to confess to fellows with such a
+temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have
+the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: original reads Lafran&ccedil;ois">Lefran&ccedil;ois</ins>,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_095" id="Page_095">[95]</a></span>
+every month&mdash;a good phlebotomy, in the interests
+of the police and morals."</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel;
+you've no religion."</p>
+
+<p>The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my
+religion, and I even have more than all these others
+with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore
+God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being,
+in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little
+who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as
+citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to
+go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out
+of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live
+better than we do. For one can know him as well
+in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the
+eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the
+God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and B&eacute;ranger!
+I am for the profession of faith of the
+'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89!
+And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who
+takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand,
+who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies
+uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three
+days; things absurd in themselves, and completely
+opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which proves
+to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed
+in torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf
+the people with them."</p>
+
+<p>He ceased looking round for an audience, for in
+his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment
+fancied himself in the midst of the town council.
+But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening
+to a distant rolling. One could distinguish
+the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_096" id="Page_096">[96]</a></span>
+loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at
+last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.</p>
+
+<p>It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that,
+reaching to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing
+the road and soiled their shoulders. The small
+panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes
+when the coach was closed, and retained here and
+there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust,
+that not even storms of rain had altogether washed
+away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a
+leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted
+against the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into
+the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news,
+for explanations, for hampers. Hivert did not know
+whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of
+the place in town. He went to the shops and brought
+back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for
+the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps
+from the milliner's, locks from the hairdresser's, and
+all along the road on his return journey he distributed
+his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his
+seat and shouting at the top of his voice, over the
+enclosures of the yards.</p>
+
+<p>An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's
+greyhound had run across the field. They had whistled
+for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had even
+gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment
+to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to
+go on. Emma had wept, grown angry; she had accused
+Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux,
+a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her
+had tried to console her by a number of examples of
+lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_097" id="Page_097">[97]</a></span>
+years. One, he said, had been told of who had come
+back to Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone
+one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and
+swam four rivers; and his own father had possessed
+a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had
+all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as
+he was going to dine in town.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a>The <i>panonceaux</i> that have to be hung over the doors of
+notaries.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Trans.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 121px;">
+<img src="images/i126.jpg" width="121" height="75" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_098" id="Page_098">[98]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="New_Friends" id="New_Friends"></a><span class="smcap">New Friends.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap127"><span class="dropcap">E</span></span><br />MMA got out first, then F&eacute;licit&eacute;,
+Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse,
+and they had to wake up Charles
+in his corner, where he had slept
+soundly since night set in.</p>
+
+<p>Homais introduced himself; he
+offered his homages to Madame and his respects to
+Monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able
+to render them some slight service, and added with
+a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself,
+his wife being away.</p>
+
+<p>When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she
+went up to the chimney. With the tips of her fingers
+she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus
+pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its
+black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton.
+The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating
+with a crude light the woof of her gown, the fine
+pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which
+she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed
+over her with the blowing of the wind through the
+half-open door. On the other side of the chimney
+a young man with fair hair watched her silently.</p>
+
+<p>As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where
+he was a clerk at the notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_099" id="Page_099">[99]</a></span>
+Monsieur L&eacute;on Dupuis (it was he who was the
+second <i>habitu&eacute;</i> of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put
+back his dinner-hour in the hope that some traveler
+might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in
+the evening. On the days when his work was done
+early, he had, for want of something else to do, to
+come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> with Binet. It was therefore with delight
+that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he
+should dine in company with the newcomers, and
+they passed into the large parlor where Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois,
+for the purpose of showing off, had had
+the table laid for four.</p>
+
+<p>Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap,
+for fear of coryza; then turning to his neighbor&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets
+jolted so abominably in our 'Hirondelle.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about
+always amuses me. I like change of place."</p>
+
+<p>"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always
+riveted to the same places."</p>
+
+<p>"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly
+obliged to be in the saddle"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But," L&eacute;on went on, addressing himself to Madame
+Bovary, "nothing, it seems to me, is more
+pleasant&mdash;when one can," he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Moreover," said the chemist, "the practice of
+medicine is not very hard work in our part of the
+world, for the state of our roads allows us the use
+of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are well off,
+they pay pretty well. We have, medically speaking,
+besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis,
+bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent
+fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be
+a great deal of scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable
+hygienic conditions of our peasant dwellings.
+Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur
+Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which
+all the efforts of your science will daily come into
+collision; for people still have recourse to novenas, to
+relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the
+doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not,
+truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few nonagenarians
+in our parish. The thermometer (I have
+made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees
+and in the hottest season rises to 25 or 30 degrees
+Centigrade at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees
+R&eacute;aumur as the maximum, or otherwise 54 degrees
+Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a
+matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds
+by the forest of Argueil on the one side, from the
+west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and
+this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous
+vapors given off by the river and the considerable
+number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know,
+exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen,
+and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen
+alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus
+from the ground, mixing together all those different
+emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and
+combining with the electricity diffused through the
+atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long
+run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious
+miasmata,&mdash;this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered
+on the side whence it comes, or rather whence
+it should come&mdash;that is to say, the southern side&mdash;by
+the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes
+all at once, like breezes from Russia."</p>
+
+<p>"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighborhood?"
+continued Madame Bovary, speaking to the
+young man.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place
+they call La P&acirc;ture, on the top of the hill, on the
+edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go
+and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."</p>
+
+<p>"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets,"
+she resumed; "but especially by the side of the sea."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur L&eacute;on.</p>
+
+<p>"And then, does it not seem to you," continued
+Madame Bovary, "that the mind travels more freely
+on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which
+elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the
+ideal?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the same with mountainous landscapes,"
+continued L&eacute;on. "A cousin of mine who traveled in
+Switzerland last year told me that one could not picture
+to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of
+the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One
+sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages
+suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below
+one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such
+spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer,
+to ecstasy; and I no longer marvel at that celebrated
+musician who, the better to inspire his imagination,
+was in the habit of playing the piano before some
+imposing site."</p>
+
+<p>"You play?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary,"
+interrupted Homais, bending over his plate. "That's
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the other day
+in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien'
+ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory. You
+gave it like an actor."</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on, in fact, lodged at the chemist's, where he
+had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the
+Place. He blushed at the compliment of his landlord,
+who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating
+to him, one after the other, all the principal
+inhabitants of Yonville. He was telling anecdotes,
+giving information; the fortune of the notary was not
+known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household,"
+who made a good deal of show.</p>
+
+<p>Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, German music; that which makes you
+dream."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you been to the opera?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am
+living at Paris to finish reading for the bar."</p>
+
+<p>"As I had the honor of putting it to your husband,"
+said the chemist, "with regard to this poor
+Yanoda who has run away, you will find yourself,
+thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one
+of the most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its
+greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on
+the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen.
+Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in
+a household&mdash;a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room,
+fruit-room, etc. He was a gay dog, who didn't
+care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by
+the side of the water, he had an arbor built just for
+the purpose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame
+is fond of gardening she will be able"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles;
+"although she has been advised to take exercise, she
+prefers always sitting in her room reading."</p>
+
+<p>"Like me," replied L&eacute;on. "And indeed, what is
+better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with
+a book, while the wind beats against the window
+and the lamp is burning?"</p>
+
+<p>"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black
+eyes wide open upon him.</p>
+
+<p>"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours
+slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy
+we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction,
+playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures.
+It mingles with the characters, and it seems
+as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true! that is true!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Has it ever happened to you," L&eacute;on went on,
+"to come across some vague idea of one's own in a
+book, some dim image that comes back to you from
+afar, and as the completest expression of your own
+slightest sentiment?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have experienced it," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the reason why," he said, "I especially
+love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose,
+and that it moves far more easily to tears."</p>
+
+<p>"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued
+Emma. "Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that
+rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest
+commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such
+as there are in nature."</p>
+
+<p>"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not
+touching the heart, it seems to me, the true end
+of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon
+noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness.
+For myself, living here far from the world,
+this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords so
+few resources."</p>
+
+<p>"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so
+I always subscribed to a lending library."</p>
+
+<p>"If madame will do me the honor of making use
+of it," said the chemist, who had just caught the last
+words, "I have at her disposal a library composed of
+the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter
+Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons;' and in addition I
+receive various periodicals, among them the 'Fanal
+de Rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent
+for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufch&acirc;tel,
+Yonville and vicinity."</p>
+
+<p>For two hours and a half they had been at table;
+for the servant Art&eacute;mise, carelessly dragging her old
+list slippers over the flags, brought one plate after
+the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the
+door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat
+against the wall with its hooks.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously, L&eacute;on, while talking, had placed
+his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which
+Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small blue
+silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric
+collar, and with the movements of her head the
+lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or
+came out from it. Thus, side by side, while Charles
+and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of
+those vague conversations where the hazard of all that
+is said brings you back to the fixed center of a common
+sympathy. The Paris theaters, titles of novels,
+new quadrilles, and the world they did not know;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+Tostes, where she had lived, and Yonville, where
+they were; they examined all, talked of everything till
+to the end of dinner.</p>
+
+<p>When coffee was served F&eacute;licit&eacute; went away to
+get ready the room in the new house, and the guests
+soon raised the siege. Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois was asleep
+near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in
+hand, was waiting to show Monsieur and Madame
+Bovary the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his
+red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he
+had taken in his other hand the cur&eacute;'s umbrella, they
+started.</p>
+
+<p>The town was asleep; the pillars of the market
+threw great shadows; the earth was all gray as on a
+summer's night. But as the doctor's house was only
+some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night
+almost immediately, and the company dispersed.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt
+the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like
+damp linen. The walls were new and the wooden
+stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a
+whitish light passed through the curtainless windows.
+She could catch glimpses of tree-tops, and
+beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay
+reeking in the moonlight along the course of the
+river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were
+scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles,
+with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the
+floor,&mdash;the two men who had brought the furniture
+had left everything about carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>This was the fourth time that she had slept in a
+strange place. The first was the day of her going to
+the convent; the second, of her arrival at Tostes; the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth. And
+each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of
+a new phase in her life. She did not believe that
+things could present themselves in the same way in
+different places, and since the portion of her life
+lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to
+be lived would be better.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 94px;">
+<img src="images/i135.jpg" width="94" height="65" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>IV.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Added_Cares" id="Added_Cares"></a><span class="smcap">Added Cares.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap136"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />HE next day, as she was getting up,
+she saw the clerk on the Place.
+She had on a dressing-gown. He
+looked up and bowed. She nodded
+quickly and reclosed the window.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on waited all day for six o'clock in the evening
+to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one
+but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The dinner of
+the evening before had been a considerable event for
+him; he had never till then talked for two hours consecutively
+to a "lady." How then had he been able
+to explain, and in such language, the number of
+things that he could not have said so well before?
+He was usually shy, and maintained that reserve
+which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation.
+At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He
+listened to the arguments of the older people, and did
+not seem hot about politics&mdash;a remarkable thing for
+a young man. Then he had some accomplishments;
+he painted in water-colors, could read the key of <i>G</i>,
+and readily talked literature after dinner when he did
+not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him for
+his education; Madame Homais liked him for his
+good-nature, for he often took the little Homaises into
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+the garden&mdash;little brats who were always dirty, very
+much spoiled, and somewhat lymphatic, like their
+mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they
+had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin
+of Monsieur Homais, who had been taken into the
+house from charity, and who was useful at the same
+time as a servant.</p>
+
+<p>The chemist proved the best of neighbors. He
+gave Madame Bovary information as to the tradespeople,
+sent expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted
+the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly
+placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about
+getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement
+with Lestiboudois, the sacristan, who,
+besides his sacerdotal and funereal functions, looked
+after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or
+the year, according to the taste of the customers.</p>
+
+<p>The need of looking after others was not the only
+thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality;
+there was a plan underneath it all.</p>
+
+<p>He had infringed the law of the 19th Vent&ocirc;se, year
+xi, article 1, which forbade all persons not having a
+diploma to practice medicine; so that, after certain
+anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned
+to Rouen to see the procureur of the king in his own
+private room; the magistrate receiving him standing
+up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in
+the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors
+one heard the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking
+past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were
+shut. The chemist's ears tingled as if he were about
+to have an apoplectic stroke: he saw the depths of
+dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the
+jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a caf&eacute;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his
+spirits.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew
+fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne
+consultations in his back-parlor. But the mayor
+resented it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was
+to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his attentions
+was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his
+speaking out later, should he notice anything. So
+every morning Homais brought him "the paper," and
+often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments
+to have a chat with the Doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained
+seated for hours without speaking, went into
+his consulting-room to sleep, or watched his wife
+sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at
+home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic
+with some paint which had been left behind by the
+painters. But money matters worried him. He had
+spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's
+toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry,
+over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two
+years. Then how many things had been spoilt or lost
+during their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without
+counting the plaster cur&eacute;, who, falling out of the coach
+at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand
+fragments on the pavement of Quincampoix!</p>
+
+<p>A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely,
+the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confinement
+approached he cherished her the more. It was
+another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it
+were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union.
+When from afar he saw her languid walk, and her
+figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+opposite one another he looked at her at his ease,
+while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his
+happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her,
+passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma,
+wanted to make her dance, and, half-laughing, half-crying,
+uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that
+came into his head. The idea of having begotten a
+child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He
+knew human life from end to end, and he sat down
+to it with serenity.</p>
+
+<p>Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was
+anxious to be delivered that she might know what
+it was to be a mother. But not being able to spend
+as much as she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette
+with rose silk curtains, and embroidered
+caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after
+the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a
+village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing
+anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those
+preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers,
+and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps,
+to some extent attenuated.</p>
+
+<p>As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every
+meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively.</p>
+
+<p>She hoped for a son; he would be strong and
+dark; she would call him George; and this idea of
+having a male child was like an expected revenge for
+all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is
+free; he may travel over passions and over countries,
+overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures.
+But a woman is always hampered. At once
+inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness
+of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every
+wind; there is always some desire that draws her,
+some conventionality that restrains.</p>
+
+<p>She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock,
+as the sun was rising.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a girl!" said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her head away and fainted.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois of
+the Lion d'Or, almost immediately came running in
+to embrace her. The chemist, as a man of discretion,
+offered only a few provisional felicitations through the
+half-open door. He wished to see the child, and
+thought it well made.</p>
+
+<p>While she was getting well she occupied herself
+much in seeking a name for her daughter. First she
+went over all those that have Italian endings, such as
+Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde
+very well, and Yseult or L&eacute;ocadie still better. Charles
+wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma
+opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end
+to end, and then consulted outsiders.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur L&eacute;on," said the chemist, "with whom I
+was talking about it the other day, wonders you do
+not choose Madeleine. It is very much in fashion just
+now."</p>
+
+<p>But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly
+against this name of a sinner. As to Monsieur Homais,
+he had a preference for all those that recalled
+some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous
+idea, and it was on this system that he baptized his
+four children. Thus <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads &quot;Napoleon&quot; without an accent">Napol&eacute;on</ins> represented glory and
+Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to
+romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest
+masterpiece of the French stage. For his philosophical
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+convictions did not interfere with his artistic
+tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of
+sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances
+for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy,
+for example, he found fault with the ideas, but
+admired the style; he detested the conception, but
+applauded all the details, and loathed the characters
+while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. When
+he read the fine passages he was transported, but
+when he thought that mummers would get something
+out of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and
+in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved
+he would have liked at once to crown Racine
+with both his hands and argue with him for a good
+quarter of an hour.</p>
+
+<p>At last Emma remembered that at the ch&acirc;teau of
+Vaubyessard she had heard the Marchioness call a
+young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was
+chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur
+Homais was requested to stand godfather. His
+gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit:
+six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three
+cakes of marsh-mallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy,
+into the bargain, that he had come across in a
+cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there
+was a grand dinner; the cur&eacute; was present; there was
+much excitement. Monsieur Homais toward liqueur-time
+began singing "Le Dieu des bonnes gens."
+Monsieur L&eacute;on sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary,
+senior, who was godmother, a romance of the
+time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary, senior, insisted
+on having the child brought down, and began
+baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured
+over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+made the Abb&eacute; Bournisien angry; old Bovary
+replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux;"
+the cur&eacute; wished to leave; the ladies implored, Homais
+interfered; and they succeeded in making the priest
+sit down again, and he quietly went on with the
+half-finished coffee in his saucer.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a
+month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's
+cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning
+when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also
+in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he
+often sent the servant to the Lion d'Or to buy him a
+bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and
+to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's
+whole supply of eau-de-cologne.</p>
+
+<p>The latter did not at all dislike his company. He
+had knocked about the world, he talked about Berlin,
+Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the
+mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which
+he had partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes
+even, either on the stairs or in the garden,
+would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look
+out for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for
+her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband
+might in the long run have an immoral influence
+upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to
+hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious
+reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was not the
+man to respect anything.</p>
+
+<p>One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire
+to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse
+with the carpenter's wife, and without looking at the
+almanac to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+were yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house,
+situated at the extreme end of the village, between
+the highroad and the fields.</p>
+
+<p>It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were
+closed, and the slate roofs that glittered beneath the
+fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks
+from the crest of their gables. A heavy wind was
+blowing; Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones
+of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether
+she would not go home again, or go in somewhere
+to rest.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment Monsieur L&eacute;on came out from a
+neighboring door with a bundle of papers under his
+arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the shade
+in front of Lheureux's shop under the projecting gray
+awning.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary said she was going to see her
+baby, but that she was beginning to grow tired.</p>
+
+<p>"If&mdash;" said L&eacute;on, not daring to go on.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany
+her. That same evening this was known
+in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife,
+declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame
+Bovary was compromising herself."</p>
+
+<p>To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to
+the left on leaving the street, as if making for the
+cemetery, and to follow between little houses and
+yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They
+were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines,
+thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from
+the thickets. Through openings in the hedges one
+could see into the huts, some pig on a dung-heap, or
+tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+of trees. The two, side by side, walked slowly, she
+leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which
+he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of
+midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.</p>
+
+<p>They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree
+which shaded it. Low, and covered with brown
+tiles, outside it hung, beneath the dormer-window of
+the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against
+a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuces, a few
+square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on
+sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on
+the grass, and several indefinite rags, knitted stockings,
+a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of
+coarse linen, were spread over the hedge. At the
+noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she
+was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she
+was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face
+covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier,
+whom his parents, too taken up with their business,
+left in the country.</p>
+
+<p>"Go in," she said; "your little one is there
+asleep."</p>
+
+<p>The room on the ground floor, the only one in
+the dwelling, had at its farther end, against the wall,
+a large bed without curtains, while a kneading-trough
+took up the side by the window, one pane of which
+was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the
+corner behind the door, shining hobnailed shoes stood
+in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a
+bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a
+<i>Matthieu Laensberg</i> lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid
+gun-flints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou. Finally,
+the last luxury in the apartment was a "Fame"
+blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the
+wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.</p>
+
+<p>Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She
+took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and
+began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on walked up and down the room; it seemed
+strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her
+nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. Madame
+Bovary reddened, he turned away, thinking
+perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his
+eyes. Then she put back the baby girl, who had just
+vomited over her frock. The nurse at once came
+to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show.</p>
+
+<p>"She gives me other doses," she said; "I am always
+a-washing of her. If you would have the goodness
+to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a
+little soap; it would really be more convenient for
+you, as I needn't trouble you then."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good
+morning, Madame Rollet," and she went out, wiping
+her shoes at the door.</p>
+
+<p>The good woman accompanied her to the end of
+the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had
+getting up of nights.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep
+on my chair. I'm sure you might at least give me
+just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a
+month, and I'd take it of a morning with some
+milk."</p>
+
+<p>After submitting to her thanks, Madame Bovary
+left. She had gone a little way down the path
+when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned
+round. It was the nurse.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind
+an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband,
+who with his trade and six francs a year that the
+captain&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between
+each word, "I'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me
+have coffee alone; you know men&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I
+will give you some. You bother me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see, in consequence
+of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the
+chest. He even says that cider weakens him."</p>
+
+<p>"Do make haste, M&egrave;re Rollet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey,
+"if it weren't asking too much," and she curtsied
+once more, "if you would"&mdash;and her eyes begged&mdash;"a
+jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub
+your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's
+tongue."</p>
+
+<p>Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur
+L&eacute;on's arm. She walked fast for some time, then
+more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her
+eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose
+frock-coat had a black-velvet collar. His brown hair
+fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She
+noticed his nails, which were longer than one wore
+them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations
+to trim them, and for this purpose he kept
+a special knife in his writing-desk.</p>
+
+<p>They returned to Yonville by the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: water-side">waterside</ins>. In
+the warm season the bank, wider than at other times,
+showed to its foot the garden walls, whence a few
+steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together
+in it as the current drove them, and spread
+themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair;
+sometimes at the top of the reeds or on the leaf of
+a water-lily an insect with thin legs crawled or
+rested. The sun pierced with a ray the small blue
+bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each
+other; branchless old willows mirrored their gray
+backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows
+seemed empty. It was the dinner-hour at the farms,
+and the young woman and her companion heard
+nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on
+the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the
+sound of Emma's skirts rustling around her.</p>
+
+<p>The walls of the gardens, with pieces of bottle on
+their coping, were as hot as the glass windows of a
+conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up between
+the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade
+Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their
+faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray
+of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in
+its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.</p>
+
+<p>They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers
+who were expected shortly at the Rouen theatre.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"If I can," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>Had they nothing else to say to one another?
+Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and
+while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases
+they felt the same languor stealing over them both.
+It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous,
+dominating that of their voices. Surprised with
+wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think
+of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+Coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity
+before them their inborn softness, an odorous
+wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without
+a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.</p>
+
+<p>In one place the ground had been trodden down
+by the cattle; they had to step on large green stones
+put here and there in the mud. She often stopped
+a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering
+on the stone that shook, her arms outspread,
+her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she
+would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of
+water.</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame
+Bovary opened the little gate, ran up the steps and
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on returned to his office. His chief was away;
+he just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen,
+and at last took up his hat and went out.</p>
+
+<p>He went to La P&acirc;ture at the top of the Argueil
+hills at the beginning of the forest; he threw himself
+upon the ground under the pines and gazed at the
+sky through his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how
+bored I am!"</p>
+
+<p>He thought he was to be pitied for living in this
+village, with Homais for a friend and Monsieur Guillaumin
+for master. The latter, entirely absorbed by
+his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and
+red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing
+of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff
+English manner, which in the beginning had impressed
+the clerk.</p>
+
+<p>As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife
+in Normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for
+others' woes, letting everything go in her household,
+and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such
+a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of
+such restricted conversation, that although she was
+thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms
+next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never
+thought that she might be a woman for another, or
+that she possessed anything else of her sex than the
+gown.</p>
+
+<p>And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers,
+two or three publicans, the cur&eacute;, and, finally,
+Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons,
+rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own
+lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to
+boot, and quite unbearable companions.</p>
+
+<p>But from the general background of all these human
+faces Emma's stood out isolated and yet farthest
+off; for between her and him he seemed to see a
+vague abyss.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning he had called on her several
+times along with the druggist. Charles had not appeared
+particularly anxious to see him again, and
+L&eacute;on did not know what to do between his fear of
+being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that
+seemed almost impossible.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 119px;">
+<img src="images/i149.jpg" width="119" height="55" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>IV.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Silent_Homage" id="Silent_Homage"></a><span class="smcap">Silent Homage.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap150"><span class="dropcap">W</span></span><br />HEN the first cold days set in Emma
+left her bedroom for the sitting-room,
+a long apartment with a
+low ceiling, in which there was
+on the mantelpiece a large bunch
+of coral spread out against the
+looking-glass. Seated in her <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins> near the window,
+she could see the villagers pass along the
+pavement.</p>
+
+<p>Twice a day L&eacute;on went from his office to the
+Lion d'Or. Emma could hear him coming from afar;
+she leant forward listening, and the young man glided
+past the curtain, always dressed in the same way,
+and without turning his head. But in the twilight,
+when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the
+embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often
+shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly
+gliding past. She would get up and order the table
+to be laid.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap
+in hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no
+one, always repeating the same phrase, "Good evening,
+everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat
+at table between the pair, he asked the doctor about
+his patients, and the latter consulted him as to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+probability of their payment. Next they talked of
+what was in the paper. Homais by this hour knew
+it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end
+to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and
+all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred
+in France or abroad. But the subject becoming
+exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out
+some remarks on the dishes before him. Sometimes
+even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to Madame
+the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave
+her some advice on the manipulation of stews and
+the hygiene of seasoning. He talked aroma, osmazome,
+juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner.
+Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes
+than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of
+preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also
+all the last inventions in economic stoves, together
+with the art of preserving cheeses and of curing sick
+wines.</p>
+
+<p>At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut
+up the shop. Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly
+look, especially if F&eacute;licit&eacute; was there, for he had noticed
+that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have
+ideas, and the devil take me if I don't believe he's in
+love with your servant!"</p>
+
+<p>But a more serious fault with which he reproached
+Justin was his constantly listening to conversation.
+On Sunday, for example, one could not get him out
+of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had
+called him to fetch the children, who were falling
+asleep in the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chairs">armchairs</ins>, and dragging down with
+their backs calico chair-covers that were too large.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+Not many people came to these soir&eacute;es at the
+chemist's, his scandal-mongering and political opinions
+having successively alienated various respectable
+persons from him. The clerk never failed to be there.
+As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame
+Bovary, took her shawl, and put away under the
+shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over
+her boots when there was snow.</p>
+
+<p>First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next
+Monsieur Homais played &eacute;cart&eacute; with Emma; L&eacute;on behind
+her gave her advice. Standing up with his
+hands on the back of her chair, he saw the teeth of
+her comb that bit into her chignon. With every
+movement that she made to throw her cards the right
+side of her bodice was drawn up. From her turned-up
+hair a dark color fell over her back, and growing
+gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade.
+Then her skirt fell on both sides of her chair, puffing
+out, full of folds, and reaching the floor. When L&eacute;on
+occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he
+drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.</p>
+
+<p>When the game of cards was over, the druggist
+and the Doctor played dominoes, and Emma, changing
+her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning
+over the leaves of "L'Illustration." She had brought
+her ladies' journal with her. L&eacute;on sat down near her;
+they looked at the engravings together, and waited
+for each other at the bottom of the pages. She often
+begged him to read her the verses; L&eacute;on declaimed
+them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave
+a dying fall in the love passages. But the noise of
+the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais was
+strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give
+him a double-six. Then, the three hundred finished,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire,
+and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the
+cinders; the teapot was empty, L&eacute;on was still reading.
+Emma listened to him, mechanically turning
+round the lamp-shade, on the gauze of which were
+painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dancers
+with their balancing-poles. L&eacute;on stopped, pointing
+with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they
+talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed
+the more sweet to them because it was unheard.</p>
+
+<p>Thus a kind of bond was established between
+them, a constant commerce of books and of romances.
+Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did not
+trouble himself about it.</p>
+
+<p>On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological
+head, all marked with figures to the thorax, and
+painted blue. This was an attention of the clerk's.
+He showed him many others, even to doing errands for
+him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having
+made the mania for cactuses fashionable, L&eacute;on bought
+some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on his
+knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers with
+their stiff hairs.</p>
+
+<p>She had a board with a balustrade fixed against
+her window to hold the pots. The clerk, too, had
+his small hanging garden; they saw each other tending
+their flowers at their windows.</p>
+
+<p>Of the windows of the village there was one yet
+more often occupied; for on Sundays, from morning to
+night, and every morning when the weather was
+bright, one could see at the dormer-window of a
+garret the profile of Monsieur Binet bending over his
+lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard
+at the Lion d'Or.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+One evening on coming home L&eacute;on found in his
+room a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale
+ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur Homais,
+Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his
+chief; every one wished to see this rug. Why did the
+doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked queer.
+They decided that she must be in love with him.</p>
+
+<p>He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he
+talk of her charms and of her wit; so much so, that
+Binet once roughly answered him:</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her
+set?"</p>
+
+<p>He tortured himself to find out how he could
+make his declaration to her, and, always halting between
+the fear of displeasing her and the shame of
+being such a coward, he wept with discouragement
+and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote
+letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he
+again deferred. Often he set out with the determination
+to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him
+in Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in,
+invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him
+to see some patient in the neighborhood, he at once
+accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her
+husband, was he not something belonging to her?</p>
+
+<p>As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she
+loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with
+great outbursts and lightnings,&mdash;a hurricane of the
+skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up
+the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into
+the abyss. She did not know that on the terraces of
+houses lakes are formed when the pipes are choked,
+and she would thus have remained in her security
+when she suddenly discovered a rent in its wall.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>V.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Smothered_Flames" id="Smothered_Flames"></a><span class="smcap">Smothered Flames.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap155"><span class="dropcap">I</span></span><br />T WAS a Sunday in February, an
+afternoon when the snow was falling.</p>
+
+<p>They had all, Monsieur and
+Madame Bovary, Homais, and
+Monsieur L&eacute;on, gone to see a yarn-mill
+that was being built in the valley a mile and half
+from Yonville. The druggist had taken <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads &quot;Napoleon&quot; without an accent">Napol&eacute;on</ins> and
+Athalie to give them some exercise, and Justin accompanied
+them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, however, could be less curious than this
+curiosity. A great piece of waste ground, on which
+pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and stones, were a
+few brake-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a
+quadrangular building pierced by a number of little
+windows. The building was unfinished; the sky
+could be seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached
+to the top-plank of the gable a bunch of straw
+mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricolored ribbons
+in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Homais was talking. He explained to the company
+the future importance of this establishment,
+computed the strength of the floorings, the thickness
+of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>
+yard-stick such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his
+own special use.</p>
+
+<p>Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against
+his shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding
+afar through the mist his pale splendor. She
+turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn
+down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were
+trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his
+face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to
+behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the
+platitude of the bearer.</p>
+
+<p>While she was considering him thus, tasting in her
+irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, L&eacute;on made a
+step forward. The cold that made him pale seemed
+to add a more gentle languor to his face; between
+his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar of
+his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked
+out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue
+eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more
+limpid and more beautiful than those mountain-lakes
+where the heavens are mirrored.</p>
+
+<p>"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.</p>
+
+<p>And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated
+himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his
+boots. At the reproaches with which he was being
+overwhelmed <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads &quot;Napoleon&quot; without an accent">Napol&eacute;on</ins> began to roar, while Justin
+dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife
+was wanted; Charles offered his.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carries a knife in
+his pocket like a peasant."</p>
+
+<p>The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back
+to Yonville.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her
+neighbor's, and when Charles had left and she felt
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+herself alone, the comparison recurred with the clearness
+of a sensation almost actual, and with that
+lengthening of perspective which memory gives to
+things. Looking from her bed at the clear fire that
+was burning, she still saw, as she had down there,
+L&eacute;on standing up with one hand bending his cane,
+and with the other holding Athalie, who was quietly
+sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming;
+she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled
+his other attitudes on other days, the words he
+had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person;
+and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for
+a kiss&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?"
+she asked herself; "but with whom? With me?"</p>
+
+<p>All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart
+leapt. The flame of the fire threw a joyous light
+upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching
+out her arms.</p>
+
+<p>Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if
+Heaven had but willed it! And why not? What
+prevented it?"</p>
+
+<p>When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed
+to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing,
+she complained of a headache, then asked
+carelessly what had happened that evening.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur L&eacute;on," he said, "went to his room
+early."</p>
+
+<p>She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep,
+her soul filled with a new delight.</p>
+
+<p>The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from
+Monsieur Lheureux, the draper. He was a man of
+ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred
+a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless
+face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his
+white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance
+of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had
+been formerly; a pedlar, said some, a banker at Routot,
+according to others. What was certain was, that he
+made complex calculations in his head that would
+have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness,
+he always held himself with his back bent in
+the position of one who bows or who invites.</p>
+
+<p>After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with
+crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table,
+and began by complaining to madame, with many
+civilities, that he should have remained till that day
+without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like
+his was not made to attract a "fashionable lady;" he
+emphasized the words; yet she had only to command,
+and he would undertake to provide her with anything
+she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery
+or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly
+four times a month. He was connected with the
+best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois
+Fr&egrave;res," at the "Barbe d'Or," or at the "Grand
+Sauvage;" all these gentlemen knew him as well as
+the insides of their pockets. To-day, then, he had
+come to show madame, in passing, various articles
+he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity.
+And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered
+collars from the box.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require
+anything," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three
+Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles,
+a pair of straw slippers, and, finally, four eggcups in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+cocoa-nut wood, carved in open-work by convicts.
+Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched
+out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched
+Emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided
+amid these goods. From time to time, as if to
+remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk
+of the scarves spread out at full length, and they
+rustled with a little noise, making in the green twilight
+the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like
+little stars.</p>
+
+<p>"How much are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing.
+But there's no hurry; whenever it's convenient. We
+are not Jews."</p>
+
+<p>She reflected for a few moments, and ended by
+again declining Monsieur Lheureux's offer. He replied
+quite unconcernedly:</p>
+
+<p>"Very well. We shall understand each other by
+and by. I have always got on with ladies&mdash;if I
+didn't with my own!"</p>
+
+<p>Emma smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly,
+after his joke, "that it isn't the money I should
+trouble about. Why, I could give you some, if need
+be."</p>
+
+<p>She made a gesture of surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I
+shouldn't have to go far to find you some, rely on
+that."</p>
+
+<p>And he began asking after P&egrave;re Tellier, the proprietor
+of the "Caf&eacute; Fran&ccedil;ais," whom Monsieur Bovary
+was then attending.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter with P&egrave;re Tellier? He coughs
+so that he shakes his whole house, and I'm afraid
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+he'll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel
+vest. He was such a rake as a young man! That
+sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity;
+he's burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the same,
+to see an acquaintance go off."</p>
+
+<p>And while he fastened up his box he discoursed
+about the doctor's patients.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking
+frowningly at the floor, "that causes these illnesses.
+I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these days I shall
+even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in
+my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your
+service; your very humble servant." And he closed
+the door gently.</p>
+
+<p>Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on
+a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it;
+everything was well with her.</p>
+
+<p>"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking
+of the scarves.</p>
+
+<p>She heard some steps on the stairs. It was L&eacute;on.
+She got up and took from the chest of drawers the
+first of a pile of dusters to be hemmed. When he
+came in she seemed very busy.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave
+it up every few minutes, while he himself seemed
+quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near the
+fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case.
+She stitched on, or from time to time turned
+down the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did
+not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence,
+as he would have been by her speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor fellow!" she thought.</p>
+
+<p>"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.</p>
+
+<p>At last, however, L&eacute;on said that he should have,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+one of these days, to go to Rouen on some office
+business.</p>
+
+<p>"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long
+stitch of gray thread.</p>
+
+<p>This work irritated L&eacute;on. It seemed to roughen
+the ends of her fingers. A gallant phrase came into
+his head, but he did not risk it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah!
+yes! Have I not my house to look after, my husband
+to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many
+duties that must be considered first?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then
+she affected anxiety. Two or three times she even
+repeated, "He is so good!"</p>
+
+<p>The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this
+tenderness in his behalf astonished him unpleasantly;
+nevertheless he took up his praises, which he said
+every one was singing, especially the chemist.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," replied the clerk.</p>
+
+<p>And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose
+very untidy appearance generally made them laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A
+good housewife does not trouble about her appearance."</p>
+
+<p>Then she relapsed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>It was the same on the following days; her talk,
+her manners, everything changed. She took interest
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+in the house-work, went to church regularly, and
+looked after her servant with more severity.</p>
+
+<p>She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called,
+F&eacute;licit&eacute; brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed
+her to show off her limbs. She declared she adored
+children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion,
+and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical
+outbursts which would have reminded any one but
+the Yonville people of Sachette in "N&ocirc;tre Dame de
+Paris."</p>
+
+<p>When Charles came home he found his slippers
+put to warm near the fire. His waistcoat now never
+wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite
+a pleasure to see in the cupboard the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: night-caps">nightcaps</ins> arranged
+in piles of the same height. She no longer
+grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden;
+what he proposed was always done, although she did
+not understand the wishes to which she submitted
+without a murmur; and when L&eacute;on saw him by his
+fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
+his two feet on the fender, his cheeks red with feeding,
+his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling
+along the carpet, and this woman with the slender
+waist who came behind his <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins> to kiss his forehead:</p>
+
+<p>"What madness!" he said to himself. "And how
+to reach her!"</p>
+
+<p>And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible
+to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But
+by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary
+pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes
+from which he had nothing to obtain, and in
+his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed
+from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+that is taking wing. It was one of those pure
+feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated
+because they are rare, and whose loss would
+afflict more than their passion rejoices.</p>
+
+<p>Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face
+longer. With her black hair, her large eyes, her
+aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent
+now, did she not seem to be passing through life
+scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the
+vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so
+sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,
+that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm,
+as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the
+flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. The
+others even did not escape from this seduction. The
+chemist said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be
+misplaced in a sub-prefecture."</p>
+
+<p>The housewives admired her economy, the patients
+her politeness, the poor her charity.</p>
+
+<p>But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with
+hate. That dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted
+heart, of whose torment those chaste lips said
+nothing. She was in love with L&eacute;on, and sought
+solitude that she might with the more ease delight in his
+image. The sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness
+of this meditation. Emma thrilled at the
+sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion
+subsided, and afterwards there remained to her only
+an immense astonishment that ended in sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on did not know that when he left her in despair,
+she rose after he had gone to see him in the
+street. She concerned herself about his comings and
+goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+history to find an excuse for going to his room. The
+chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the
+same roof, and her thoughts constantly centred upon this
+house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there
+to dip their red feet and white wings in its gutters.
+But the more Emma recognized her love, the more
+she crushed it down, that it might not be evident,
+that she might make it less. She would have liked
+L&eacute;on to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes
+that should facilitate this. What restrained her
+was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame
+also. She thought she had repulsed him too much,
+that the time was past, that all was lost. Then pride,
+the joy of being able to say to herself, "I am virtuous,"
+and to look at herself in the glass taking
+resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice
+she believed she was making.</p>
+
+<p>Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money,
+and the melancholy of passion, all blended themselves
+into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts
+from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to
+pain, and seeking everywhere occasions for it. She
+was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open
+door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness
+she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow
+home.</p>
+
+<p>What exasperated her was that Charles did not
+seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he
+was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult,
+and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For
+whose sake, then, was she virtuous? Was it not for
+him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery,
+and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap
+that buckled her in on all sides?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various
+hatreds that resulted from her boredom, and every
+effort to diminish only augmented it; for this useless
+trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,
+and contributed still more to the separation between
+them. Her own gentleness to herself made her rebel
+against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd
+fancies, marriage tendernesses to adulterous desires.
+She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she
+might have a better right to hate him, to revenge
+herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at
+the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts,
+and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to
+her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be
+happy, to let it be believed.</p>
+
+<p>Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was
+seized with the temptation to flee somewhere with
+L&eacute;on to try a new life; but at once a vague chasm
+full of darkness opened within her soul.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought.
+"What is to become of me? What help is to be
+hoped for, what consolation, what solace?"</p>
+
+<p>She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in
+a low voice, with flowing tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked
+her when she came in during these crises.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak
+to him of it; it would worry him."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes," F&eacute;licit&eacute; went on, "you are just like
+La Gu&eacute;rine, P&egrave;re Gu&eacute;rin's daughter, the fisherman at
+Pollet, that I used to know at Dieppe before I came
+to you. She was so sad, so sad, that to see her
+standing upright on the threshold of her house, she
+seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+the door. Her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog
+that she had in her head, and the doctors could not
+do anything, nor the priest either. When she was
+taken too bad she went off quite alone to the seashore,
+so that the customs officer, going his rounds,
+often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the
+shingle. Then, after her marriage, it went off, they
+say."</p>
+
+<p>"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage
+that it began."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 129px;">
+<img src="images/i166.jpg" width="129" height="65" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>VI.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Spiritual_Counsel" id="Spiritual_Counsel"></a><span class="smcap">Spiritual Counsel.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap167"><span class="dropcap">O</span></span><br />NE evening when the window was
+open, and she, sitting by it, had
+been watching Lestiboudois, the
+beadle, trimming the box, she
+suddenly heard the Angelus ringing.</p>
+
+<p>It was the beginning of April, when the primroses
+are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the
+flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like
+women, seem to be getting ready for the summer
+f&ecirc;tes. Through the bars of the arbor and away
+beyond, the river could be seen in the fields, meandering
+through the grass in wandering curves. The evening
+vapors rose between the leafless poplars, touching
+their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more
+transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their
+branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither
+their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the
+bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful
+lamentation.</p>
+
+<p>With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the
+young woman lost themselves in old memories of
+her youth and school-days. She remembered the
+great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of
+flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+small columns. She would have liked to be once
+more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off
+here and there by the stiff black hoods of the good
+sisters bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays,
+when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of
+the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense.
+Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and
+quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by
+the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went
+towards the church, inclined to no matter what devotions,
+so that her soul was absorbed and all existence
+lost in it.</p>
+
+<p>On the Place she met Lestiboudois on his way
+back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labor, he
+preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it
+again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own
+convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier
+warned the lads of catechism hour.</p>
+
+<p>Already a few who had arrived were playing
+marbles on the stones of the cemetery. Others,
+astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their
+clogs the large nettles growing between the little
+enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only
+green spot. All the rest was but stones, always
+covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.</p>
+
+<p>The children in list shoes ran about there as if it
+were an enclosure made for them. The shouts of
+their voices could be heard through the humming of
+the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging
+of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the
+belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows
+flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with
+the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. At the
+end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of
+a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a
+distance looked like a white stain trembling in the
+oil. A long ray of the sun fell across the nave and
+seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the cur&eacute;?" asked Madame Bovary of
+one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking
+a swivel in a hole too large for it.</p>
+
+<p>"He is just coming," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>And in fact the door of the presbytery grated;
+Abb&eacute; Bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled
+into the church.</p>
+
+<p>"These young scamps!" murmured the priest,
+"always the same!" Then, picking up a catechism
+all in rags that he had struck with his foot, "They
+respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of
+Madame Bovary, "Excuse me," he said; "I did not
+recognize you."</p>
+
+<p>He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and
+stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between
+his two fingers.</p>
+
+<p>The light of the setting sun that fell full upon
+his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the
+elbows, ravelled at the hem. Grease and tobacco
+stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the
+buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they
+were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds
+of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow
+spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his
+greyish beard. He had just dined, and was breathing
+noisily.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you?" he added.</p>
+
+<p>"Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+"Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These
+first warm days weaken one most remarkably, don't
+they? But, after all, we are born to suffer, as St.
+Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think
+of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He!" she said with a gesture of contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished,
+"doesn't he prescribe something for you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I
+need."</p>
+
+<p>But the cur&eacute; from time to time looked into the
+church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering
+one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to know&mdash;" she went on.</p>
+
+<p>"You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an
+angry voice; "I'll warm your ears, you imp!" Then
+turning to Emma. "He's Boudet the carpenter's son;
+his parents are well off, and let him do just as he
+pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he would, for
+he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call
+him <i>Ri</i>boudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme),
+and I even say '<i>Mon</i> Riboudet.' Ha! ha!
+'<i>Mont</i> Riboudet.' The other day I repeated that jest
+to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended
+to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"</p>
+
+<p>She seemed not to hear him. And he went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are
+certainly the busiest people in the parish. But he is
+doctor of the body," he added with a thick laugh,
+"and I of the soul."</p>
+
+<p>She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest.
+"Yes," she said, "you solace all sorrows."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary.
+This morning I had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+that was ill; they thought it was under a spell. All
+their cows, I don't know how it is&mdash;But pardon me!
+Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! will you leave
+off?"</p>
+
+<p>And with a bound he ran into the church.</p>
+
+<p>The boys were just then clustering round the large
+desk, climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening
+the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to
+venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly
+distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing
+them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from
+the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the
+stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting
+them there.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding
+his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of
+which he put between his teeth, "farmers are much
+to be pitied."</p>
+
+<p>"Others, too," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly. Town-laborers, for example."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not they&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families,
+virtuous women, I assure you, real saints, who
+wanted even bread."</p>
+
+<p>"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of
+her mouth twitched as she spoke, "those, Monsieur
+le Cur&eacute;, who have bread and have no&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Fire in the winter," said the priest.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what does that matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"What! What does it matter? It seems to me
+that when one has firing and food&mdash;for, after all&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My God! my God!" she sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel unwell?" he asked, approaching her
+anxiously. "It is indigestion, no doubt? You must
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+get home, Madame Bovary; drink a little tea, that
+will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water
+with a little moist sugar."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" And she looked like one awaking
+from a dream.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to
+your forehead. I thought you felt faint." Then, bethinking
+himself, "But you were asking me something?
+What was it? I really don't remember."</p>
+
+<p>"I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma.</p>
+
+<p>And the glance she cast round her slowly fell
+upon the old man in the cassock. They looked at
+one another face to face without speaking.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse
+me, but duty first, you know; I must look after
+my good-for-nothings. The first communion will
+soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after
+all. So after Ascension Day I keep them <i>recta</i> an
+extra hour every Wednesday. Poor children! One
+cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord,
+as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do
+by the mouth of His Divine Son. Good health to
+you, madame; my respects to your husband."</p>
+
+<p>And he went into the church making a genuflexion
+as soon as he reached the door.</p>
+
+<p>Emma saw him disappear between the double
+row of forms, walking with heavy tread, his head a
+little bent over his shoulder, and with his two hands
+half-open behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned on her heel with one movement,
+like a statue on a pivot, and went homewards. But
+the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices of the
+boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a Christian?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+"Yes, I am a Christian?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is a Christian?"</p>
+
+<p>"He who, being baptized&mdash;baptized&mdash;baptized&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She went up the steps of the staircase holding on
+to the banisters, and when she was in her room
+threw herself into an <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>The whitish light of the window-panes fell with
+soft undulations. The furniture in its place seemed
+to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in
+the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was
+out, the clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely
+marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself
+was such tumult. But little Berthe was there,
+between the window and the work-table, tottering on
+her knitted shoes, and trying to come to her mother
+to catch hold of the ends of her apron-strings.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her
+from her with her hand.</p>
+
+<p>The little girl soon came up closer against her
+knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked
+up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of
+pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone," repeated the young woman
+quite irritably.</p>
+
+<p>Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing
+her with her elbow.</p>
+
+<p>Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the
+brass handle, cutting against it her cheek, which
+began to bleed. Madame Bovary sprang to lift her
+up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with
+all her might, and she was just going to curse herself
+when Charles appeared. It was the dinner-hour; he
+had come home.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+"Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the
+little one fell down while she was playing, and has
+hurt herself."</p>
+
+<p>Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious
+one, and he went for some sticking plaster.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the
+dining-room; she wished to remain alone to look
+after the child. Then, watching her sleep, the little
+anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed
+very stupid to herself, and very good to have been
+so worried just now at so little. Berthe, in fact, no
+longer sobbed. Her breathing now imperceptibly
+raised the cotton covering. Big tears lay in the corner
+of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes
+one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster
+stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly
+this child is!"</p>
+
+<p>When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from
+the chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner
+to return the remainder of the sticking-plaster, he
+found his wife standing by the cradle.</p>
+
+<p>"I assure you it's nothing," he said, kissing her
+on the forehead. "Don't worry, my poor darling;
+you will make yourself ill."</p>
+
+<p>He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although
+he had not seemed much moved, Homais,
+nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to
+"keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the
+various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness
+of servants. Madame Homais knew something
+of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by
+a basin full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped
+on her pinafore, and her good parents took no end
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+of trouble for her. The knives were not sharpened,
+nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the
+windows and strong bars across the fireplace; the
+little Homaises, in spite of their spirit, could not stir
+without some one watching them; at the slightest
+cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and
+until they were turned four they all, without pity, had
+to wear wadded head-protectors. This, it is true,
+was a fancy of Madame Homais's; her husband was
+inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences
+of such compression to the intellectual organs,
+he even went so far as to say to her, "Do
+you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?"</p>
+
+<p>Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt
+the conversation. "I should like to speak to
+you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear, who went
+upstairs in front of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Can he suspect anything?" L&eacute;on asked himself.
+His heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises.</p>
+
+<p>At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him
+to see himself what would be the price at Rouen of
+a fine daguerreotype. It was a sentimental surprise
+he intended for his wife, a delicate attention&mdash;his
+portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to
+know how much it would be. The inquiries would
+not put Monsieur L&eacute;on out, since he went to town
+almost every week.</p>
+
+<p>Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young
+man's affair" at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But
+he was mistaken. L&eacute;on was after no love-making.
+He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois saw
+from the amount of food he left on his plate. To
+find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>
+Binet answered roughly that he wasn't paid by the
+police.</p>
+
+<p>All the same, his companion seemed very strange
+to him, for L&eacute;on often threw himself back in his
+chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>"It's because you don't take enough recreation,"
+said the collector.</p>
+
+<p>"What recreation?"</p>
+
+<p>"If I were you I'd have a lathe."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't know how to turn," answered the
+clerk.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin
+with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on was weary of loving without any result;
+moreover, he was beginning to feel that depression
+caused by the repetition of the same kind of life,
+when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it.
+He was so bored with Yonville and the Yonvillers,
+that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses,
+irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist,
+good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely
+unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new
+condition of life frightened as much as it seduced
+him.</p>
+
+<p>This apprehension soon changed into impatience,
+and then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked
+balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish
+reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented
+him? And he began making home preparations;
+he arranged his occupations beforehand. He
+furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead
+an artist's life there! He would take lessons on the
+guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring
+two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with
+a death's-head on the guitar above them.</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing,
+however, seemed more reasonable. Even his
+employer advised him to go to some other chambers
+where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a
+middle course, then, L&eacute;on looked for some place as
+second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote
+his mother a long letter full of details, in which he
+set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately.
+She consented.</p>
+
+<p>He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert
+carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville
+to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and when
+L&eacute;on had packed up his wardrobe, had his three
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchairs</ins> restuffed, bought a stock of cravats, in a
+word, had made more preparations than for a voyage
+round the world, he put it off from week to week,
+until he received a second letter from his mother
+urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination
+before the vacation.</p>
+
+<p>When the moment for the farewells had come,
+Madame Homais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a
+man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to
+carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate
+of the notary, who was taking L&eacute;on to Rouen in his
+carriage. The latter had just time to bid farewell to
+Monsieur Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the head of the stairs he stopped,
+he was so out of breath. On his coming in, Madame
+Bovary rose hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is I again!" said L&eacute;on.</p>
+
+<p>"I was sure of it!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing
+under her skin made her red from the roots of her
+hair to the top of her collar. She remained standing,
+leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor is not here?" he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"He is out." She repeated, "He is out."</p>
+
+<p>Then there was silence. They looked one at the
+other, and their thoughts, confounded in the same
+agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts.</p>
+
+<p>"I should like to kiss Berthe," said L&eacute;on.</p>
+
+<p>Emma went down a few steps and called F&eacute;licit&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>He threw one long look around him that took in
+the walls, the brackets, the fireplace, as if to penetrate
+everything, carry away everything. But she returned,
+and the servant brought Berthe, who was
+swinging a windmill roof downward at the end of a
+string. L&eacute;on kissed her several times on the neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one!
+good-bye!"</p>
+
+<p>And he gave her back to her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Take her away," she said.</p>
+
+<p>They remained alone&mdash;Madame Bovary, her back
+turned, her face pressed against a window-pane;
+L&eacute;on held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly
+against his thigh.</p>
+
+<p>"It is going to rain," said Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a cloak," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned round, her chin lowered, her forehead
+bent forward. The light fell on it as on a piece of
+marble to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's
+being able to guess what Emma was seeing in the
+horizon or what she was thinking within herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, good-bye," he sighed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+She raised her head with a quick movement.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, good-bye&mdash;go!"</p>
+
+<p>They advanced toward each other; he held out his
+hand; she hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"In the English fashion, then," she said, giving
+her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>L&eacute;on felt it between his fingers, and the very essence
+of all his being seemed to pass down into that
+moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes
+met again, and he disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the market-place, he stopped
+and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at
+this white house with the four green blinds. He
+thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the
+room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though
+no one were touching it, slowly opened its long
+oblique folds, that spread out with a single movement,
+and thus hung straight and motionless as a
+plaster wall. L&eacute;on set off running.</p>
+
+<p>From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road,
+and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse.
+Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were talking. They
+were waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Embrace me," said the chemist with tears in his
+eyes. "Here is your coat, my good friend. Mind
+the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, L&eacute;on, jump in," said the notary.</p>
+
+<p>Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice
+broken by sobs, uttered these three sad words:</p>
+
+<p>"A pleasant journey!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give
+him his head."</p>
+
+<p>They set out, and Homais went back.</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking
+the garden and watched the clouds. They were
+gathering round the sunset on the side of Rouen, and
+swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which
+the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden
+arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the
+empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust
+of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain
+fell; it pattered against the green leaves. Then the
+sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook
+their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of
+water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off
+the pink flowers of an acacia.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six
+during dinner.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young
+friend!"</p>
+
+<p>"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning
+on his chair: "Any news at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little
+moved this afternoon. You know women&mdash;a nothing
+upsets them, especially my wife. And we should
+be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization
+is much more malleable than ours."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor L&eacute;on!" said Charles. "How will he live
+at Paris? Will he get used to it?"</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips.
+"The outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the
+champagne&mdash;all that'll be jolly enough, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although
+he'll have to do like the rest for fear of passing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+for a Jesuit. And you don't know what a life
+those dogs lead in the Latin Quarter with actresses.
+Besides, students are thought a great deal of at Paris.
+Provided they have a few accomplishments, they are
+received in the best society; there are even ladies of
+the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with
+them, which subsequently furnishes them opportunities
+for making very good matches."</p>
+
+<p>"But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down
+there&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is
+the reverse of the medal. And one is constantly
+obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket there.
+Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden.
+An individual presents himself, well dressed, even
+wearing an order, whom any one would take for a
+diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself;
+offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your
+hat. Then you become more intimate; he takes you
+to a caf&eacute;, invites you to his country-house, introduces
+you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and
+three fourths of the time it's only to plunder your
+watch or lead you into some pernicious step."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking
+especially of illnesses&mdash;of typhoid fever, for example,
+that attacks students from the provinces."</p>
+
+<p>Emma shuddered.</p>
+
+<p>"Because of the change of regimen," continued
+the chemist, "and of the perturbation that results
+therefrom in the whole system. And then the water
+at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants,
+all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are
+not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good
+soup. For my own part, I have always preferred
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+plain living; it is more healthful. So when I was
+studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boardinghouse;
+I dined with the professors."</p>
+
+<p>And thus he went on, expounding his opinions
+generally and his personal likings, until Justin came
+to fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at
+it! I can't go out for a minute! Like a plough-horse,
+I have always to be moiling and toiling. What
+drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By
+the way, do you know the news?"</p>
+
+<p>"What news?"</p>
+
+<p>"That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising
+his eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious
+expressions, "that the agricultural meeting of the
+Seine-Inf&eacute;rieure will be held this year at Yonville-l'Abbaye.
+The rumor, at all events, is going the
+round. This morning the paper alluded to it. It
+would be of the utmost importance for our district.
+But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you;
+Justin has the lantern."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 102px;">
+<img src="images/i182.jpg" width="102" height="65" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>VII.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_Womans_Whims" id="A_Womans_Whims"></a><span class="smcap">A Woman's Whims.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap183"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />HE next day was a dreary one for
+Emma. Every thing seemed to her
+enveloped in a black atmosphere
+floating confusedly over the exterior
+of things, and sorrow was
+engulphed within her soul with soft
+shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined
+castles. It was that reverie which we give to things
+that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after
+everything done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption
+of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation
+of any prolonged vibration, brings on.</p>
+
+<p>As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the
+quadrilles were running in her head, she was full of
+a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. L&eacute;on reappeared,
+taller, handsomer, more charming, more
+vague. Though separated from her, he had not left
+her; he was there, and the walls of the house seemed
+to hold his shadow. She could not detach her eyes
+from the carpet where he had walked, from those
+empty chairs where he had sat. The river still
+flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the
+slippery banks. They had often walked there to the
+murmur of the waves, over the moss-covered pebbles.
+How bright the sun had been! What happy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the
+end of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, sitting
+on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of
+the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and
+the nasturtiums of the arbor. Ah! he was gone, the
+only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy.
+Why had she not seized this happiness when it
+came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with
+both hands, with both knees, when it was about to
+flee from her? And she cursed herself for not having
+loved L&eacute;on. She thirsted for his lips. The wish
+took possession of her to run after and rejoin him,
+throw herself into his arms and say to him, "It is I;
+I am yours." But Emma recoiled beforehand at the
+difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased
+by regret, became only the more acute.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth the memory of L&eacute;on was the centre
+of her boredom; it burnt there more brightly than
+the fire travelers leave on the snow of a Russian
+steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed against
+him, she stirred carefully the dying embers, sought
+all around her anything that could revive it; and the
+most distant reminiscences, like the most immediate
+occasions, what she experienced as well as what she
+imagined, her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied,
+her projects of happiness that crackled in the
+wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost
+hopes, the domestic t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te,&mdash;she gathered it all
+up, took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for
+her melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>The flames, however, subsided, either because the
+supply had exhausted itself, or because it had been
+piled up too much. Love, little by little, was quelled
+by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+light that had empurpled her pale sky was
+overspread and faded by degrees. In the supineness
+of her conscience she even took her repugnance
+towards her husband for aspirations towards her
+lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness;
+but as the tempest still raged, and as passion
+burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help
+came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and
+she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her.</p>
+
+<p>Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She
+thought herself now far more unhappy; for she had
+the experience of grief, with the certainty that it
+would not end.</p>
+
+<p>A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices
+could well allow herself certain whims. She bought
+a gothic prie-Dieu, and in a month spent fourteen
+francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote
+to Rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one
+of Lheureux's finest scarves, and wore it knotted
+round her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with
+closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched
+out on a couch in this garb.</p>
+
+<p>She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair
+<i>&agrave; la Chinoise</i>, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she
+parted it on one side and rolled it under like a
+man's.</p>
+
+<p>She wished to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries,
+a grammar, and a supply of white paper. She
+tried serious reading, history, and philosophy. Sometimes
+in the night Charles woke up with a start,
+thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming,"
+he stammered; and it was the noise of a match
+Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But her reading
+fared like her pieces of embroidery, all of which,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up,
+left it, passed on to other books.</p>
+
+<p>She had attacks in which she could easily have
+been driven to commit any folly. She maintained one
+day, in opposition to her husband, that she could
+drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Charles was
+stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed the
+brandy to the last drop.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her vaporish airs (as the housewives
+of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never
+seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of
+her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the
+faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition
+has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet;
+the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her
+eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three
+gray hairs on her temples, she talked much of her
+old age.</p>
+
+<p>She often fainted. One day she even spat blood,
+and, as Charles fussed round her showing his anxiety&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?"</p>
+
+<p>Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his
+elbows on the table, sitting in an <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins> at his
+bureau under the phrenological head.</p>
+
+<p>Then he wrote to his mother to beg her to come,
+and they had many long consultations together on the
+subject of Emma.</p>
+
+<p>What should they decide? What was to be done
+since she rejected all medical treatment?</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what your wife wants?" replied
+Madame Bovary, senior. "She wants to be forced to
+occupy herself with some manual work. If she were
+obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+wouldn't have these vapors, that come to her from
+a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the
+idleness in which she lives."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet she is always busy," said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels,
+bad books, works against religion, in which they
+mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire.
+But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Any
+one who has no religion always ends by turning out
+badly."</p>
+
+<p>So they decided to stop Emma from reading novels.
+The enterprise did not seem easy. The good lady
+undertook it. She was, when she passed through
+Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent
+that Emma had discontinued her subscription.
+Would they not have a right to apply to the police
+if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous
+trade?</p>
+
+<p>The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were
+cold. During the three weeks that they had been together
+they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words
+apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met
+at table and in the evening before going to bed.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day
+at Yonville.</p>
+
+<p>The Place since morning had been blocked by a
+row of carts, which, on end and their shafts in the
+air, spread all along the line of houses from the
+church to the inn. On the other side there were
+canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and
+woollen stockings were sold, together with harness
+for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose
+ends fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware
+was spread out on the ground between pyramids of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw
+stuck out. Near the corn-machines clucking hens
+passed their necks through the bars of flat cages.
+The people, crowding in the same place and unwilling
+to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash
+the shop-front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his
+shop was never empty, and the people pushed in
+less to buy drugs than for consultations, so great
+was Homais's reputation in the neighboring villages.
+His robust aplomb had fascinated the rustics. They
+considered him a greater doctor than all the doctors.</p>
+
+<p>Emma was leaning out at the window; she was
+often there. The window in the provinces replaces
+the theatre and the promenade, and she amused herself
+with watching the crowd of boors, when she
+saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. He had on
+yellow gloves, although he wore heavy gaiters; he
+was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by
+a peasant walking with bent head and quite a
+thoughtful air.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who
+was talking on the doorsteps with F&eacute;licit&eacute;, and,
+taking him for a servant of the house: "Tell him
+that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is
+here."</p>
+
+<p>It was not from territorial vanity that the new
+arrival added "of La Huchette" to his name, but to
+make himself the better known. La Huchette, in
+fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just
+bought the ch&acirc;teau and two farms that he cultivated
+himself, without, however, troubling very much
+about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed
+to have at least fifteen thousand francs a year.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger
+introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because
+he felt "a tingling all over."</p>
+
+<p>"That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to
+all reasoning.</p>
+
+<p>So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and
+asked Justin to hold it. Then addressing the countryman,
+already pale&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid, my lad."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, sir," said the other; "get on."</p>
+
+<p>And with an air of bravado he held out his great
+arm. At the prick of the lancet the blood spurted
+out, splashing against the looking-glass.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it
+was a little fountain flowing. How red my blood is!
+That's a good sign isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels
+nothing at first, and then syncope sets in, and more
+especially with people of strong constitution like this
+man."</p>
+
+<p>At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he
+was twisting between his fingers. A shudder of his
+shoulders made the chair-back creak. His hat fell off.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought as much," said Bovary, pressing his
+finger on the vein.</p>
+
+<p>The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin's
+hands; his knees shook, he turned pale.</p>
+
+<p>"Emma! Emma!" called Charles.</p>
+
+<p>With one bound she came down the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>"Some vinegar," he cried. "O dear! two at
+once!"</p>
+
+<p>And in his emotion he could hardly put on the
+compress.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+"It is nothing," said Monsieur Boulanger quietly,
+taking Justin in his arms. He seated him on the
+table with his back resting against the wall.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The
+strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was
+for some minutes moving her light fingers about the
+young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar
+on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples
+with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly.
+The ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope still
+lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in their pale
+sclerotic like blue flowers in milk.</p>
+
+<p>"We must hide this from him," said Charles.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the
+table. With the movement she made in bending
+down, her skirt (it was a summer frock with four
+flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the
+skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the
+room; and as Emma, stooping, staggered a little as
+she stretched out her arms, the stuff here and there
+gave with the inflections of her bust. Then she
+went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting
+some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. The
+servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing
+his pupil with his eyes open he drew a long breath;
+then going round him he looked at him from head
+to foot.</p>
+
+<p>"Fool!" he said, "really a little fool! A fool in
+four letters! A phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it!
+And a fellow who isn't afraid of anything; a kind of
+squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous
+heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk
+to me, boast about yourself! Here's a fine fitness for
+practising pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+you may be called before the tribunals in
+order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and
+you would have to keep your head then, to reason,
+show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile."</p>
+
+<p>Justin did not answer. The chemist went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering
+the doctor and madame. On Wednesday,
+moreover, your presence is indispensable to me.
+There are now twenty people in the shop. I left
+everything because of the interest I take in you.
+Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep
+an eye on the jars."</p>
+
+<p>When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had
+gone, they talked for a little while about fainting-fits.
+Madame Bovary said she had never fainted.</p>
+
+<p>"That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur
+Boulanger; "but some people are very susceptible.
+Thus, in a duel, I have seen a second lose consciousness
+at the mere sound of the loading of pistols."</p>
+
+<p>"For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of
+other people's blood doesn't affect me at all, but the
+mere thought of my own flowing would make me
+faint, if I reflected upon it too much."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant,
+advising him to calm himself, since his fancy
+was over.</p>
+
+<p>"It procured me the advantage of making your
+acquaintance," he added, and he looked at Emma as
+he said this. Then he put three francs on the corner
+of the table, bowed negligently, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>He was soon on the other side of the river (this
+was his way back to La Huchette), and Emma saw
+him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening
+his pace now and then as one who reflects.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+"She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is
+very pretty, this doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes,
+a dainty foot, a figure like a Parisienne's. Where
+the devil does she come from? Wherever did this
+fat fellow pick her up?"</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he
+was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity,
+having, moreover, had much to do with women,
+and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty
+to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him,
+no doubt. He has dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for
+three days. While he is trotting after his patients,
+she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored!
+She would like to live in town and dance polkas
+every evening. Poor little woman! She is gaping
+after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.
+With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm
+sure of it. She'd be tender, charming! Yes; but
+how get rid of her afterwards?"</p>
+
+<p>Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the
+distance made him by contrast think of his mistress.
+She was an actress at Rouen, whom he kept; and
+when he had pondered over this image, with which,
+even in remembrance, he was satiated&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much
+prettier, especially fresher. Virginie is decidedly beginning
+to grow fat. She is so finikin with her
+pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns."</p>
+
+<p>The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe
+heard only the regular beating of the grass striking
+against his boots, with the cry of the grasshopper hidden
+at a distance among the oats. He again saw
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+Emma in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and
+he undressed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow
+with his stick at a clod in front of him. And he at
+once began to consider the political part of the enterprise.
+He asked himself&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall we meet? By what means? We
+shall always be having the brat on our hands, and
+the servant, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of
+worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time
+over it."</p>
+
+<p>Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce
+one's heart like a gimlet. And that pale complexion;
+I adore pale women!"</p>
+
+<p>When he reached the top of the Argueil hills he
+had made up his mind. "It's only finding the opportunities.
+Well, I will call in now and then. I'll
+send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if
+need be. We shall become friends; I'll invite them
+to my place. By Jove!" added he, "there's the agricultural
+show coming on. She'll be there. I shall
+see her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest
+way."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 109px;">
+<img src="images/i193.jpg" width="109" height="55" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>VIII.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_Village_Festival" id="A_Village_Festival"></a><span class="smcap">A Village Festival.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap194"><span class="dropcap">A</span></span><br />T LAST it came, the famous agricultural
+show. On the morning of
+the solemnity all the inhabitants at
+their doors were chatting over
+the preparations. The pediment
+of the townhall had been hung with
+garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow
+for the banquet; and in the middle of the Place, in
+front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce
+the arrival of the prefect and the names of the
+successful farmers who had obtained prizes. The National
+Guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville)
+had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom
+Binet was captain. On that day he wore a collar
+even higher than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his
+tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless that the
+whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended
+into his legs; which rose in a cadence of set
+steps with a single movement. As there was some
+rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,
+both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately.
+One saw the red epaulettes and the black
+breastplates pass and repass alternately; there was no
+end to it, and it continually began again. There had
+never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+had washed down their houses the evening before;
+tricolored flags hung from half-open windows; all the
+public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather
+the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the colored
+neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the
+sun, and relieved with their motley colors the somber
+monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. The
+neighboring farmers' wives, when they got off their
+horses, pulled out a long pin that fastened round them
+their skirts, turned up for fear of mud; the husbands,
+on the contrary, in order to save their hats,
+kept their handkerchiefs round them, holding one
+corner between their teeth.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd came into the main street from both
+ends of the village. People poured in from the lanes,
+the alleys, the houses; and from time to time one
+heard knockers banging against doors closing behind
+women with their gloves, who were going out to see
+the f&ecirc;te. What was most admired were two long
+lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a
+platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides
+this there were against the four columns of the
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: town-hall">townhall</ins> four kinds of poles, each bearing a small
+standard of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions
+in gold letters. On one was written, "To
+Commerce;" on the other, "To Agriculture;" on the
+third, "To Industry;" and on the fourth, "To the
+Fine Arts."</p>
+
+<p>But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed
+to darken that of Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois, the innkeeper.
+Standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself,
+"What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas
+booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to
+dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? They
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+call all this fussing doing good to the place! Then
+it wasn't worth while sending to Neufch&acirc;tel for the
+keeper of a cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds!
+tatterdemalions!"</p>
+
+<p>The chemist was passing. He had on a frock-coat,
+nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder,
+a hat with a low crown.</p>
+
+<p>"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry."
+And as the fat widow asked where he was going&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, to see me, who
+am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the
+man's rat in his cheese, taking a holiday?"</p>
+
+<p>"What cheese?" asked the landlady.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I
+merely wished to convey to you, Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois,
+that I usually live at home like a recluse. To-day,
+however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am going," replied the chemist, astonished.
+"Am I not a member of the consulting commission?"</p>
+
+<p>M&egrave;re Lefran&ccedil;ois looked at him for a few moments,
+and ended by saying with a smile:</p>
+
+<p>"That's another pair of shoes! But what does
+agriculture matter to you? Do you understand anything
+about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist,&mdash;that
+is to say, a chemist. And the object of chemistry,
+Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois, being the knowledge of
+the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural
+bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within
+its domain. And, in fact, the composition of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of
+gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask
+you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"</p>
+
+<p>The landlady did not answer. Homais went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is
+necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls
+oneself? It is necessary rather to know the composition
+of the substances in question&mdash;the geological
+strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the
+soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different
+bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And
+one must be master of all the principles of hygiene
+in order to direct, criticise the construction of buildings,
+the feeding of animals, the diet of the domestics.
+And, moreover, Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois, one must
+know botany, be able to distinguish between plants,
+you understand, which are the wholesome and those
+that are deleterious, which are unproductive and
+which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here
+and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy
+others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by
+means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on
+the alert to find out improvements."</p>
+
+<p>The landlady never took her eyes off the "Caf&eacute;
+Fran&ccedil;ais," and the chemist went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists,
+or that at least they would pay more attention to the
+counsels of science. Thus, lately I myself wrote a
+considerable tract, a memoir of more than seventy-two
+pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects,
+together with some New Reflections on this Subject,'
+that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen,
+and which even procured me the honor of being received
+among its members&mdash;Section, Agriculture;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+Class, Pomological. Well, if my work had been
+given to the public&mdash;" But the druggist stopped,
+Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois seemed so preoccupied.</p>
+
+<p>"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension!
+Such a cookshop as that!" And with
+a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her
+breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed
+with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs
+were heard issuing. "Well, it won't last long," she
+added; "it'll be over before a week."</p>
+
+<p>Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came
+down three steps and whispered in his ear:</p>
+
+<p>"What! you didn't know it? There'll be an execution
+in next week. It's Lheureux who is selling
+him up; he has killed him with bills."</p>
+
+<p>"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the chemist,
+who always found expressions in harmony with all
+imaginable circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Then the landlady began telling him this story,
+that she had heard from <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note: the original reads &quot;Theodore&quot; without an accent">Th&eacute;odore</ins>, Monsieur Guillaumin's
+servant, and although she detested Telher, she
+blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak."</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the
+market; he is bowing to Madame Bovary, who's got
+on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur Boulanger's
+arm."</p>
+
+<p>"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must
+go at once and pay her my respects. Perhaps she'd
+be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under
+the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois,
+who was calling him back to tell him more
+about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile
+on his lips, with straight knees, bowing exuberantly
+right and left, and taking up much room with the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him
+in the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar,
+hurried on, but Madame Bovary lost her breath; so
+he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in
+a rough tone:</p>
+
+<p>"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you
+know, the druggist." She pressed his elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself.
+And he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Her profile was so calm that one could guess
+nothing from it. It stood out in the light from the
+oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the
+leaves of reeds. Her eyes with their long curved
+lashes looked straight before her, and though wide
+open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheekbones,
+because of the blood pulsing gently under the
+delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition
+between her nostrils. Her head leaned towards her
+shoulder, and the pearly tips of her white teeth were
+seen between her lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.</p>
+
+<p>Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant
+for a warning; for Monsieur Lheureux was accompanying
+them, and spoke now and again as if to enter
+into the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The
+wind is east!"</p>
+
+<p>And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered
+him, while at the slightest movement made
+by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your pardon!"
+and raised his hat.</p>
+
+<p>When they reached the farrier's house, instead of
+following the road up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+turned down a path, drawing with him Madame Bovary.
+He called out:</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you
+again presently."</p>
+
+<p>"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded
+upon by others? And as to-day I have the
+happiness of being with you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence.
+Then he talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure
+of walking on the grass. A few daisies had
+sprung up again.</p>
+
+<p>"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said,
+"and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the
+amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall I
+pick some? What do you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.</p>
+
+<p>"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.</p>
+
+<p>The meadow began to fill, and the housewives,
+hustled one with their great umbrellas, their baskets,
+and their babies. One had often to get out of the
+way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with
+blue stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who
+smelled of milk when one passed close to them. They
+walked along holding one another by the hand, and
+thus they spread over the whole field from the row
+of open trees to the banquet tent. But this was the
+examination time, and the farmers one after the other
+entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord
+supported on sticks.</p>
+
+<p>The beasts were there, their noses toward the cord,
+and making a confused line with their unequal rumps.
+Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their
+snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on
+the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their
+heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them.
+Ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the
+halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils,
+looking toward the mares. These stood quietly,
+stretching out their heads and flowing manes, while
+their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then
+came and sucked them. And above the long undulation
+of these crowded animals one saw some white
+mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp
+horns sticking out, and the heads of men running
+about. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces
+off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron
+ring in its nostrils, who moved no more than if he
+had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him
+by a rope.</p>
+
+<p>Between the two lines the committee-men were
+walking with heavy steps, examining each animal,
+then consulting one another in a low voice. One
+who seemed of more importance now and then took
+notes in a book as he walked along. This was the
+president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de la Panville.
+As soon as he recognized Rodolphe he came
+forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said:</p>
+
+<p>"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting
+us?"</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But
+when the president had disappeared:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ma foi!</i>" said he, "I shall not go. Your company
+is better than his."</p>
+
+<p>And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to
+move about more easily, showed the gendarme his
+blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+some fine beast which Madame Bovary did not at all
+admire. He noticed this and began jeering at the
+Yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apologized
+for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruity
+of common and elegant in which the habitually
+vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric
+existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies
+of art, and always a certain contempt for social
+conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus
+his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by
+the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of gray
+ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the
+ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.
+These were so polished that they reflected the grass.
+He trampled on horses' dung with them, one hand in
+the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one side.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the
+country&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's waste of time," said Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that
+not one of these people is capable of understanding
+even the cut of a coat!"</p>
+
+<p>Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of
+the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there.</p>
+
+<p>"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."</p>
+
+<p>"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you
+very light-hearted."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the
+world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer
+upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight
+of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself
+whether it were not better to join those sleeping
+there!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not
+think of them."</p>
+
+<p>"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who
+cares for me?" And he accompanied the last words
+with a kind of whistling of the lips.</p>
+
+<p>But they were obliged to separate from each other
+because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying
+behind them. He was so overladen with them
+that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes
+and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was
+Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the
+church chairs about among the people. Alive to all
+that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this
+means of turning the show to account; and his idea
+was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to
+turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled
+for these seats, whose straw smelled of incense, and
+they lent against the thick backs, stained with the
+wax of candles, with a certain veneration.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he
+went on as if speaking to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always
+alone! Ah! if I had some aim in life, if I had met
+some love, if I had found some one! Oh, how I
+would have spent all the energy of which I am capable,
+surmounted everything, overcome everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are
+not to be pitied."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.</p>
+
+<p>"For, after all," she went on, "you are free&mdash;&mdash;"
+she hesitated, "rich&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not mock me," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>And she protested that she was not mocking him,
+when the report of a cannon resounded. Immediately
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+all began hustling one another pell-mell toward the
+village.</p>
+
+<p>It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to
+be coming, and the members of the jury felt
+much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin
+the meeting or still wait.</p>
+
+<p>At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau
+appeared, drawn by two thin horses, whom a coachman
+in a white hat was whipping lustily. Binet had
+only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the
+colonel to imitate him. All ran toward the enclosure;
+every one pushed forward. A few even forgot their
+collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate
+the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing
+in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of
+the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment
+when the National Guard and firemen deployed, beating
+drums and marking time.</p>
+
+<p>"Present!" shouted Binet.</p>
+
+<p>"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."</p>
+
+<p>And after presenting arms, during which the clang
+of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle
+rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then
+were seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman
+in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald
+brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his
+head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign
+appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by
+heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd,
+while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and
+forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognized
+the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him
+that the prefect was not able to come. He himself
+was a councilor at the prefecture; then he added a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them
+with compliments; the other confessed himself nervous;
+and they remained thus, face to face, their
+foreheads almost touching, with the members of the
+jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages,
+the National Guard and the crowd. The
+councilor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast
+repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow,
+also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested
+his devotion to the monarchy and the honor
+that was being done to Yonville.</p>
+
+<p>Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head
+of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along
+with his club-foot, led them to the door of the "Lion
+d'Or," where a number of peasants collected to look
+at the carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered,
+and the gentlemen one by one mounted the
+platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet
+armchairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.</p>
+
+<p>All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby
+faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the color of
+sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from
+stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad
+bows. All the waistcoats were of velvet, double-breasted;
+all the watches had, at the end of a long
+ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; every one rested his two
+hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of
+his trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone
+more brilliantly than the leather of his heavy boots.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies of the company stood at the back under
+the vestibule between the pillars, while the common
+herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on
+chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought
+thither all those that he had moved from the field,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+and he even kept running back every minute to fetch
+others from the church. He caused such confusion
+with this piece of business that one had great difficulty
+in getting to the small steps of the platform.</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist,
+who was passing to his place, "that they ought to
+have put up two Venetian masts with something
+rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have
+been a very pretty effect."</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you
+expect? The mayor took everything on his own
+shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache!
+and he is even completely destitute of what is called
+the genius of art."</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had
+gone up to the first floor of the townhall, to the
+"council-room," and as it was empty, he declared
+that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably.
+He fetched three stools from the round table under the
+bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one
+of the windows, they sat down by each other.</p>
+
+<p>There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings,
+much parleying. At last the councilor got up.
+They knew now that his name was Lieuvain, and in
+the crowd the name was passed from one to the
+other. After he had collated a few pages, and bent
+over them to see better, he began:</p>
+
+<p>"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before
+addressing you on the object of our meeting
+to-day, and this sentiment, will, I am sure, be shared
+by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a
+tribute to the higher administration, to the government,
+to the monarch, gentlemen, our sovereign, to
+that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who
+directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the
+chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a
+stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace
+respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture,
+and the fine arts."</p>
+
+<p>"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little
+further."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" said Emma.</p>
+
+<p>But at this moment the voice of the councilor rose
+to an extraordinary pitch. He declaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when
+civil discord ensanguined our public places, when the
+landlord, the business-man, the working-man himself,
+falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep,
+trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the
+noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive
+doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, some one down there might see me,"
+Rodolphe resumed, "then I should have to invent
+excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>"But, gentlemen," continued the councilor, "if,
+banishing from my memory the remembrance of these
+sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the actual situation
+of our dear country, what do I see there?
+Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing;
+everywhere new means of communication, like so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+many new arteries in the body of the state, establish
+within it new relations. Our great industrial centers
+have recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated,
+smiles in all hearts; our ports are full, confidence
+is born again, and France breathes once
+more!"</p>
+
+<p>"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the
+world's point of view they are right."</p>
+
+<p>"How so?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there
+are souls constantly tormented? They need by turns
+to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most
+turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all
+sorts of fantasies, of follies."</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveler
+who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on:</p>
+
+<p>"We have not even this distraction, we poor
+women!"</p>
+
+<p>"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."</p>
+
+<p>"But is it ever found?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"And this is what you have understood," said the
+councilor. "You farmers, agricultural laborers! you
+pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to
+civilization! you men of progress and morality, you
+have understood, I say, that political storms are even
+more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!"</p>
+
+<p>"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day
+suddenly, and when one is despairing of it. Then
+the horizon expands; it is as if a voice cried, 'It is
+here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything
+to this being. There is no need for explanations;
+they understand one another. They have seen each
+other in dreams!" He looked at her. "In fine, here
+it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you.
+It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts, one does
+not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went
+out from darkness into light!"</p>
+
+<p>And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to
+the word. He passed his hand over his face, like a
+man seized with giddiness. Then he let it fall on
+Emma's. She took hers away.</p>
+
+<p>"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen?
+He only who was so blind, so plunged (I do not fear
+to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of another
+age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural
+populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more
+patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the
+public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And,
+gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence,
+vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound
+and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all
+else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good
+of all, to the common amelioration and to the support
+of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of
+duty&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I
+am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads
+in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers
+and rosaries who constantly drone into our
+ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to
+feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+all the conventions of society with the ignominy
+that it imposes upon us."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet&mdash;yet&mdash;&mdash;" objected Madame Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are
+they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the
+source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music,
+the arts, of everything, in a word?"</p>
+
+<p>"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow
+to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small,
+the conventional, that of men, that which constantly
+changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a
+commotion here below, of the earth earthy, like the
+mass of imbeciles you see down there. But the other,
+the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape
+that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that
+give us light."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with
+a pocket-handkerchief. He continued:</p>
+
+<p>"And what should I do here, gentlemen, pointing
+out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our
+wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is
+it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,
+who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows
+of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being
+ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious
+machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,
+and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered
+at the baker's, who makes it into food for
+poor and rich alike. Again, is it not the agriculturist
+who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks in
+the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves,
+how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? And,
+gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples?
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+Who has not frequently reflected on all the
+momentous things that we get out of that modest
+animal, the ornament of poultry-yards, that provides
+us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent
+flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should
+never end if I were to enumerate one after the other
+all the different products which the earth, well cultivated,
+like a generous mother, lavishes upon her
+children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple-tree
+for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax.
+Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made
+such great strides of late years, and to which I will
+more particularly call your attention."</p>
+
+<p>He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of
+the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his
+words. Tuvache by his side listened to him with
+starting eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time
+softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist,
+with his son Napol&eacute;on between his knees, put his hand
+behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. The
+chins of the other members of the jury went slowly
+up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval.
+The firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their
+bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with out-turned
+elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he
+could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because
+of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose.
+His lieutenant, the youngest son of Monsieur Tuvache,
+had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook
+on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf
+peeped out. He smiled beneath it with a perfectly
+infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence
+drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment
+and sleepiness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+The square as far as the houses was crowded with
+people. One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all
+the windows, others standing at doors, and Justin, in
+front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by
+the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the
+silence Monsieur Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air.
+It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted
+here and there by the creaking of chairs in the
+crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing
+of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who
+answered one another at street corners. In fact, the
+cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus
+far, and these lowed from time to time, while with
+their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage
+that hung above their mouths.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to
+her <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'it'">in</ins> a low voice, speaking rapidly:</p>
+
+<p>"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you?
+Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn?
+The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted,
+slandered; and if at length two poor souls
+do meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend
+together. Yet they will make the attempt; they will
+flutter their wings; they will call upon each other.
+Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten
+years, they will come together, will love; for fate
+has decreed it, and they are born one for the other."</p>
+
+<p>His arms were folded across his knees, and thus
+lifting his face toward Emma, close by her, he looked
+fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden
+lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelled the
+perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.
+Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the
+Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+and his beard exhaled like this hair an odor of vanilla
+and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes
+the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement,
+as she leaned back in her chair, she saw in the
+distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old
+diligence the "Hirondelle," that was slowly <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'decending'">descending</ins>
+the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust.
+It was in this yellow carriage that L&eacute;on had so often
+come back to her, and by this route down there
+that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him
+opposite at his window; then all grew confused;
+clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again
+turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on
+the arm of the Viscount, and that L&eacute;on was not far
+away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she
+was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her
+side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through
+her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under
+a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath
+of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened
+wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness
+of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her
+gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face
+with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing
+of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd
+and the voice of the councilor intoning his phrases.
+He said:</p>
+
+<p>"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions
+of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a
+rash empiricism. Apply yourselves, above all, to the
+amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the
+development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine
+races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas,
+where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span>
+to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in
+the hope of better success. And you, aged servants,
+humble domestics, whose hard labor no Government
+up to this day has taken into consideration, come
+hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues,
+and be assured that the state henceforward has its
+eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you;
+that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate
+as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays
+got up, beginning another speech. His was
+not perhaps so florid as that of the councilor, but it
+recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to
+say, by more special knowledge and more elevated
+considerations. Thus the praise of the Government
+took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more.
+He showed in it the relations of these two, and how
+they had always contributed to civilization. Rodolphe
+with Madame Bovary was talking dreams, presentiments,
+magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society,
+the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on
+acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off
+the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil,
+planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery
+was there not more of injury than of gain?
+Monsieur Derozerays set himself this problem. From
+magnetism little by little Rodolphe had come to affinities,
+and while the president was citing Cincinnatus
+and his plough, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and
+the emperors of China inaugurating the year by the
+sowing of seed, the young man was explaining to
+the young woman that these irresistible attractions
+find their cause in some previous state of existence.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know
+one another? What chance willed it? It was because
+across the infinite, like two streams that flow but
+to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us
+toward each other."</p>
+
+<p>And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.</p>
+
+<p>"For good farming generally!" cried the president.</p>
+
+<p>"Just now, for example, when I went to your
+house."</p>
+
+<p>"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."</p>
+
+<p>"Did I know I should accompany you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Seventy francs."</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed
+you&mdash;I remained."</p>
+
+<p>"Manures!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other
+days, all my life!"</p>
+
+<p>"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"</p>
+
+<p>"For I have never in the society of any other
+person found so complete a charm."</p>
+
+<p>"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."</p>
+
+<p>"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>"For a merino ram!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like
+a shadow."</p>
+
+<p>"To Monsieur Belot of <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original reads Notre-Dame without an accent">N&ocirc;tre-Dame</ins>."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought,
+in your life, shall I not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Porcine race; prizes&mdash;equal, to Messrs. Leh&eacute;riss&eacute;
+and Cullembourg, sixty francs!"</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all
+warm and quivering like a captive dove that tries
+to fly away; but, whether she was trying to take it
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+away or whether she was answering his pressure, she
+made a movement with her fingers. He exclaimed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me!
+You are good! You understand that I am yours!
+Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"</p>
+
+<p>A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled
+the cloth on the table, and in the square below all
+the great caps of the peasant women were uplifted
+by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.</p>
+
+<p>"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He
+was hurrying on: "Flemish manure&mdash;flax-growing&mdash;drainage&mdash;long
+leases&mdash;domestic service."</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked
+at one another. A supreme desire made their dry
+lips tremble, and softly, without an effort, their fingers
+intertwined.</p>
+
+<p>"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerri&egrave;re,
+for fifty-four years of service at the same
+farm, a silver medal&mdash;value, twenty-five francs!"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councilor.</p>
+
+<p>She did not present herself, and one could hear
+voices whispering:</p>
+
+<p>"Go up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be afraid!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, how stupid she is!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; here she is."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let her come up!"</p>
+
+<p>Then there came forward on the platform a little
+old woman with timid bearing, who seemed to
+shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she wore
+heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large
+blue apron. Her pale face framed in a borderless cap
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+was more wrinkled than a withered russet apple, and
+from the sleeves of her red jacket hung down two
+large hands with knotty joints. The dust of
+barns, the potash of washings, and the grease of
+wools had so incrusted, roughened, hardened these,
+that they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed
+in clear water; and by dint of long service they remained
+half open, as if to bear humble witness for
+themselves of so much suffering endured. Something
+of monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of
+sadness or of emotion weakened that pale look. In
+her constant living with animals she had caught their
+dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that
+she found herself in the midst of so large a company,
+and inwardly scared by the flags, the drums, the gentlemen
+in frock-coats, and the order of the councilor,
+she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance
+or run away, nor why the crowd was pushing
+her and the jury were smiling at her. Thus stood
+before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of
+servitude.</p>
+
+<p>"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth
+Leroux!" said the councilor, who had taken the list
+of prize-winners from the president; and, looking at
+the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he
+repeated in a fatherly tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Approach! approach!"</p>
+
+<p>"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his
+armchair; and he began shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four
+years of service. A silver medal! Twenty-five
+francs! For you!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it,
+and a smile of beatitude spread over her face; and as
+she walked away they could hear her muttering:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+"I'll give it to our cur&eacute; up home, to say some
+masses for me!"</p>
+
+<p>"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning
+across to the notary.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and
+now that the speeches had been read, each one fell
+back into his place again, and everything into the old
+grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these
+struck the animals, indolent victors, going back to the
+stalls, a green crown on their horns.</p>
+
+<p>The National Guards, however, had gone up to
+the first floor of the townhall with buns spitted on
+their bayonets, and the drummer of the battalion carried
+a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took
+Rodolphe's arm; he saw her home; they separated at
+her door; then he walked about alone in the meadow
+while he waited for the time of the banquet.</p>
+
+<p>The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests
+were so crowded that they could hardly move their
+elbows; and the narrow planks used for forms almost
+broke down under their weight. They ate hugely.
+Each one stuffed himself on his own account.
+Sweat stood on every brow, and a whitish steam, like
+the vapor of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
+above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe,
+leaning against the calico of the tent, was
+thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard nothing.
+Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up
+the dirty plates; his neighbors were talking; he did
+not answer them; they filled his glass, and there was
+silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing noise.
+He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of
+her lips; her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the
+plates of the shakos, the folds of her gown fell along
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+the walls, and days of love unrolled to all infinity before
+him in the vistas of the future.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks,
+but she was with her husband. Madame
+Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about
+the danger of stray rockets, and every moment he
+left the company to go and give some advice to Binet.</p>
+
+<p>The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache
+had, through an excess of caution, been shut up in
+his cellar, and so the damp powder would not light,
+and the principal set piece, that was to represent a
+dragon biting his tail, failed completely. Now and
+then a meager Roman-candle went off; then the
+gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
+cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed
+in the darkness. Emma silently nestled gently against
+Charles's shoulder; then, raising her chin, she watched
+the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark
+sky. Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning
+lanterns.</p>
+
+<p>They went out one by one. The stars shone out.
+A few drops of rain began to fall. She knotted her
+fichu round her bare head.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the councilor's carriage came out
+from the inn. His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly
+dozed off, and one could see from the distance,
+above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass
+of his body, that swayed from right to left with the
+giving of the traces.</p>
+
+<p>"Truly," said the chemist, "one ought to proceed
+most rigorously against drunkenness! I should like to
+see written up weekly at the door of the townhall on
+a board <i>ad hoc</i> the names of all those who during
+the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+regard to statistics, one would thus have, as it were,
+public records that one could refer to in case of need.
+But excuse me!"</p>
+
+<p>And he once more ran off to the captain. The
+latter was going back to see his lathe again.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to
+him, "to send one of your men, or to go yourself&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector.
+"It's all right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be uneasy," said the chemist, when he
+returned to his friends. "Monsieur Binet has assured
+me that all precautions have been taken. No sparks
+have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ma foi!</i> I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning
+at large. "But never mind; we've had a beautiful
+day for our f&ecirc;te."</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a
+tender look, "Oh, yes! very beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>And having bowed to one another, they separated.</p>
+
+<p>Two days later, in the "Fanal de Rouen," there
+was a long article on the show. Homais had composed
+it with <i>verve</i> the very next morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands?
+Whither hurries this crowd like the waves of
+a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical sun pouring
+its heat upon our heads?"</p>
+
+<p>Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants.
+Certainly the Government was doing much, but not
+enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand
+reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!"
+Then touching on the entry of the councilor, he did
+not forget "the martial air of our militia," nor "our
+most merry village maidens," nor the "bald-headed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom
+some, the remnants of our immortal phalanxes, still
+felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the
+drums." He cited himself among the first of the members
+of the jury, and he even called attention in a
+note to the fact that Monsieur Homais, chemist, had
+sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society.
+When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he
+painted the joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic
+strophes. "The father embraced the son, the brother
+the brother, the husband his consort. More than one
+showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt
+when he got home to his good housewife, he hung it
+up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.</p>
+
+<p>"About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the
+meadow of Monsieur Leigeard brought together the
+principal personages of the f&ecirc;te. The greatest cordiality
+reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed.
+Monsieur Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the
+Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays, Agriculture; Monsieur
+Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin sisters;
+Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening
+some brilliant fireworks on a sudden illumined the air.
+One would have called it a veritable kaleidoscope, a
+real operatic scene; and for a moment our little locality
+might have thought itself transported into the midst
+of a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.'</p>
+
+<p>"Let us state that no untoward event disturbed
+this family meeting." And he added: "Only the
+absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the
+priests understand progress in another fashion. Just
+as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!"</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>IX.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_Woodland_Idyll" id="A_Woodland_Idyll"></a><span class="smcap">A Woodland Idyll.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap222"><span class="dropcap">S</span></span><br />IX weeks passed. Rodolphe did not
+come again. At last one evening he
+appeared.</p>
+
+<p>The day after the show he had
+said to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"We mustn't go back too soon;
+that would be a mistake."</p>
+
+<p>And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting.
+After the hunting he had thought he was too late,
+and then he reasoned thus:</p>
+
+<p>"If from the first day she loved me, she must,
+from impatience to see me again, love me more.
+Let's go on with it!"</p>
+
+<p>And he knew that his calculation had been right
+when, on entering the room, he saw Emma turn pale.
+She was alone. The day was drawing in. The
+small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the
+twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on which
+the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass
+between the meshes of the coral.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly
+answered his first conventional phrases.</p>
+
+<p>"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+"Seriously?" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side
+on a footstool, "no; it was because I did not want
+to come back."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you not guess?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered
+her head, blushing. He went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Emma!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice,
+"that I was right not to come back; for this name,
+this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped
+me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why
+all the world calls you thus! Besides it is not your
+name; it is the name of another!" he repeated, "of
+another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes,
+I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives
+me to despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you!
+Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will
+never hear of me again; and yet&mdash;to-day&mdash;I know
+not what force impelled me toward you. For one
+does not struggle against Heaven; one cannot resist
+the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which
+is beautiful, charming, adorable."</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time that Emma had heard such
+words spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who
+reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully
+at this glowing language.</p>
+
+<p>"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could
+not see you, at least I have gazed long on all that
+surrounds you. At night&mdash;every night&mdash;I arose; I
+came hither; I watched your house, its roof glimmering
+in the moonlight, the trees in the garden before
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining
+through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you
+never knew that there, so near you, so far from you,
+was a poor wretch!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned toward him with a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are good!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt
+that! Tell me&mdash;one word&mdash;only one word!"</p>
+
+<p>And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool
+to the floor; but a sound of wooden shoes was
+heard in the kitchen, and, he noticed the door of the
+room was not closed.</p>
+
+<p>"How kind it would be of you," he went on,
+rising, "if you would humor a whim of mine." It
+was to go over her house; he wanted to know it;
+and Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they
+both rose, when Charles came in.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title,
+launched out into obsequious phrases. Of this the
+other took advantage to pull himself together a little.</p>
+
+<p>"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about
+her health."</p>
+
+<p>Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand
+anxieties; his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning
+again. Then Rodolphe asked if riding would
+not be good.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an
+idea! You ought to follow it up."</p>
+
+<p>And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur
+Rodolphe offered one. She refused his offer; he
+did not insist. Then to explain his visit he said that
+his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered
+from giddiness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+"I'll call round," said Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that
+will be more convenient for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! very good! I thank you."</p>
+
+<p>And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you
+accept Monsieur Boulanger's kind offer?"</p>
+
+<p>She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses,
+and finally declared that perhaps it would look
+odd.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said
+Charles, making a pirouette. "Health before everything!
+You are wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't
+got a habit?"</p>
+
+<p>"You must order one," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>The riding-habit decided her.</p>
+
+<p>When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur
+Boulanger that his wife was at his command,
+and that they counted on his good-nature.</p>
+
+<p>The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at
+Charles's door with two saddle-horses. One had pink
+rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to
+himself that no doubt she had never seen anything
+like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his appearance
+as he stood on the landing in his great velvet
+coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready;
+she was waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start,
+and the chemist also came out. He was giving Monsieur
+Boulanger a little good advice.</p>
+
+<p>"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your
+horses perhaps are mettlesome."</p>
+
+<p>She heard a noise above her; it was F&eacute;licit&eacute; drumming
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+on the window-panes to amuse little Berthe.
+The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with
+a wave of her whip.</p>
+
+<p>"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence!
+above all, prudence!" And he flourished his
+newspaper as he saw them disappear.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off
+at a gallop. Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now
+and then they exchanged a word. Her figure slightly
+bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched
+out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement
+that rocked her in her saddle. At the bottom
+of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head; they
+started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly
+the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell
+about her.</p>
+
+<p>It was early in October. There was fog over the
+land. Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between
+the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated
+up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the
+clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar
+the roofs of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's
+edge, the yards, the walls, and the church steeple.
+Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and
+never had this poor village where she lived appeared
+so small. From the height on which they were, the
+whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending
+off its vapor into the air. Clumps of trees here and
+there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of
+the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach
+stirred by the wind.</p>
+
+<p>Beside them, on the turf between the pines, a brown
+light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth,
+ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the
+horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in
+front of them.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of
+the wood. She turned away from time to time to
+avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks
+in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a
+little giddy. The horses were panting; the leather of
+the saddles creaked.</p>
+
+<p>Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Forward! forward!" he continued.</p>
+
+<p>He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set
+off at a trot. Long ferns by the roadside caught in
+Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward and removed
+them as they rode along. At other times to turn aside
+the branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt
+his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now
+blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were spaces
+full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated
+with the confused patches of the trees that were gray,
+fawn, or golden colored, according to the nature of
+their leaves. Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering
+of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the
+ravens flying off amid the oaks.</p>
+
+<p>They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses.
+She walked on in front on the moss between the
+paths. But her long habit got in her way, although
+she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking
+behind her, saw between the black cloth and the
+black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that
+seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span>
+She stopped. "I am tired," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"</p>
+
+<p>Then some hundred paces farther on she again
+stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from
+her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a
+bluish transparency as if she were floating under
+azure waves.</p>
+
+<p>"But where are we going?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly.
+Rodolphe looked round him biting his mustache.
+They came to a larger space where the coppice had
+been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree,
+and Rodolphe began speaking to her of his love. He
+did not begin by frightening her with compliments.
+He was calm, serious, melancholy.</p>
+
+<p>Emma listened to him with bowed head, and
+stirred the bits of wood on the ground with the tip
+of her foot.</p>
+
+<p>But at the words, "Are not our destinies now
+one?&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well.
+It is impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She
+stopped. Then, having gazed at him for a few
+moments with an amorous and humid look, she said
+hurriedly:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the
+horses? Let us go back."</p>
+
+<p>He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She
+repeated:</p>
+
+<p>"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"</p>
+
+<p>Then smiling a strange smile, his pupils fixed, his
+teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms. She
+recoiled trembling. She stammered:</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let us
+go!"</p>
+
+<p>"If it must be," he went on, his face changing;
+and he again became respectful, caressing, timid. She
+gave him her arm. They went back. He said:</p>
+
+<p>"What was the matter with you? Why? I do
+not understand. You were mistaken, no doubt. In
+my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a
+place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I want you for
+my life. I must have your eyes, your voice, your
+thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"</p>
+
+<p>And he put out his arm around her waist. She
+feebly tried to disengage herself. He supported her
+thus as they walked along.</p>
+
+<p>But they heard the two horses browsing on the
+leaves.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not
+let us go! Stay!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew her farther on to a small pool where
+duckweeds made a greenness on the water. Faded
+waterlilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the
+noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away
+to hide themselves.</p>
+
+<p>"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am
+mad to listen to you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why? Emma! Emma!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly,
+leaning on his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of
+his coat. She threw back her white neck, swelling
+with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder
+and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him.</p>
+
+<p>The shades of night were falling; the horizontal
+sun passing between the branches dazzled the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or on
+the ground, trembled luminous patches, as if humming-birds
+flying about had scattered their feathers.
+Silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to
+come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose
+beating had begun again, and the blood coursing
+through her flesh like a stream of milk. Then far
+away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she
+heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered,
+and in silence she heard it mingling like music with
+the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves. Rodolphe,
+a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife
+one of the two broken bridles.</p>
+
+<p>They returned to Yonville by the same road. On
+the mud they saw again the traces of their horses
+side by side, the same thickets, the same stones in
+the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and
+yet for her something had happened more stupendous
+than if the mountains had moved in their places.
+Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her
+hand to kiss it.</p>
+
+<p>She was charming on horseback&mdash;upright, with her
+slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her
+horse, her face something flushed by the fresh air
+in the red of the evening.</p>
+
+<p>On entering Yonville she made her horse prance
+in the road. People looked at her from the windows.</p>
+
+<p>At dinner her husband thought she looked well,
+but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired
+about her ride, and she remained sitting there with
+her elbow at the side of her plate between the two
+lighted candles.</p>
+
+<p>"'Emma!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's.
+He has an old cob, still very fine, only a
+little broken-kneed, that could be bought, I am very
+sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking
+it might please you, I have bespoken it&mdash;bought
+it. Have I done right? Do tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of
+an hour later&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"</p>
+
+<p>And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she
+went and shut herself up in her room.</p>
+
+<p>At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the
+paths, the ditches, Rodolphe, and she again felt the
+pressure of his arm, while the leaves rustled and
+the reeds whistled.</p>
+
+<p>But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered
+at her face. Never had her eyes been so large,
+so black, of so profound a depth. Something subtle
+about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have
+a lover! a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second
+puberty had come to her. So at last she was to
+know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of
+which she had despaired! She was entering upon
+marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium.
+An azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of
+sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
+existence appeared remote, far below in the shade,
+through the interspaces of these heights.</p>
+
+<p>Then she recalled the heroines of the books that
+she had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous
+women began to sing in her memory with the voice
+of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and
+realized the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself
+in this type of amorous women whom she had
+so envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of
+revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now
+she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst
+forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without
+remorse, without anxiety, without trouble.</p>
+
+<p>The day following passed with a new sweetness.
+They made vows to one another. She told him of
+her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with kisses;
+and she, looking at him through half-closed eyes,
+asked him to call her again by her name&mdash;to say
+that he loved her. They were in the forest, as yesterday,
+in the shed of some wooden-shoe maker. The
+walls were of straw, and the roof so low they had
+to stoop. They were seated side by side on a bed
+of dry leaves.</p>
+
+<p>From that day forth they wrote to one another
+regularly every evening. Emma placed her letter at
+the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of
+the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another
+there, that she always found fault with as too short.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, when Charles had gone out before
+daybreak, she was seized with the fancy to see Rodolphe
+at once. She would go quickly to La Huchette,
+stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville
+while every one was still asleep. This idea made her
+pant with desire, and she soon found herself in the
+middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without
+looking behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognized
+her lover's house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks
+stood out black against the pale dawn.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building
+that she thought must be the ch&acirc;teau. She
+entered it as if the doors at her approach had opened wide
+of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up
+to the corridor, Emma raised the latch of a door,
+and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man
+sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.</p>
+
+<p>"You here? You here?" he repeated, "How did
+you manage to come? Ah! your dress is damp."</p>
+
+<p>"I love you," she answered, passing her arms
+round his neck.</p>
+
+<p>This first piece of daring successful, now every
+time Charles went out early Emma dressed quickly
+and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led to the
+waterside.</p>
+
+<p>But when the plank for the cows was taken up,
+she had to go by the walls alongside of the river; the
+bank was slippery; in order not to fall she caught
+hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went
+across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling,
+and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf, knotted round
+her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She
+was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived
+out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out
+from her whole person a fresh perfume of sap, of verdure,
+of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe still
+slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his
+room.</p>
+
+<p>The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy,
+whitish light enter softly. Emma felt about, opening
+and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging
+from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole
+around her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to
+him and pressed her to his breast.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+Then she examined the apartment, opened the
+drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb,
+and looked at herself in his shaving-glass. Often she
+even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on
+the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of
+sugar near a bottle of water.</p>
+
+<p>It took them a good quarter of an hour to say
+good-bye. Then Emma wept. She would have wished
+never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than
+herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day,
+seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are
+you ill? Tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>At last he declared with a serious air that her visits
+were becoming imprudent&mdash;that she was compromising
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 102px;">
+<img src="images/i234.jpg" width="102" height="60" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>X.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Lovers_Vows" id="Lovers_Vows"></a><span class="smcap">Lovers' Vows.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap235"><span class="dropcap">G</span></span><br />RADUALLY Rodolphe's fears took
+possession of her. At first, love had
+intoxicated her, and she had thought
+of nothing beyond. But now that
+he was indispensable to her life, she
+feared to lose anything of this, or
+even that it should be disturbed. When she came
+back from his house, she looked all about her, anxiously
+watching every form that passed in the horizon,
+and every village window from which she could
+be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of
+the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling
+more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.</p>
+
+<p>One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly
+thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that
+seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways
+from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass
+on the edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with
+terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped
+out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters
+buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over
+his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was
+Captain Binet lying in ambush for wild ducks.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+"You ought to have called out long ago!" he
+exclaimed. "When one sees a gun, one should
+always give warning."</p>
+
+<p>The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright
+he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited
+duck-hunting except in boats, Monsieur Binet, despite
+his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so
+he every moment expected to see the rural guard
+turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and,
+all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his
+luck and on his cleverness.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a
+great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't warm; it's nipping."</p>
+
+<p>Emma answered nothing. He went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And you're out so early?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming
+from the nurse where my child is."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am
+here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the
+weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at
+the mouth of the gun&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted
+him, turning on her heel.</p>
+
+<p>"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and
+he went back into his tub.</p>
+
+<p>Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so
+abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavorable conjectures.
+The story about the nurse was the worst
+possible excuse, every one at Yonville knowing that
+the little Bovary had been at home with her parents
+for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction;
+this path led only to La Huchette. Binet, then,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+would guess whence she came, and he would not
+keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She
+remained until evening racking her brain with every
+conceivable lying project, and had constantly before
+her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.</p>
+
+<p>Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed,
+by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist's,
+and the first person she caught sight of in the shop
+was the tax-collector again. He was standing in
+front of the counter, lighted by the gleams of the red
+bottle, and was saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."</p>
+
+<p>"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric
+acid." Then to Emma, who was going up
+to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't
+worth while going up; she is just coming down.
+Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse
+me. Good-day, doctor" (for the chemist much
+enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing
+another by it reflected on himself some of
+the grandeur that he found in it). "Now, take care
+not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some
+chairs from the little room; you know very well that
+the <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chairs">armchairs</ins> are not to be taken out of the drawing-room."</p>
+
+<p>And to put his <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins> back in its place he was
+darting away from the counter, when Binet asked him
+for half an ounce of sugar acid.</p>
+
+<p>"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously,
+"don't know it; I'm ignorant of it! But perhaps you
+want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to
+make himself some copper-water with which to remove
+rust from his hunting things.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span>
+Emma shuddered. The chemist began, saying:</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account
+of the damp."</p>
+
+<p>"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a
+sly look, "there are people who like it."</p>
+
+<p>She was stifling.</p>
+
+<p>"And give me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Will he never go?" thought she.</p>
+
+<p>"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces
+of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal,
+if you please, to clean the varnished leather of
+my togs."</p>
+
+<p>The chemist was beginning to cut the wax when
+Madame Homais appeared, Irma in her arms, Napol&eacute;on
+by her side, and Athalie following. She sat down on
+the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted
+down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered
+round the jujube box near her papa. The latter was
+filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels,
+making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only
+from time to time were heard the weights jingling in
+the balance, and a few low words from the chemist
+giving directions to his pupil.</p>
+
+<p>"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked
+Madame Homais.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing
+down some figures in his waste-book.</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a
+low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her
+finger to the chemist.</p>
+
+<p>But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill,
+had probably heard nothing. At last he went out.
+Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame
+Homais.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>The next day the lovers discussed how to arrange
+their rendezvous. Emma wanted to bribe her servant
+with a present, but it would be better to find some
+safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look
+for one.</p>
+
+<p>All through the winter, three or four times a week,
+in the dead of night he came to the garden. Emma
+had on purpose taken away the key of the gate,
+which Charles thought lost.</p>
+
+<p>To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at
+the shutters. She jumped up with a start; but sometimes
+he had to wait, for Charles had a mania for
+chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She
+was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have
+done it, she would have hurled him out at the window.
+At last she would begin to undress, then take up a
+book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book
+amused her. But Charles, who was in bed, called to
+her to come too.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am coming," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the
+wall and fell asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating,
+undressed.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it,
+and putting his arm around her waist, he drew her
+without a word to the end of the garden.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the arbor, on the same seat of old sticks
+where formerly L&eacute;on had looked at her so amorously
+on the summer evenings. She never thought of him
+now.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+The stars shone through the leafless jasmine
+branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing,
+and now and again on the bank the rustling of the
+dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed
+out in the darkness and sometimes, vibrating with
+one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense
+black waves pressing forward to engulf them.
+The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the
+sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes,
+that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst
+of the silence low words were spoken that fell on
+their souls sonorous, crystalline, and reverberating in
+multiplied vibrations.</p>
+
+<p>When the night was rainy, they took refuge in
+the consulting-room between the car-shed and the
+stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that
+she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled
+down there as if at home. The sight of the library,
+of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited
+his merriment, and he could not refrain from
+making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed
+Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious,
+and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for
+example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching
+steps in the alley.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one is coming!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He blew out the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you your pistols?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And
+Rodolphe finished his sentence with a gesture that
+said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger."</p>
+
+<p>She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+she felt in it a sort of indecency and a na&iuml;ve coarseness
+that scandalized her.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the
+pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous,
+he thought, even odious; for he had no reason
+to hate the good Charles, not being what is called
+devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had
+treated him to a lecture, which he did not think in
+the best taste.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She
+had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut
+handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring&mdash;a
+real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She
+often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the
+voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her
+mother&mdash;hers! and of his mother&mdash;his! Rodolphe
+had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less
+consoled him with caressing words as one would
+soothe a forsaken child, and she sometimes even said
+to him, gazing at the moon:</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure that above there together they approve
+of our love."</p>
+
+<p>But she was so pretty! He had possessed so few
+women of such ingenuousness. This love without
+debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing
+him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his
+pride and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which
+his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him
+in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished
+on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer
+kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.</p>
+
+<p>He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle
+that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that
+made her mad; so that their great love, which engrossed
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the
+water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she
+could see the bed of it. She would not believe it;
+she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed
+his indifference less and less.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know whether she regretted yielding
+to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary,
+to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of
+feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered
+by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it
+was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her;
+she almost feared him.</p>
+
+<p>Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever,
+Rodolphe having succeeded in carrying out the
+adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six
+months, when the spring-time came, they were to
+one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping
+up a domestic flame.</p>
+
+<p>It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his
+turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. The
+present always arrived with a letter. Emma cut the
+string that tied it to the basket, and read the following
+lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"<span class="smcap">My Dear Children</span>,&mdash;I hope this will find you in
+good health, and that it will be as good as the
+others, for it seems to me a little more tender, if I
+may venture to say so, and heavier. But next
+time, for a change, I'll give you a turkey-cock, unless
+you have a preference for some dabs; and send me
+back the hamper, if you please, with the two old
+ones. I have had an accident with my cart-sheds,
+whose covering flew off one windy night among the
+trees. The harvest has not been over-good either.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you.
+It is so difficult now to leave the house since I am
+alone, my poor Emma."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old
+fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I
+caught the other day at the fair at Yvetot, where I
+had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away
+mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be
+pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was
+also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who, traveling
+through your part of the country this winter, had a
+tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual working hard.
+That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his
+tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if
+he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had
+seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude
+that business is looking up. So much the better, my
+dear children, and may God send you every imaginable
+happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen
+my dear little grand-daughter, Berthe Bovary. I have
+planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the garden
+under your room, and I won't have it touched unless
+it is to have jam made for her by-and-bye, that I will
+keep in the cupboard for when she comes.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"Good-bye my dear children. I kiss you, my
+girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on
+both cheeks. I am, with best compliments, your
+loving father,</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+"<span class="smcap">Th&eacute;odore Rouault</span>."
+</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some
+minutes. The mistakes in spelling interwove with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+one another, but Emma followed the kindly thought
+that chattered through it all like a hen half hidden in
+a hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with
+ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped
+from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought
+she saw her father bending over the hearth to take
+up the tongs. How long since she had been with
+him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner,
+where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in
+the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered
+the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts
+neighed when any one passed by, and galloped, galloped.
+Under her window there was a beehive, and
+sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck
+against her window like rebounding balls of gold.
+What happiness she had had at that time, what freedom,
+what hope! What an abundance of illusions!
+Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of
+them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions
+of life,&mdash;maidenhood, her marriage, and her love;&mdash;thus
+constantly losing them all her life through,
+like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at
+every inn along his road.</p>
+
+<p>But what, then, made her so unhappy? What was
+the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed
+her? And she raised her head, looking round as if to
+seek the cause of that which made her suffer.</p>
+
+<p>An April ray was dancing on the china of the
+<i>&eacute;tag&egrave;re</i>; the fire burned; beneath her slippers she
+felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright,
+the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with
+laughter.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the
+lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+She was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a
+rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt.
+Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time
+he came near she leant forward, beating the air with
+both her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to
+embrace her. "How I love you, my poor child!
+How I love you!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, noticing that the tips of her ears were rather
+dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed
+her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked
+a thousand questions about her health, as if on the
+return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her
+again and crying a little, she gave her back to the
+servant, who stood quite thunder-stricken at this
+excess of tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>That evening Rodolphe found her more serious
+than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a
+whim."</p>
+
+<p>And he missed three rendezvous running. When
+he did come, she showed herself cold and almost
+contemptuous.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"</p>
+
+<p>And he pretended not to notice her melancholy
+sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out.</p>
+
+<p>Then Emma repented. She even asked herself
+why she detested Charles; if it had not been better
+to have been able to love him? But he gave her no
+opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that
+she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice,
+when the chemist came just in time to provide her
+with an opportunity.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>XI.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="An_Experiment_And_A_Failure" id="An_Experiment_And_A_Failure"></a><span class="smcap">An Experiment and a Failure.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap246"><span class="dropcap">H</span></span><br />E had recently read a eulogy on a
+new method for curing club-foot,
+and as he was a partisan of progress,
+he conceived the patriotic
+idea that Yonville, in order to
+keep to the fore, ought to have some
+operations for strephopody or club-foot.</p>
+
+<p>"For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there?
+See" (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages
+of the attempt), "success, almost certain relief
+and beautifying the patient, celebrity acquired by the
+operator. Why, for example, should not your husband
+relieve poor Hippolyte of the 'Lion d'Or'?
+Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to
+all the travellers, and then" (Homais lowered his
+voice and looked round him), "who is to prevent
+me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to
+the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about;
+it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And
+who knows? who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to
+Emma that he was not clever; and what a satisfaction
+for her to have urged him to a step by which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+his reputation and fortune would be increased! She
+only wished to lean on something more solid than
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Charles, urged by the chemist and by her, allowed
+himself to be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr.
+Duval's volume, and every evening, holding his head
+between both hands, plunged into the reading of it.</p>
+
+<p>While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus,
+that is to say, <i>katastrephopody</i>, <i>endostrephopody</i>, and
+<i>exostrephopody</i> (or better, the various turnings of the
+foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with the
+<i>hypostrephopody</i> and <i>anastrephopody</i>), otherwise torsion
+downwards and upwards, Monsieur Homais,
+with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at
+the inn to submit to the operation.</p>
+
+<p>"You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain;
+it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less
+than the extraction of certain corns."</p>
+
+<p>Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't
+concern me. It's for your sake, for pure humanity!
+I should like to see you, my friend, rid of your
+hideous deformity, together with that waddling of
+the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must
+considerably interfere with you in the exercise of
+your calling."</p>
+
+<p>Then Homais represented to him how much jollier
+and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave
+him to understand that he would be more likely to
+please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile
+heavily. Then he attacked him through his vanity:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you
+have done if you had had to go into the army, to go
+and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+And Homais retired, declaring that he could not
+understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing
+the benefactions of science.</p>
+
+<p>The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy.
+Binet, who never interfered with other
+people's business, Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois, Art&eacute;mise, the
+neighbors, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache&mdash;every
+one persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but
+what finally decided him was that it would cost him
+nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the
+machine for the operation. This generosity was an
+idea of Emma's, and Charles consented to it, thinking
+in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel.</p>
+
+<p>So, by the advice of the chemist, and after three
+fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter,
+with the aid of the locksmith, that weighed
+about eight pounds, in which iron, wood, sheet-iron,
+leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared.</p>
+
+<p>But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut,
+it was necessary first of all to find out what kind of
+club-foot he had.</p>
+
+<p>He had a foot forming almost a straight line with
+the leg, which, however, did not prevent it from
+being turned in, so that it was an equinus together
+with something of a varus, or else a slight varus
+with a strong tendency to equinus. But with this
+equinus, wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose
+skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which the black
+nails looked as if made of iron, the club-foot ran
+about like a deer from morn till night. He was
+constantly to be seen on the Place, jumping around
+the carts, thrusting his limping foot forward. He
+seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. By
+dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+qualities of patience and of energy; and when he was
+doing some heavy work, he stood on it in preference
+to its fellow.</p>
+
+<p>Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to
+cut the tendo Achillis, and, if need were, the anterior
+tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting
+rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk
+both operations at once; he was even trembling
+already for fear of injuring some important region
+that he did not know.</p>
+
+<p>Neither Ambrose Par&eacute;, applying for the first time
+since Celsus, after an interval of fifteen centuries, a
+ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren, about to open
+an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first
+took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that
+trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as
+had the doctor when he approached Hippolyte, his
+tenotome between his fingers. And, as at hospitals,
+near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed
+thread, many bandages&mdash;a pyramid of bandages&mdash;every
+bandage to be found at the chemist's. It was
+Monsieur Homais who since morning had been organising
+all these preparations, as much to dazzle the
+multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles pierced
+the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon
+was cut, the operation over. Hippolyte could not
+get over his surprise, but bent over Bovary's hands
+to cover them with kisses.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, be calm," said the chemist; "later you
+will show your gratitude to your benefactor."</p>
+
+<p>And he went down to tell the result to five or
+six inquirers who were waiting in the yard, and who
+fancied that Hippolyte would reappear walking properly.
+Then Charles, having buckled his patient into
+the machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+awaited him at the door. She threw herself on his
+neck: they sat down to table; he ate much, and at
+dessert he even wished to take a cup of coffee, a
+luxury he permitted himself only on Sundays when
+there was company.</p>
+
+<p>The evening was charming, full of prattle, of
+dreams together. They talked about their future
+fortune, of the improvements to be made in their
+house; he saw people's estimation of him growing,
+his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him;
+and she was happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment,
+healthier, better, to feel at last some tenderness
+for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought
+of Rodolphe for one moment passed through her
+mind, but her eyes turned again to Charles; she even
+noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth.</p>
+
+<p>They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in
+spite of the servant, suddenly entered the room,
+holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written.
+It was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de
+Rouen." He brought it them to read.</p>
+
+<p>"Read it yourself," said Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>He read:</p>
+
+<p>"'Despite the prejudices that still cover a part of
+the face of Europe like a net, the light nevertheless
+begins to penetrate our country places. Thus on Tuesday
+our little town of Yonville found itself the scene
+of a surgical operation which is at the same time an
+act of loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of
+our most distinguished practitioners&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles,
+choking with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! not at all! What next!"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+"'&mdash;&mdash;Performed an operation on a club-footed
+man.' I have not used the scientific term, because
+you know in a newspaper every one would not perhaps
+understand. The masses must&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"</p>
+
+<p>"I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur
+Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners,
+performed an operation on a club-footed man called
+Hippolyte Tautain, stable-man for the last twenty-five
+years at the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow
+Lefran&ccedil;ois, at the Place d'Armes. The novelty of the
+attempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had
+attracted such a concourse of persons that there was
+a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment.
+The operation, moreover, was performed as
+if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared
+on the skin, as if to show that the rebellious tendon
+had at last given way beneath the efforts of art.
+The patient, strangely enough&mdash;we affirm it as an
+eye-witness&mdash;complained of no pain. His condition
+up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired.
+Everything tends to show that his convalescence will
+be brief; and who knows whether, at our next village
+festivity, we shall not see our good Hippolyte figuring
+in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous
+boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by
+his verve and his capers his complete cure? Honor,
+then, to the generous savants! Honor to those indefatigable
+spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration
+or to the alleviation of their kind! Honor,
+thrice honor! Is it not time to cry that the blind
+shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that
+which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science
+now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+readers informed as to the successive phases of this
+remarkable cure.'"</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>This did not prevent M&egrave;re Lefran&ccedil;ois from coming
+five days after, scared, and crying out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist,
+who caught sight of him passing along the Place
+hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared himself
+breathless, red, anxious, and asking every one who
+was going up the stairs&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what's the matter with our interesting
+strephopode?"</p>
+
+<p>The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions,
+so that the machine in which his leg was enclosed
+was knocked against the wall enough to break it.</p>
+
+<p>With many precautions, in order not to disturb
+the position of the limb, the box was removed, and
+an awful sight presented itself. The outlines of the
+foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire
+skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered with
+ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. Hippolyte
+had already complained of suffering from it. No attention
+had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge
+that he had not been altogether wrong, and he
+was freed for a few hours. But hardly had the
+&oelig;dema gone down to some extent, than the two savants
+thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus,
+strapping it tighter to hasten matters. At last,
+three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it
+any longer, they once more removed the machine,
+and were much surprised at the result they saw. The
+livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters
+here and there, whence oozed a black liquid. Matters
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+were taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry
+himself, and M&egrave;re Lefran&ccedil;ois had him installed in the
+little room near the kitchen, so that he might at least
+have some distraction.</p>
+
+<p>But the tax-collector, who dined there every day,
+complained bitterly of such companionship. Then
+Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. He lay
+there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale, with
+long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning
+his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where
+the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him.
+She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted
+and encouraged him. Besides, he did not want
+for company, especially on market-days, when the
+peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round
+him, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and
+brawled.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you?" they said, clapping him on the
+shoulder. "Ah! you're not up to much, it seems, but
+it's your own fault. You should do this! do that!"
+And then they told him stories of people who had all
+been cured by other remedies than his. Then by way of
+consolation they added:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle
+yourself like a king! All the same, old chap, you
+don't smell nice!"</p>
+
+<p>Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more.
+Bovary himself turned sick at it. He came every
+hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him with
+eyes full of terror, sobbing&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How
+unfortunate I am! how unfortunate I am!"</p>
+
+<p>And the doctor left, always recommending him to
+diet himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+"Don't listen to him, my lad," said M&egrave;re Lefran&ccedil;ois.
+"Haven't they tortured you enough already?
+You'll grow still weaker. Here! swallow this."</p>
+
+<p>And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of
+mutton, a piece of bacon, and sometimes small glasses
+of brandy, that he had not the strength to put to his
+lips.</p>
+
+<p>Abb&eacute; Bournisien, hearing that he was growing
+worse, asked to see him. He began by pitying his
+sufferings, declaring at the same time that he ought
+to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord,
+and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself
+to Heaven.</p>
+
+<p>"For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone,
+"you rather neglected your duties; you were rarely
+seen at divine worship. How many years is it since
+you approached the holy table? I understand that
+your work, that the whirl of the world may have
+kept you from care for your salvation. But now is
+the time to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have known
+great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you
+are not yet at this point, I know), had implored His
+mercy, and who certainly died in the best frame of
+mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a
+good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to
+prevent you from saying morning and evening a
+'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which art
+in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige
+me. That won't cost you anything. Will you promise
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>The poor devil promised. The cur&eacute; came back
+day after day. He chatted with the landlady, and
+even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and puns
+that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+he could, he fell back upon matters of religion, putting
+on an appropriate expression of face.</p>
+
+<p>His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon
+manifested a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours
+if he were cured; to which Monsieur Bournisien
+replied that he saw no objection; two precautions
+were better than one; it was no risk.</p>
+
+<p>The chemist was indignant at what he called the
+man&oelig;uvres of the priest; they were prejudicial, he
+said, to Hippolyte's convalescence, and he kept repeating
+to Madame Lefran&ccedil;ois, "Leave him alone!
+leave him alone! You perturb his morals with your
+mysticism."</p>
+
+<p>But the good woman would no longer listen to
+him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit of
+contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the
+patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch
+of box.</p>
+
+<p>Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour
+him than surgery, and the invincible gangrene
+still spread from the extremities towards the stomach.
+It was all very well to vary the potions and change
+the poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and
+more; and at last Charles replied by an affirmative
+nod of the head when M&egrave;re Lefran&ccedil;ois asked him if
+she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur
+Canivet of Neufch&acirc;tel, who was a celebrity.</p>
+
+<p>A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying
+a good position and self-possessed, Charles's colleague
+did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he
+had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then
+having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he
+went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses who
+could have reduced a poor man to such a state.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat,
+he shouted out in the shop:</p>
+
+<p>"These are the inventions of Paris! These are
+the ideas of those gentry of the capital! It is like
+strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities
+that the Government ought to prohibit. But
+they want to do the clever, and they cram you with
+remedies without troubling about the consequences.
+We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants,
+coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure
+people, and we should not dream of operating on any
+one who is in perfect health. Straighten club-feet!
+As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one
+wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!"</p>
+
+<p>Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse,
+and he concealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's
+smile; for he needed to humour Monsieur Canivet,
+whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville.
+So he did not take up the defense of Bovary; he
+did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing
+his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more
+serious interests of his business.</p>
+
+<p>This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet
+was a great event in the village. On that day all the
+inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande Rue, although
+full of people, had something lugubrious about
+it, as if an execution had been expected. At the
+grocer's they discussed Hippolyte's illness; the shops
+did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's
+wife, did not stir from her window, such was her
+impatience to see the operator arrive.</p>
+
+<p>He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But
+the springs of the right side having at length given
+way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it happened
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little,
+and on the other cushion near him could be seen a
+large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three
+brass clasps shone grandly.</p>
+
+<p>After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of
+the "Lion d'Or," the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered
+them to unharness his horse. Then he went
+into the stable to see that he was eating his oats all
+right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of all
+looked after his mare and his gig. People even said
+about this:</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Monsieur Camvet's a character!"</p>
+
+<p>And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable
+coolness. The universe to the last man might
+have died, and he would not have missed the smallest
+of his habits.</p>
+
+<p>Homais presented himself.</p>
+
+<p>"I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we
+ready? Come along!"</p>
+
+<p>But the chemist, turning red, confessed that he
+was too sensitive to assist at such an operation.</p>
+
+<p>"When one is a simple spectator," he said,
+"the imagination, you know, is impressed. And
+then I have such a nervous system!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary,
+you seem to me inclined to apoplexy. Besides, that
+doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows are
+always poking about your kitchens, which must end
+by spoiling your constitutions. Now just look at me.
+I get up every day at four o'clock; I shave with
+cold water (and am never cold). I don't wear
+flannels, and I never catch cold; my carcass is good
+enough! I live now in one way, now in another,
+like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me
+to carve a Christian as the first fowl that turns up.
+Then, perhaps, you will say, habit! habit!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte,
+who was sweating with agony between his sheets,
+these gentlemen entered into a conversation, in which
+the chemist compared the coolness of a surgeon to
+that of a general; and this comparison was pleasing
+to Canivet, who launched out on the exigencies
+of his art. He looked upon it as a sacred office,
+although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At
+last, coming back to the patient, he examined the
+bandages brought by Homais, the same that had
+appeared for the club-foot, and asked for some one to
+hold the limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for,
+and Monsieur Canivet having turned up his sleeves,
+passed into the billiard-room, while the chemist stayed
+with Art&eacute;mise and the landlady, both whiter than
+their aprons, and with ears strained towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from
+his house. He kept downstairs in the sitting-room
+by the side of the fireless chimney, his chin on his
+breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. "What
+a mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Perhaps,
+after all, he had made some slip. He thought it over,
+but could hit upon nothing. But the most famous
+surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no
+one would ever believe! People, on the contrary,
+would laugh, jeer! It would spread as far as Forges,
+as Neufch&acirc;tel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could
+say if his colleagues would not write against him.
+Polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in
+the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him.
+He saw himself dishonored, ruined, lost; and his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed
+amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea
+and floating upon the waves.</p>
+
+<p>Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share
+his humiliation; she felt another&mdash;that of having supposed
+such a man was worth anything. As if twenty
+times already she had not sufficiently perceived his
+mediocrity.</p>
+
+<p>Charles was walking up and down the room; his
+boots creaked on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," she said; "you fidget me."</p>
+
+<p>He sat down again.</p>
+
+<p>How was it that she&mdash;she, who was so intelligent&mdash;could
+have allowed herself to be deceived
+again? and through what deplorable madness had she
+thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She
+recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the privations of
+her soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household,
+her dream sinking into the mire like wounded swallows;
+all that she had longed for, all that she had
+denied herself, all that she might have had! And
+for what? for what?</p>
+
+<p>In the midst of the silence that hung over the village
+a heart-rending cry rose on the air. Bovary
+turned white to fainting. She knit her brows with a
+nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him,
+for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing,
+who felt nothing! For he was there quite quiet,
+not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name
+would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had
+made efforts to love him, and she had repented with
+tears for having yielded to another!</p>
+
+<p>"But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed
+Bovary, who was meditating.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on
+her thought like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma,
+shuddering, raised her head in order to find out what
+he meant to say; and they looked one at the other in
+silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered
+were they by their inner thoughts. Charles
+gazed at her with the dull look of a drunken man,
+while he listened motionless to the last cries of the
+sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn
+modulations, broken by sharp spasms like the far-off
+howling of some beast being slaughtered. Emma bit
+her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece
+of coral that she had broken, fixed on Charles the
+burning glance of her eyes like two arrows of fire
+about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated her
+now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his
+whole person, his existence, in fine. She repented of
+her past virtue as of a crime, and what still remained
+of it crumbled away beneath the furious blows of her
+pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant
+adultery. The memory of her lover came back to her
+with dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul
+into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh
+enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed
+from her life, as absent for ever, as impossible
+and annihilated, as if he had been about to die and
+were passing under her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sound of steps on the pavement.
+Charles looked up, and through the lowered blinds he
+saw at the corner of the market in the broad sunshine
+Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his
+handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a
+large red box in his hand, and both were going
+towards the chemist's.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement
+Charles turned to his wife saying to her:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, kiss me, my own!"</p>
+
+<p>"Leave me!" she said, red with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be
+calm; compose yourself. You know well enough that
+I love you. Come!"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough!" she cried with a terrible look.</p>
+
+<p>And escaping from the room, Emma closed the
+door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall
+and smashed on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>Charles sank back into his <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins> overwhelmed,
+trying to discover what could be wrong with her,
+fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely
+feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling
+round him.</p>
+
+<p>When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening,
+he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of
+the steps on the lowest stair. They threw their arms
+round one another, and all their rancour melted like
+snow beneath the warmth of that kiss.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 120px;">
+<img src="images/i261.jpg" width="120" height="50" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>XII.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Preparations_For_Flight" id="Preparations_For_Flight"></a><span class="smcap">Preparations for Flight.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap262"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />HEY began to love one another again.
+Often, even in the middle of the
+day, Emma suddenly wrote to him,
+then from the window made a
+sign to Justin, who, taking his apron
+off, quickly ran to La Huchette.
+Rodolphe would come; she had sent for him to tell
+him that she was bored; that her husband was odious,
+her life frightful.</p>
+
+<p>"But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! if you <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: would&mdash; without closing quotation marks">would&mdash;"</ins></p>
+
+<p>She was sitting on the floor between his knees,
+her hair loose, her look lost.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what?" said Rodolphe.</p>
+
+<p>She sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"We would go and live elsewhere&mdash;somewhere!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How
+could that be possible?"</p>
+
+<p>She returned to the subject; he pretended not to
+understand, and turned the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>What he did not understand was all this worry
+about so simple an affair as love. She had a motive,
+a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her
+repulsion to her husband. The more she gave up
+herself to the one, the more she loathed the other.
+Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to
+have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so
+dull as when they found themselves together after her
+meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing the
+spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of
+that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt
+brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant,
+of that man, in a word, who had such
+experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires.
+It was for him that she filed her nails with
+the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough
+cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her
+handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with bracelets,
+rings, and necklaces. When he was coming she filled
+the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared
+her room and her person like a courtesan expecting
+a prince. The servant had to be constantly
+washing linen, and all day F&eacute;licit&eacute; did not stir from
+the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her
+company, watched her at work.</p>
+
+<p>With his elbows on the long board on which she
+was ironing, he greedily watched all these women's
+clothes spread out about him, the dimity petticoats, the
+fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running
+strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing
+his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" F&eacute;licit&eacute;
+answered laughing. "As if your mistress, Madame
+Homais, didn't wear the same."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+"Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he
+added with a meditative air, "As if she were a lady
+like madame!"</p>
+
+<p>But F&eacute;licit&eacute; grew impatient of seeing him hanging
+round her. She was six years older than he, and
+Th&eacute;odore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, was beginning
+to pay court to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of
+starch. "You'd better be off and pound almonds;
+you are always dangling about women. Before you
+meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've
+got a beard to your chin."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots."</p>
+
+<p>And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's
+boots, all coated with mud, the mud of the rendezvous,
+that crumbled into powder beneath his fingers,
+and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the
+servant, who wasn't so particular when she cleaned
+them herself, because as soon as the stuff of the boots
+was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.</p>
+
+<p>Emma had many shoes in her closet that she
+wore out one after the other, without Charles allowing
+himself the slightest observation. So also he disbursed
+three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she
+thought proper to make a present of to Hippolyte.
+Its top was covered with cork, and it had spring
+joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by
+black trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But
+Hippolyte, not daring to use such a handsome leg
+every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him another
+more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had
+again to defray the expense of this purchase.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+So little by little the stable-man took up his work
+again. One saw him running about the village as before,
+and when Charles heard from afar the sharp
+noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who
+had undertaken the order; this provided him with an
+excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her about
+the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine
+trifles, made himself very obliging, and never asked
+for his money. Emma yielded to this lazy mode of
+satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have
+a very handsome riding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's
+at Rouen, to give to Rodolphe. The week
+after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her table.</p>
+
+<p>But the next day he called on her with a bill for
+two hundred and seventy francs, not counting the
+centimes. Emma was much embarrassed; all the
+drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed
+over a fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters
+to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and
+Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur Derozerays'
+account, which he was in the habit of paying
+him every year about midsummer.</p>
+
+<p>She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At
+last he lost patience; he was being sued; his capital
+was out, and unless he got some in he should be
+forced to take back all the goods she had received.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing
+I regret is the whip. My word! I'll ask monsieur to
+return it to me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating
+to himself in an undertone, and with his usual
+low whistle:</p>
+
+<p>"Good! we shall see! we shall see!"</p>
+
+<p>She was thinking how to get out of this when
+the servant coming in put on the mantelpiece a small
+roll of blue paper "from Monsieur Derozerays." Emma
+pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen
+napoleons; it was the account. She heard Charles on
+the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer,
+and took out the key.</p>
+
+<p>Three days after Lheureux reappeared.</p>
+
+<p>"I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he
+said. "If, instead of the sum agreed on, you would
+take&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is," she said, placing fourteen napoleons
+in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>The tradesman was astounded. Then, to conceal
+his disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and
+proffers of service, all of which Emma declined; then
+she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket
+of her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had
+given her in change. She promised herself she would
+economise in order to pay back later on. "Pshaw!"
+she thought, "he won't think about it again."</p>
+
+<p class="center">*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*</p>
+
+<p>Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle,
+Rodolphe had received a seal with the motto <i>Amor nel
+cor</i>; furthermore, a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a
+cigar-case exactly like the Viscount's, that Charles
+had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma
+had kept. These presents, however, humiliated him;
+he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by
+obeying, thinking her tyrannical and over-exacting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+Then she had strange ideas.</p>
+
+<p>"When midnight strikes," she said, "you must
+think of me."</p>
+
+<p>And if he confessed that he had not thought of
+her, there were floods of reproaches that always
+ended with the eternal question:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you love me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, of course I love you," he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"A great deal?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly!"</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't loved any others?"</p>
+
+<p>"Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p>Emma wept, and he tried to console her, adorning
+his protestations with puns.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so
+that I could not live without you, do you see?
+There are times when I long to see you again, when
+I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself,
+where is he? Perhaps he is talking to other women.
+They smile upon him; he approaches. Oh no! no
+one else pleases you. There are some more beautiful,
+but I love you best. I know how to love best.
+I am your servant, your concubine! You are my
+king, my idol! You are good, you are beautiful,
+you are clever, you are strong!"</p>
+
+<p>He had so often heard these things said that
+they did not strike him as original. Emma was
+like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty,
+gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the
+eternal monotony of passion, that has always the
+same forms and the same language. He did not
+distinguish, this man of so much experience, the
+difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span>
+expression. Because lips libertine and venal had
+murmured such words to him, he believed but little
+in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding
+mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the
+fulness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in
+the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give
+the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions,
+nor of his sorrows; and since human speech
+is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer
+out tunes to make bears dance when we long to
+move the stars.</p>
+
+<p>But with that superior critical judgment that
+belongs to him, who, in no matter what circumstance,
+holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights
+to be got out of this love. He thought all modesty
+in the way. He treated her quite <i>sans fa&ccedil;on</i>. He
+made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers
+was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration
+for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that
+benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness,
+shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his
+butt of Malmsey.</p>
+
+<p>By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's
+manners changed. Her looks grew bolder, her speech
+more free; she even committed the impropriety of
+walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in
+her mouth, "as if to defy the people." At last those
+who still doubted doubted no longer when one day
+they saw her getting out of the "Hirondelle" her
+waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and
+Madame Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene
+with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's, was
+not the least scandalised of the women-folk. Many
+other things displeased her. First, Charles had not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels;
+then the "ways of the house" annoyed her; she
+allowed herself to make some remarks, and there
+were quarrels, especially one on account of F&eacute;licit&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing
+along the passage, had surprised her in company
+of a man&mdash;a man with a brown collar, about forty
+years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly
+escaped through the kitchen. Then Emma began to
+laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that
+unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to
+look after those of one's servants.</p>
+
+<p>"Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law,
+with so impertinent a look that Madame
+Bovary asked her if she were not perhaps defending
+her own case.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave the room!" said the young woman,
+springing up with a bound.</p>
+
+<p>"Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile
+them.</p>
+
+<p>But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma
+was stamping her feet as she repeated&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! what manners! What a peasant!"</p>
+
+<p>He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She
+stammered:</p>
+
+<p>"She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps
+worse!"</p>
+
+<p>And she was for leaving at once if the other did
+not apologize.</p>
+
+<p>So Charles went back again to his wife and implored
+her to give way; he knelt to her; she ended
+by saying&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Very well! I'll go to <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note - the original reads: her. without closing quotation marks">her."</ins></p>
+
+<p>And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+with the dignity of a marchioness as she
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"Excuse me, madame."</p>
+
+<p>Then having gone up again to her room, she
+threw herself flat on her bed and cried there like a
+child, her face buried in the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of
+anything extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a
+small piece of white paper to the blind, so that if by
+chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry
+to the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal;
+she had been waiting three-quarters of an hour
+when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at the
+corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the
+window and call him, but he had already disappeared.
+She fell back in despair.</p>
+
+<p>Soon, however, it seemed to her that some one
+was walking on the pavement. It was he, no doubt.
+She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He was
+there outside. She threw herself into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Do take care!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! if you knew!" she replied.</p>
+
+<p>And she began telling him everything, hurriedly,
+disjointedly, exaggerating the facts, inventing many,
+and so prodigal of parentheses that he understood
+nothing of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted!
+be patient!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I have been patient; I have suffered for four
+years. A love like ours ought to show itself in the
+face of heaven. They torture me! I can bear it no
+longer! Save me!"</p>
+
+<p>She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears,
+flashed like flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+he had never loved her so much, so that he lost his
+head and said:</p>
+
+<p>"What is it? What do you wish?"</p>
+
+<p>"Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh,
+I entreat you!"</p>
+
+<p>And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to
+seize there the unexpected consent it breathed forth in
+a kiss.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;" Rodolphe resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your little girl!"</p>
+
+<p>She reflected a few moments, then replied&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"We will take her! It can't be helped!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a woman!" he said to himself, watching
+her as she went. For she had run into the garden.
+Some one was calling her.</p>
+
+<p>On the following days Madame Bovary senior was
+much surprised at the change in her daughter-in-law.
+Emma, in fact, was showing herself more docile, and
+even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe
+for pickling gherkins.</p>
+
+<p>Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she
+wish by a sort of voluptuous stoicism to feel the
+more profoundly the bitterness of the things she was
+about to leave?</p>
+
+<p>But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary,
+she lived as if lost in the anticipated delight of her
+coming happiness. It was an eternal subject for conversation
+with Rodolphe. She leant on his shoulder
+murmuring&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you
+think about it? Can it be? It seems to me that the
+moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if we
+were rising in a balloon as if we were setting out
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+for the clouds. Do you know that I count the hours?
+And you?"</p>
+
+<p>Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at
+this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results
+from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and
+that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances.
+Her desires, her sorrows, the experience
+of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as
+soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers
+grow, gradually developed her, and she at length
+blossomed forth in all the plenitude of her nature.
+Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for her long
+amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while
+a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and
+raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the
+light by a little black down. One would have thought
+that an artist apt in conception had arranged the
+curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass,
+negligently, and with the changing chances of their
+adultery, that unbound them every day. Her voice
+now took more mellow inflections, her figure also;
+something subtle and penetrating escaped even from
+the folds of her gown and from the line of her foot.
+Charles, as when they were first married, thought her
+delicious and quite irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>When he came home in the middle of the night,
+he did not dare to wake her. The porcelain night-light
+threw a round trembling gleam upon the ceiling,
+and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed, as it
+were, a white hut standing out in the shade, and by
+the bedside Charles looked at them. He seemed to
+hear the light breathing of his child. She would grow
+big now; every season would bring rapid progress.
+He already saw her coming from school as the day
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on her jacket, and
+carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would
+have to be sent to a boarding-school; that would cost
+much; how was it to be done? Then he reflected.
+He thought of hiring a small farm in the neighborhood,
+that he would superintend every morning on
+his way to his patients. He would save up what
+he brought in; he would put it in the savings-bank.
+Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter
+where; besides, his practice would increase; he
+counted upon that, for he wanted Berthe to be well-educated,
+to be accomplished, to learn to play the
+piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when
+she was fifteen, when, resembling her mother, she
+would, like her, wear large straw hats in the summer-time;
+from a distance they would be taken for
+two sisters. He pictured her to himself working in
+the evening by their side beneath the light of the
+lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would
+look after the house; she would fill all the home
+with her charm and her gaiety. At last, they would
+think of her marriage; they would find her some good
+young fellow with a steady business; he would make
+her happy; this would last for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and
+while he dozed off by her side she awakened to other
+dreams.</p>
+
+<p>To the gallop of four horses she was carried away
+for a week towards a new land, whence they would
+return no more. They went on and on, their arms
+entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a
+mountain there suddenly glimpsed some splendid city
+with domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of citron
+trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+pointed steeples were storks' nests. They went at a
+walking-pace because of the great flag-stones, and on
+the ground there were bouquets of flowers, offered you
+by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the
+chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with
+the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains,
+whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged
+like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled
+beneath playing waters. And then, one night they
+came to a fishing village, where brown nets were
+drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of
+the huts. It was there that they would stay; they
+would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a
+palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf, by the sea. They
+would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and
+their existence would be easy and large as their silk
+gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights they
+would contemplate. However, in the immensity of
+this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood
+forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other
+like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite,
+harmonized, azure, and bathed in sunshine. But the
+child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored
+more loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning,
+when the dawn whitened the window, and
+when little Justin was already in the square taking
+down the shutters of the chemist's shop.</p>
+
+<p>She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said
+to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I want a cloak&mdash;a large lined cloak with a deep
+collar."</p>
+
+<p>"You are going on a journey?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No; but&mdash;never mind. I may count on you,
+may I not, and quickly?"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+He bowed.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk&mdash;not
+too heavy&mdash;handy."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a
+foot and a half, as they are being made just now."</p>
+
+<p>"And a travelling bag."</p>
+
+<p>"Decidedly," thought Lheureux, "there's a row
+on here."</p>
+
+<p>"And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch
+from her belt, "take this; you can pay yourself out
+of it."</p>
+
+<p>But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong;
+they knew one another; did he doubt her? What
+childishness!</p>
+
+<p>She insisted, however, on his taking at least the
+chain, and Lheureux had already put it in his pocket
+and was going, when she called him back.</p>
+
+<p>"You will leave everything at your place. As to
+the cloak"&mdash;she seemed to be reflecting&mdash;"do not
+bring it either; you can give me the maker's address,
+and tell him to have it ready for me."</p>
+
+<p>It was the next month that they were to run
+away. She was to leave Yonville as if she was going
+on some business to Rouen. Rodolphe would
+have booked the seats, procured the passports, and
+even have written to Paris in order to have the whole
+mail-coach reserved for them as far as Marseilles,
+where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence
+without stopping to Genoa. She would take care to
+send her luggage to Lheureux', whence it would be
+taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one would
+have any suspicion. And in all this there never was
+any allusion to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking
+of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+He wished to have two more weeks before him to
+arrange some affairs; then at the end of a week he
+wanted two more; then he said he was ill; next he
+went on a journey. The month of August passed,
+and, after all these delays, they decided that it was
+to be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September&mdash;a
+Monday.</p>
+
+<p>At length the Saturday before arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything is ready?" she asked him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went
+to sit down near the terrace on the curb-stone of the
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>"You are sad," said Emma.</p>
+
+<p>"No; why?"</p>
+
+<p>And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender
+fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it because you are going away?" she went
+on; "because you are leaving what is dear to you&mdash;your
+life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing in the
+world! You are all to me; so shall I be to you. I
+will be your people, your country; I will tend, I
+will love you!"</p>
+
+<p>"How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh.
+"Do you love me? Swear it then!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do I love you&mdash;love you? I adore you, my
+love!"</p>
+
+<p>The moon, full and purple-colored, was rising
+right out of the earth at the end of the meadow. She
+rose quickly between the branches of the poplars, that
+hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span>
+with holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness
+in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now
+sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a
+great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and
+the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very
+depths like a headless serpent covered with luminous
+scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra all
+along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together.
+The soft night was about them; masses of
+shadow filled the branches. Emma, her eyes half-closed,
+breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind
+that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they
+were in the rush of their reverie. The tenderness of
+the old days came back to their hearts, full and silent
+as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume
+of the syringas, and threw across their memories
+shadows more immense and more sombre than those
+of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass.
+Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting
+out on the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes
+they heard a ripe peach falling all alone from the
+espalier.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if
+speaking to herself, "Yes, it will be good to travel.
+And yet, why should my heart be so heavy? Is it
+dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or
+rather&mdash;&mdash;? No; it is the excess of happiness. How
+weak I am, am I not? Forgive me!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps
+you may repent!"</p>
+
+<p>"Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming
+closer to him: "What ill could come to me? There is
+no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not traverse
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+with you. The longer we live together the more it
+will be like an embrace, every day closer, more heart
+to heart. There will be nothing to trouble us, no care,
+no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally.
+Oh, speak! Answer me!"</p>
+
+<p>At regular intervals he answered, "Yes&mdash;Yes&mdash;"
+She had passed her hands through his hair, and she
+repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big tears
+which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe!
+dear little Rodolphe!"</p>
+
+<p>Midnight struck.</p>
+
+<p>"Midnight!" said she. "Come! it is to-morrow!
+One day more!"</p>
+
+<p>He rose to go; and as if the movement he made
+had been the signal for their flight, Emma said, suddenly,
+assuming a gay air&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You have the passports?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"You are forgetting nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"It is at the H&ocirc;tel de Provence, is it not, that
+you will wait for me at mid-day?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Till to-morrow then!" said Emma, in a last
+caress; and she watched him go.</p>
+
+<p>He did not turn round. She ran after him, and,
+leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>He was already on the other side of the river and
+walking fast across the meadow.</p>
+
+<p>After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and
+when he saw her with her white gown gradually
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized
+with such a beating of the heart that he leant against
+a tree lest he should fall.</p>
+
+<p>"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful
+oath. "No matter! she was a pretty mistress!"</p>
+
+<p>And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the
+pleasures of their love, came back to him. For a
+moment he softened; then he rebelled against her.</p>
+
+<p>"For, after all," he exclaimed gesticulating, "I
+can't exile myself&mdash;have a child on my hands."</p>
+
+<p>He was saying these things to give himself firmness.</p>
+
+<p>"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no,
+no, no, no! a thousand times no! It would have
+been too stupid."</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 125px;">
+<img src="images/i279.jpg" width="125" height="70" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>XIII.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Deserted" id="Deserted"></a><span class="smcap">Deserted.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap280"><span class="dropcap">N</span></span><br />O SOONER was Rodolphe at home
+than he sat down quickly at his
+bureau under the stag's head that
+hung as a trophy on the wall.
+But when he had the pen between
+his fingers, he could think of nothing,
+so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect.
+Emma seemed to him to have receded into a
+far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had
+suddenly placed a distance between them.</p>
+
+<p>To get back something of her, he fetched from
+the cupboard at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box,
+in which he usually kept his letters from women,
+and from it came an odor of dry dust and withered
+roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little
+spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when
+they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten
+it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature
+given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him
+pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst
+possible taste. Then, from looking at this image and
+recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features
+little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against
+the other, had effaced each other. Finally, he read
+some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating
+to their journey, short, technical, and urgent,
+like business notes. He wanted to see the long ones
+again, those of old times. In order to find them at
+the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the
+others, and mechanically began <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'rumaging'">rummaging</ins> amidst this
+mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets,
+garters, a black mask, pins, and hair&mdash;hair! dark and
+fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box,
+broke when it was opened.</p>
+
+<p>Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the
+writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their
+orthography. They were tender or jovial, facetious,
+melancholy; there were some that asked for love,
+others that asked for money. A word recalled faces
+to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes,
+however, he remembered nothing at all.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, these women, rushing at once into his
+thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced
+to a uniform level of love that equalized them all. So
+taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused
+himself for some moments with letting them fall in
+cascades from his right into his left hand. At last,
+bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to the
+cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!"
+Which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like
+schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled
+upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and
+that which passed through it, more heedless than
+children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved
+upon the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Come," said he, "let's begin."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+He wrote&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring
+misery into your life."</p>
+
+<p>"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am
+acting in her interest; I am honest."</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"Have you carefully weighed your resolution?
+Do you know to what an abyss I was dragging you,
+poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were
+coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness
+in the future. Ah! unhappy that we are&mdash;insensate!"</p>
+
+<p>Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.</p>
+
+<p>"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides
+that would stop nothing. It would all have to
+be begun over again later on. As if one could make
+women like that listen to reason!" He reflected,
+then went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"I shall not forget you, oh! believe it; and I shall
+ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day,
+sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human
+things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude
+would have come to us, and who knows if I should
+not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing
+your remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should
+have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that
+would come to you tortures me, Emma. Forget me!
+Why did I ever know you? Why were you so
+beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no!
+accuse only fate."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[255]</a></span>
+"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"Ah! if you had been one of those frivolous
+women that one sees, certainly I might, through egotism,
+have made an experiment, in that case without
+danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once
+your charm and your torment, has prevented you
+from understanding, adorable woman that you are,
+the falseness of our future position. Nor had I
+reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade
+of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel
+tree, without foreseeing the consequences."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice.
+Ah, well! so much the worse; it must be
+stopped!"</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might
+have gone, it would have persecuted us. You would
+have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny,
+contempt, insult, perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And
+I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear
+with me your memory as a talisman! For I am going
+to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you.
+I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad.
+Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of
+the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name
+to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers."</p>
+
+<p>The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got
+up to shut the window, and when he had sat down
+again&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she
+should come and hunt me up."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">"I shall be far away when you read these sad
+lines, for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible
+to shun the temptation of seeing you again. No
+weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later we shall
+talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>And there was a last 'adieu' divided into two
+words: "A Dieu!" which he thought in very excellent
+taste.</p>
+
+<p>"Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself.
+"Yours devotedly?' No! 'Your friend?' Yes,
+that's it."</p>
+
+<p class="right blockquot smcap">
+"Your friend."</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion.
+"She'll think me harder than a rock. There ought to
+have been some tears on this; but I can't cry; it
+isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water
+into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and
+let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale
+stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he came
+upon the one "<i>Amor nel cor</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances.
+Pshaw! never mind!"</p>
+
+<p>After which he smoked three pipes and went to
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>The next day when he was up (at about two
+o'clock&mdash;he had slept late), Rodolphe had a basket of
+apricots picked. He put his letter at the bottom
+under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard,
+his ploughman, to take it with care to Madame
+Bovary. He made use of this means for corresponding
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+with her, sending according to the season fruits
+or game.</p>
+
+<p>"If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell
+her that I have gone on a journey. You must give
+the basket to her herself, into her own hands. Get
+along and take care!"</p>
+
+<p>Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief
+round the apricots, and, walking with great
+heavy steps in his thick iron-bound galoshes, made
+his way to Yonville.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary, when he got to her house was
+arranging a bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with
+F&eacute;licit&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for
+you from master."</p>
+
+<p>She was seized with apprehension, and as she
+sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked
+at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself
+looked at her with amazement, not understanding how
+such a present could so move any one. At last he
+went out. F&eacute;licit&eacute; remained. Emma could bear it no
+longer; she ran into the sitting-room as if to take the
+apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the
+leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some
+fearful fire were behind her, she flew to her room
+terrified.</p>
+
+<p>Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her;
+she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the
+stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding
+this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between
+her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second
+floor she stopped before the attic-door, that was closed.</p>
+
+<p>Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the
+letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. And
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no! here,"
+she thought, "I shall be all right."</p>
+
+<p>Emma pushed open the door and went in.</p>
+
+<p>The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that
+gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself
+to the closed garret-window. She drew back the
+bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open
+country until it was lost to the sight. Underneath
+her, the village square was empty; the stones of the
+pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses
+were motionless. At the corner of the street, from a
+lower story, rose a kind of humming with strident
+modulations. It was Binet turning.</p>
+
+<p>She leant against the embrasure of the window, and
+re-read the letter with angry sneers. But the more
+she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused
+were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled
+him with her arms, and the throbs of her
+heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a
+sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven
+intervals. She looked about her with the wish that
+the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not end
+it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced,
+looked at the paving-stones, saying to herself,
+"Come! come!"</p>
+
+<p>The luminous ray that came straight up from below
+drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. It
+seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating
+square went up the walls, and that the floor dipped
+on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the
+edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The
+blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling
+in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+be taken; and the humming of the lathe never
+ceased, like an angry voice calling her.</p>
+
+<p>"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"Wherever are you? Come!"</p>
+
+<p>The thought that she had just escaped from death
+almost made her faint with terror. She closed her
+eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her
+sleeve; it was F&eacute;licit&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is
+on the table."</p>
+
+<p>And she had to go down to sit at table.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then
+she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns,
+and she really thought of applying herself to this
+work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly
+the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How
+had she lost it? Where could she find it? But she
+felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even
+invent a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became
+a coward; she was afraid of Charles; he knew
+all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced these
+words in a strange manner:</p>
+
+<p>"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon
+again, it seems."</p>
+
+<p>"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.</p>
+
+<p>"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at
+her abrupt tone. "Why, Girard, whom I met just
+now at the door of the Caf&eacute;-Fran&ccedil;ais. He has gone
+on a journey, or is to go."</p>
+
+<p>She gave a sob.</p>
+
+<p>"What surprises you in that? He absents himself
+like that from time to time for a change, and,
+<i>ma foi</i>, I think he's right, when one has a fortune
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has
+our friend. He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois
+told me&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant
+came in. She put back into the basket the apricots
+scattered on the sideboard. Charles, without noticing
+his wife's color, had them brought to him, took one,
+and bit into it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!"</p>
+
+<p>And he handed her the basket, which she put
+away from her gently.</p>
+
+<p>"Do just smell! What an odor!" he remarked,
+passing it under her nose several times.</p>
+
+<p>"I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by
+an effort of will the spasm passed; then&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is
+nervousness. Sit down and go on eating." For she
+dreaded lest he should begin questioning her, attending
+to her, that she should not be left alone.</p>
+
+<p>Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat
+the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards
+putting them on his plate.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square
+at a rapid trot. Emma uttered a cry and fell back
+rigid to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided
+to set out for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette
+to Buchy there is no other way than by Yonville, he
+had to go through the village, and Emma had recognized
+him by the rays of the lanterns, which like
+lightning flashed through the twilight.</p>
+
+<p>The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in
+the house, ran thither. The table with all the plates
+was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+were strewn over the room; Charles was calling
+for help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and F&eacute;licit&eacute;,
+whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress,
+whose whole body shivered convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar,"
+said the chemist.</p>
+
+<p>Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle:</p>
+
+<p>"I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would
+wake any dead person for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it
+is I&mdash;your Charles, who loves you. Do you know
+me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!"</p>
+
+<p>The child stretched out her arms to her mother to
+cling to her neck. But turning away her head, Emma
+said in a broken voice&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! no one!"</p>
+
+<p>She fainted again. They carried her to her bed.
+She lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart,
+her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and
+white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed
+from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove,
+and the chemist, near him, maintained that
+meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions
+of life.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow;
+"I think the paroxysm is past."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is resting a little now," answered
+Charles, watching her sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl!
+She has gone off now!"</p>
+
+<p>Then Homais asked how the accident had come
+about. Charles answered that she had been taken ill
+suddenly while she was eating some apricots.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+"Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it
+might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope.
+Some natures are so sensitive to certain smells;
+and it would even be a very fine question to study
+both in its pathological and physiological relation. The
+priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced
+aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to
+stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies&mdash;a thing,
+moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex,
+who are more delicate than the other. Some are cited
+who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new
+bread&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a
+low voice.</p>
+
+<p>"And not only," the chemist went on, "are
+human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals
+also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly
+aphrodisiac effect produced by the <i>Nepeta cataria</i>,
+vulgarly called cat-mint, on the feline race; and, on
+the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity
+I can answer for, Bridaux (one of my old comrades,
+at present established in the Rue Malpalu)
+possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as
+you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even makes
+the experiment before his friends at his summer-house
+at Guillaume Wood. Would any one believe that a
+simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a
+quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it
+not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"This shows us," went on the other, smiling with
+benign self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities
+of the nervous system. With regard to madame, she
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+has always seemed to me, I confess, very susceptible.
+And so I should by no means recommend to you,
+my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that,
+under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack
+the constitution. No; no useless physicking! Diet,
+that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification. Then,
+don't you think that perhaps her imagination should
+be worked upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"In what way? How?" said Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question.
+'That is the question,' as I lately read in a newspaper."</p>
+
+<p>But Emma, awaking, cried out&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The letter! the letter!"</p>
+
+<p>They thought she was delirious; and she was by
+midnight. Brain-fever had set in.</p>
+
+<p>For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He
+gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he
+was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms
+and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as
+Neufch&acirc;tel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he
+sent him back again. He called Monsieur Canivet into
+consultation; he sent for Dr. Larivi&egrave;re, his old master,
+from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him
+most was Emma's prostration, for she did not speak,
+did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her
+body and soul were both resting together after all
+their troubles.</p>
+
+<p>About the middle of October she could sit up in
+bed supported by pillows. Charles wept when he
+saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength
+returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an
+afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he tried
+to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span>
+garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing beneath
+the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging
+along her slippers, and leaning against Charles's
+shoulder. She smiled all the time.</p>
+
+<p>They went thus to the bottom of the garden near
+the terrace. She drew herself up slowly, shading her
+eyes with her hand to look. She looked far off, as
+far as she could, but on the horizon were only great
+bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.</p>
+
+<p>"You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary.
+And pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour,
+"Sit down on this seat; you'll be comfortable."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>She was seized with giddiness, and from that
+evening her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain
+character, it is true, and more complex symptoms.
+Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the
+head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles
+thought he saw the first signs of cancer.</p>
+
+<p>And besides this, the poor fellow was worried
+about money matters.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 93px;">
+<img src="images/i292.jpg" width="93" height="70" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>XIV.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="Religious_Fervor" id="Religious_Fervor"></a><span class="smcap">Religious Fervor.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap293"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />O BEGIN with, he did not know
+how he could pay Monsieur Homais
+for all the physic supplied by him,
+and though, as a medical man, he
+was not obliged to pay for it, he
+nevertheless blushed a little at such
+an obligation. Then the expenses of the household,
+now that the servant was mistress, became terrible.
+Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen
+grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux especially harassed
+him. In fact, at the height of Emma's illness, the
+latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to make
+his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the
+travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number
+of other things. It was very well for Charles to
+say he did not want them. The tradesman answered
+arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and
+that he would not take them back; besides, it would
+vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had
+better think it over; in short, he was resolved to sue
+him rather than give up his rights and take back his
+goods. Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent
+back to the shop. F&eacute;licit&eacute; forgot; he had other things
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+to attend to; then thought no more about them. Monsieur
+Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns
+threatening and whining, so managed that Bovary
+ended by signing a bill at six months. But hardly
+had he signed this bill than a bold idea occurred to
+him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux.
+So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it
+were possible to get them, adding that it would be
+for a year, at any interest he wished. Lheureux ran
+off to his shop, brought back the money and dictated
+another bill, by which Bovary undertook to pay to
+his order on the 1st of September next the sum of
+one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the
+hundred and eighty already agreed to, made just
+twelve hundred and fifty, thus lending at six per cent,
+in addition to one-fourth for commission; and the
+things bringing him in a good third at the least, this
+ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a
+hundred and thirty francs. He hoped that the business
+would not stop there; that the bills would not
+be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his
+poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as
+at a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably
+more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.</p>
+
+<p>Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He
+was adjudicator for a supply of cider to the hospital
+at Neufch&acirc;tel; Monsieur Guillaumin promised him some
+shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of
+establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil
+and Rouen, which no doubt would not be long in
+ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion d'Or," and
+that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying
+more luggage, would thus put into his hands the
+whole commerce of Yonville.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+Charles several times asked himself by what means
+he should next year be able to pay back so much
+money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such as
+applying to his father or selling something. But his
+father would be deaf, and he&mdash;he had nothing to sell.
+Then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed
+so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind.
+He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if,
+all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it was
+robbing her of something not to be constantly thinking
+of her.</p>
+
+<p>The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence
+slow. When it was fine they wheeled her
+<ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins> to the window that overlooked the square,
+for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the
+blinds on that side were always down. She wished
+the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now
+displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to
+the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little
+meals, rang for the servant to inquire about her gruel
+or to chat with her. The snow on the market-roof
+threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain
+began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind
+full of eagerness for the inevitable return of some
+trifling events which nevertheless had no relation to
+her. The most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle"
+in the evening. Then the landlady shouted
+out, and other voices answered, while Hippolyte's
+lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was
+like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came
+in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea,
+and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in,
+the children coming back from school, dragging their
+wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+of the shutters with their rulers one after the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came
+to see her. He inquired after her health, gave her
+news, exhorted her to religion in a coaxing little
+gossip that was not without its charm. The mere
+thought of his cassock comforted her.</p>
+
+<p>One day, when at the height of her illness, she
+had thought herself dying, and had asked for the
+communion; and, while they were making the preparations
+in her room for the sacrament, while they were
+turning the night-table covered with sirups into an
+altar, and while F&eacute;licit&eacute; was strewing dahlia flowers
+on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over her that
+freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling.
+Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life
+was beginning; it seemed to her that her being,
+mounting toward God, would be annihilated in that
+love like a burning incense that melts into vapour.
+The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the
+priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and
+it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out
+her lips to accept the body of the Saviour presented
+to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round
+her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning
+on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling
+halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she
+heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived
+in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the
+midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father,
+resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to
+earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in
+their arms.</p>
+
+<p>This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so
+that now she strove to recall her sensation, that still
+lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and
+with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride,
+at length found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting
+the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruction
+of her will, that must have left a wide entrance
+for the inroads of heavenly grace. There
+existed, then, in the place of happiness, still
+greater joys,&mdash;another love beyond all loves, without
+pause and without end, one that would grow eternally!
+She saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of
+purity floating above the earth mingling with heaven,
+to which she aspired. She wanted to become a saint.
+She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished
+to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary
+set in emeralds that she might kiss it every
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>The cur&eacute; marvelled at this humour, although
+Emma's religion, he thought, might, from its fervour,
+end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But not
+being much versed in these matters, as soon as they
+went beyond a certain limit he wrote to Monsieur
+Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor, to send him "something
+good for a lady who was very clever." The
+bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had
+been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up, pell-mell,
+everything that was then the fashion in the
+pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions
+and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after
+the manner of Monsieur de Maistre, and certain novels
+in rose-coloured bindings and with a honied style,
+manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent
+blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+Man of the World at Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de
+* * *, <i>d&eacute;cor&eacute;</i> with many Orders;" "The Errors of
+Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently
+clear to apply herself seriously to anything; moreover,
+she began this reading in too much hurry. She
+grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance
+of the polemic writings displeased her by their
+inveteracy in attacking people she did not know;
+and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed
+to her written in such ignorance of the world, that
+they insensibly estranged her from the truths for
+whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless, she
+persevered; and when the volume slipped from her
+hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic
+melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive.</p>
+
+<p>As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it
+back to the bottom of her heart, and it remained there
+more solemn and more motionless than a king's
+mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from
+this embalmed love, that, penetrating through everything,
+perfumed with tenderness the immaculate
+atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she
+knelt on her Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the
+Lord the same suave words that she had murmured
+formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery.
+It was to make faith come; but no delights descended
+from the heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and
+with a vague feeling of a gigantic dupery.</p>
+
+<p>This searching after faith, she thought, was only
+one merit the more, and in the pride of her devoutness
+Emma compared herself to those grand ladies of
+long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a
+portrait of La Valli&egrave;re, and who, trailing with so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+much majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long
+gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of
+Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded.</p>
+
+<p>Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She
+sewed clothes for the poor, she sent wood to women
+in childbed; and Charles one day, on coming home,
+found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at
+the table eating soup. She had her little girl, whom
+during her illness her husband had sent back to the
+nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach her to
+read; even when Berthe cried, she was not vexed.
+She had made up her mind to resignation, to universal
+indulgence. Her language about everything was
+full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, "Is
+your stomach-ache better, my angel?"</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure
+except perhaps this mania of knitting jackets for orphans
+instead of mending her own house-linen; but,
+harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman
+took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even staid
+there till after Easter, to escape the sarcasms of old
+Bovary, who never failed on Good Friday to order
+chitterlings.</p>
+
+<p>Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law,
+who strengthened her a little by the rectitude of her
+judgment and her grave ways, Emma almost every
+day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois,
+Madame Caron, Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache,
+and regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent
+Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed
+any of the tittle-tattle about her neighbor. The
+little Homais also came to see her; Justin accompanied
+them. He went up with them to her <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: bed-room">bedroom</ins>,
+and remained standing near the door, motionless and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+mute. Often even Madame Bovary, taking no heed
+of him, began her toilette. She began by taking out
+her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement,
+and when he for the first time saw all this mass of
+hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets,
+it was to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into
+something new and strange, whose splendour terrified
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions
+or his timidity. She had no suspicion that the
+love vanished from her life was there, palpitating by
+her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that
+youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty.
+Besides, she now enveloped all things with such indifference,
+she had words so affectionate with looks
+so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could
+no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption
+from virtue. One evening, for example, she
+was angry with the servant, who had asked to go
+out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.
+Then suddenly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"So you love him?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>And without waiting for any answer from F&eacute;licit&eacute;,
+who was blushing, she added, "There! run along;
+enjoy yourself!"</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning of spring she had the garden
+turned up from end to end, despite Bovary's remonstrances.
+However, he was glad to see her at last
+manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger
+she displayed more wilfulness. First, she found occasion
+to expel M&egrave;re Rollet, the nurse, who during her
+convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too
+often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her
+boarder, better off for teeth than a cannibal. Then
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+she got rid of the Homais family, successively dismissed
+all the other visitors, and even frequented
+church less assiduously, to the great approval of the
+chemist, who said to her in a friendly way&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"</p>
+
+<p>As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every
+day when he came out after catechism class. He
+preferred staying out of doors to taking the air "in
+the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the
+time when Charles came home. They were hot;
+some sweet cider was brought out, and they drank
+together to madame's complete restoration.</p>
+
+<p>Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower
+down against the terrace wall, fishing for cray-fish.
+Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he thoroughly
+understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.</p>
+
+<p>"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance
+all round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape,
+"hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table,
+and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with
+little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water
+at restaurants."</p>
+
+<p>But during his demonstration the cider often
+spurted right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic,
+with a thick laugh, never missed this joke&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It's goodness strikes the eye!"</p>
+
+<p>He was, in fact, a good fellow, and one day he
+was not even scandalised at the chemist, who advised
+Charles to give madame some distraction by taking
+her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious
+tenor, Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence,
+wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared
+that he considered music less dangerous for morals
+than literature.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+But the chemist took up the defence of letters.
+The theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices,
+and, beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Castigat ridendo mores</i>, Monsieur Bournisien!
+Thus, consider the greater part of Voltaire's tragedies;
+they are cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections,
+that make them a very school of morals and diplomacy
+for the people."</p>
+
+<p>"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the
+'Gamin de Paris,' in which there was the character
+of an old general that is really hit off to a
+T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced
+a working girl, who at the end&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad
+literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn
+in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems
+to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the
+abominable times that imprisoned Galileo."</p>
+
+<p>"I know very well," objected the cur&eacute;, "that
+there are good works, good authors. However, if it
+were only those persons of different sexes together in
+a bewitching apartment, decorated with worldly
+pomp, and then, those pagan disguises, that rouge,
+those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in
+the long run, engender a certain mental libertinage,
+give rise to immodest thoughts, and impure temptations.
+Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the
+Fathers. Finally," he added, suddenly assuming a
+mystic tone of voice, while he rolled a pinch of
+snuff between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned
+the theatre, she must be right; we must
+submit to her decrees."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," asked the chemist, "should she excommunicate
+actors? For formerly they openly took part
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the
+chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce
+called 'Mysteries,' which often offended against the
+laws of decency."</p>
+
+<p>The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a
+groan, and the chemist went on&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It's just as it is in the Bible; for there, you know,
+are more than one piquant detail, matters really
+libidinous!"</p>
+
+<p>And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur
+Bournisien&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place
+in the hands of a young girl, and I should be sorry
+if Athalie&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the
+other impatiently, "who recommend the Bible."</p>
+
+<p>"No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that
+in our days, in this century of enlightenment, any
+one should still persist in proscribing an intellectual
+relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes
+even hygienic; is it not, doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either
+because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend
+no one, or else because he had not any ideas.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation seemed at an end when the
+chemist thought fit to shoot a Parthian arrow.</p>
+
+<p>"I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes
+to go and see dancers kicking about."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come!" said the cur&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I've known some!" And separating the
+words of his sentence, Homais repeated, "I&mdash;have&mdash;known&mdash;some!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they did wrong," said Bournisien, resigned
+to anything.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+"By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed
+the chemist.</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry
+eyes that Homais was intimidated by them.</p>
+
+<p>"I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a
+tone, "that toleration is the surest way to draw people
+to religion."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow,
+sitting down again on his chair. But he stayed
+only a few moments.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais
+said to the doctor&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did
+you see, in a way!&mdash;Now take my advice. Take
+madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in
+your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If
+any one could take my place, I would accompany you
+myself. Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to
+give one performance; he's engaged to go to England
+at a high salary. From what I hear, he's a regular
+dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses
+and a cook along with him. All these great artists
+burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute
+life, that stirs the imagination to some extent. But
+they die at the hospital, because they haven't the
+sense when young to lay by. Well, a pleasant dinner!
+Good-bye till to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's
+head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who
+at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the
+expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give in,
+so sure was he that this recreation would be good for
+her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had
+sent them three hundred francs which he had no
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+longer expected; the current debts were not very
+large, and the falling in of Lheureux's bills was still so far
+off that there was no need to think about them. Besides,
+imagining that she was refusing from delicacy,
+he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her
+she at last made up her mind, and the next day at
+eight o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle."</p>
+
+<p>The chemist, whom nothing whatever kept at
+Yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge
+from it, sighed as he saw them go.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them;
+"happy mortals that you are!"</p>
+
+<p>Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing
+a blue silk gown with four flounces&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure
+at Rouen."</p>
+
+<p>The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in
+the Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every
+provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms,
+where one sees in the middle of the court
+chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of
+the commercial travellers;&mdash;a good old house with
+worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on
+winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding,
+whose black tables are sticky with coffee and
+brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies,
+the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that
+always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed
+in Sunday-clothes, has a caf&eacute; on the street, and
+towards the country-side a kitchen-garden. Charles at
+once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with
+the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations,
+did not understand them; was sent from
+the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several
+times traversed the whole length of the town from
+the theatre to the boulevard.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a
+bouquet. The doctor was much afraid of missing the
+beginning, and, without having had time to swallow
+a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors
+of the theatre, which were still closed.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 113px;">
+<img src="images/i306.jpg" width="113" height="70" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span></p>
+
+<h4>XV.</h4>
+
+<h4><a name="A_New_Delight" id="A_New_Delight"></a><span class="smcap">A New Delight.</span></h4>
+
+<p><span class="dropcap307"><span class="dropcap">T</span></span><br />HE crowd was waiting against the
+wall, symmetrically enclosed between
+the balustrades. At the corner
+of the neighbouring streets huge
+bills repeated in quaint letters
+"Lucia de Lammermoor&mdash;Lagardy&mdash;Opera&mdash;&amp;c."
+The weather was fine, the people
+were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and
+handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red
+foreheads; and now and again a warm wind that
+blew from the river gently stirred the border of the
+tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses.
+A little lower down, however, one was refreshed
+by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow,
+leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from the
+Rue des Charrettes, full of large black ware-houses
+where they make casks.</p>
+
+<p>For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going
+in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour,
+and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in
+the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against
+his stomach.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached
+the vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity
+on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+other corridor while she went up the staircase to the
+reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push
+with her finger the large tapestried door. She
+breathed in with all her might the dusty smell of the
+lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she
+bent forward with the air of a duchess.</p>
+
+<p>The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses
+were taken from their cases, and the subscribers,
+catching sight of one another, were bowing. They
+came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the
+anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten;
+they still talked cotton, spirits of wine, or indigo.
+The heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive
+and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking
+like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The
+young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing
+in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or apple-green
+cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired
+them leaning on their canes with golden knobs
+in the open palm of their yellow gloves.</p>
+
+<p>Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre,
+let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering
+of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre;
+then the musicians came in one after the other; and
+first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses
+grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes
+and flageolets fifing. But three knocks were heard on
+the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments
+played some chords, and the curtain rising,
+discovered a country-scene.</p>
+
+<p>It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain
+shaded by an oak to the left. Peasants and lords
+with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song
+together; then a captain suddenly came on, who
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to
+heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the
+hunters started afresh.</p>
+
+<p>She felt herself transported to the reading of her
+youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed
+to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch
+bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance
+of the novel helping her to understand
+the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase,
+while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed
+at once again with the bursts of music. She gave
+herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all
+her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn
+over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look
+at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted
+trees that shook when any one walked, and the velvet
+caps, cloaks, swords&mdash;all those imaginary things
+that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere
+of another world. But a young woman stepped forward,
+throwing a purse to a squire in green. She
+was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur
+of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucia
+attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She plained
+of love; she longed for wings. Emma too, fleeing
+from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace.
+Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared.</p>
+
+<p>He had that splendid pallor that gives something
+of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the
+South. His vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured
+doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against
+his left thigh, and he cast around laughing looks showing
+his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess
+having heard him sing one night on the beach at
+Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had
+deserted her for other women, and this sentimental
+celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation.
+The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
+his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination
+of his person and the susceptibility of his soul.
+A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament
+than intelligence, more power of emphasis than
+of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable,
+charlatan nature, in which there was something of the
+hairdresser and the tor&eacute;ador.</p>
+
+<p>From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He
+pressed Lucia in his arms, he left her, he came back,
+he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then
+elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes
+escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses.
+Emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet
+of the box with her nails. She was filling her heart
+with these melodious lamentations that were drawn
+out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like
+the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest.
+She recognized all the intoxication and the anguish
+that had almost killed her. The voice of the prima
+donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience,
+and this illusion that charmed her as some
+very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had
+loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar
+that last moonlit night when they said, "To-morrow!
+to-morrow!" The theatre rang with cheers;
+they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers
+spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile,
+fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu,
+Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations
+of the last chords.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+"But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman
+persecute her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the
+other one who came on before said, 'I love Lucia and
+she loves me!' Besides, he went off with her father
+arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he&mdash;the
+ugly little man with a cock's feather in his
+hat?"</p>
+
+<p>Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative
+duet began in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable
+machinations to his master Ashton, Charles, seeing
+the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucia, thought
+it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover,
+that he did not understand the story because
+of the music, which interfered very much with the
+words.</p>
+
+<p>"What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be
+quiet!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning
+against her shoulder, "I like to understand things."</p>
+
+<p>"Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Lucia advanced, half supported by her women, a
+wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than
+the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of her
+marriage-day; she saw herself at home again amid the
+corn in the little path as they walked to the church.
+Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored?
+She, on the contrary, had been joyous, without
+seeing the abyss into which she was throwing
+herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before
+the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery,
+she could have anchored her life upon some great,
+strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+and duty blending, she would never have fallen from
+so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt,
+was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She
+now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated.
+So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma
+determined now to see in this reproduction of her
+sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please
+the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful
+pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet
+hangings a man appeared in a black cloak.</p>
+
+<p>His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made,
+and immediately the instruments and the singers began
+the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury, dominated
+all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled
+homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucia,
+uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur, at one side, his
+modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass
+of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the
+voices of the women repeating his words took them
+up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row
+gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror,
+and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their
+half-opened mouths. The outraged lover brandished
+his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks
+to the movements of his chest, and he walked from
+right to left with long strides, clanking against the
+boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening
+out at the ankles. He, she thought, must have an
+inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with
+such effusion. All her small fault-findings faded before
+the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and,
+drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character,
+she tried to imagine to herself his life&mdash;that life
+resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+been hers if fate had willed it. They would have
+known one another, loved one another. With him,
+through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have
+travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues
+and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him,
+herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening,
+at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work,
+she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions
+of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from
+the stage, even as he acted he would have looked at
+her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking
+at her; it was certain. She longed to run to his
+arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation
+of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out,
+"Take me away! carry me with you! let us go!
+Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!"</p>
+
+<p>The curtain fell.</p>
+
+<p>The smell of the gas mingled with that of the
+breaths, the waving of the fans, made the air more
+suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the crowd
+filled the corridors, and she fell back in her <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's note -- the original reads: arm-chair">armchair</ins>
+with palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing
+that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to
+get a glass of barley-water.</p>
+
+<p>He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat,
+for his elbows were jerked at every step because of
+the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt
+three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in
+short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running
+down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if
+she were being assassinated. Her husband, who was
+a mill-owner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while
+she was with her handkerchief wiping up the stains
+from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement.
+At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her,
+quite out of breath:</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ma foi!</i> I thought I should have had to stay
+there. There is such a crowd&mdash;<i>such</i> a crowd!"</p>
+
+<p>He added&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur
+L&eacute;on!"</p>
+
+<p>"L&eacute;on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects."
+And as he finished these words the ex-clerk
+of Yonville entered the box.</p>
+
+<p>He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman;
+and Madame Bovary extended hers, without
+doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. She
+had not felt it since that spring evening when the
+rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said
+good-bye standing at the window. But soon recalling
+herself to the necessities of the situation, with an
+effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and
+began stammering a few hurried words.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, good-day! What! you here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third
+act was beginning.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are at Rouen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"And since when?"</p>
+
+<p>"Turn them out! turn them out!" People were
+looking at them. They were silent.</p>
+
+<p>But from that moment she listened no more; and
+the chorus of the guests, the scene between Ashton
+and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all were
+for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less
+sonorous and the characters more remote. She
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+remembered the games at cards at the chemist's, and
+the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour,
+<i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i> by the fireside&mdash;all that poor love, so calm
+and so protracted, so discreet, so tender and that she
+had nevertheless forgotten. And why had he come
+back? What combination of circumstances had
+brought him back into her life. He was standing
+behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the
+wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering
+beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling
+upon her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Does this amuse you?" he said, bending over
+her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed
+her cheek. She replied carelessly:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, dear me, no, not much."</p>
+
+<p>Then he proposed that they should leave the
+theatre and go and take an ice somewhere.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her
+hair's undone; this is going to be tragic."</p>
+
+<p>But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma,
+and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>"She screams too loud," said she, turning to
+Charles, who was listening.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;perhaps&mdash;a little," he replied, undecided
+between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect
+for his wife's opinion.</p>
+
+<p>Then with a sigh L&eacute;on said:</p>
+
+<p>"The heat is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Unbearable! Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."</p>
+
+<p>Monsieur L&eacute;on put her long lace shawl carefully
+about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the
+windows of a caf&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>First they spoke of her illness, although Emma
+interrupted Charles from time to time, for fear, she
+said, of boring Monsieur L&eacute;on; and the latter told
+them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen
+in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession,
+which was different in Normandy and Paris.
+Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, M&egrave;re
+Lefran&ccedil;ois, and as they had, in the husband's presence,
+nothing more to say to one another, the conversation
+soon came to an end.</p>
+
+<p>People coming out of the theatre passed along the
+pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their
+voices, "<i>O bel ange, ma Lucie!</i>" Then L&eacute;on playing
+the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tamburini,
+Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and compared with
+them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was
+nowhere.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly
+sipping his rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite
+admirable in the last act. I regret leaving before the
+end, because it was beginning to amuse me."</p>
+
+<p>"Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another
+performance."</p>
+
+<p>But Charles replied that they were going back
+next day.</p>
+
+<p>"Unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you
+would like to stay alone, pussy?"</p>
+
+<p>And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity
+that presented itself to his hopes, the young
+man sang the praises of Lagardy in the last number.
+It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles
+insisted&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make
+up your mind. You are wrong not to stay if you
+feel that this is doing you the least good."</p>
+
+<p>The tables round them, however, were <ins class="correction" title="Transcriber's Note - the original reads 'emptying:' with a colon">emptying</ins>;
+a waiter came and stood discreetly near them.
+Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the
+clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave
+two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the
+marble.</p>
+
+<p>"I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the
+money which you are&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality,
+and taking his hat said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow, at six o'clock?"</p>
+
+<p>Charles explained once more that he could not
+absent himself longer, but that nothing prevented
+Emma&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I
+am not sure&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night
+brings counsel." Then to L&eacute;on, who was walking
+along with them, "Now that you are in our part of
+the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some
+dinner now and then."</p>
+
+<p>The clerk declared he would not fail to do so,
+being obliged, moreover, to go to Yonville on some
+business for his office. And they parted before the
+Saint-Herbland Passage just as the cathedral struck
+half-past eleven.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 129px;">
+<img src="images/i317.jpg" width="129" height="65" alt="decorative" title="decorative" />
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<pre>
+End of Madame Bovary, Vol. 1 by Gustave Flaubert
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Bovary, Volume 1 (of 2)
+by Gustave Flaubert
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Bovary, Volume 1 (of 2)
+by Gustave Flaubert
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Madame Bovary
+       A Tale of Provincial Life, Volume 1 (of 2)
+
+Author: Gustave Flaubert
+
+Release Date: December 20, 2008 [EBook #27575]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MADAME BOVARY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Transcriber's note: Minor printing errors have been corrected.
+    Phrases printed in italics in the original version are
+    indicated in this electronic version by _ (underscore).
+    A list of amendments are given at the end of the book.
+
+
+
+
+
+                         MADAME BOVARY
+
+                   A TALE OF PROVINCIAL LIFE
+
+                              BY
+                        GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
+
+
+                            WITH A
+                     CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
+                              BY
+                      FERDINAND BRUNETIERE
+                     Of the French Academy
+
+                 AND A BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE BY
+                       ROBERT ARNOT, M. A
+
+                           VOLUME I.
+
+                   SIMON P. MAGEE, PUBLISHER,
+                         CHICAGO, ILL.
+                      COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY
+                        M. WALTER DUNNE
+
+
+
+
+Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+PART I.
+
+  I. THE NEW BOY                             1
+
+  II. A GOOD PATIENT                        13
+
+  III. A LONELY WIDOWER                     23
+
+  IV. CONSOLATION                           31
+
+  V. THE NEW MENAGE                         38
+
+  VI. A MAIDEN'S YEARNINGS                  43
+
+  VII. DISILLUSION                          50
+
+  VIII. GLIMPSES OF THE WORLD               58
+
+  IX. IDLE DREAMS                           71
+
+PART II.
+
+  I. A NEW FIELD                            85
+
+  II. NEW FRIENDS                           98
+
+  III. ADDED CARES                         107
+
+  IV. SILENT HOMAGE                        121
+
+  V. SMOTHERED FLAMES                      126
+
+  VI. SPIRITUAL COUNSEL                    138
+
+  VII. A WOMAN'S WHIMS                     154
+
+  VIII. A VILLAGE FESTIVAL                 165
+
+  IX. A WOODLAND IDYLL                     193
+
+  X. LOVERS' VOWS                          206
+
+  XI. AN EXPERIMENT AND A FAILURE          217
+
+  XII. PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT             233
+
+  XIII. DESERTED                           251
+
+  XIV. RELIGIOUS FERVOR                    264
+
+  XV. A NEW DELIGHT                        278
+
+
+
+
+CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
+
+
+_Domi mansit, lanam fecit:_ "He remained at home and wrote," is the
+first thing that should be said of Gustave Flaubert. This trait, which
+he shares with many of the writers of his generation,--Renan, Taine,
+Leconte de Lisle and Dumas _fils_,--distinguishes them and distinguishes
+him from those of the preceding generation, who voluntarily sought
+inspiration in disorder and agitation,--Balzac and George Sand, for
+instance (to speak only of romance writers), and the elder Dumas or
+Eugene Sue. Flaubert, indeed, had no "outward life;" he lived only for
+his art.
+
+A second trait of his character, and of his genius as a writer, is that
+of seeing in his art only the art itself--and art alone, without the
+mingling of any vision of fortune or success. A competency,--which he
+had inherited from the great surgeon, his father,--and moderate tastes,
+infinitely more _bourgeois_ than his literature,--permitted him to shun
+the great stumbling-block of the professional man of letters, which, in
+our day, and doubtless in the United States as well as in France, is the
+temptation to coin money with the pen. Never was writer more
+disinterested than Flaubert; and the story is that _Madame Bovary_
+brought him 300 francs--in debts.
+
+A third trait, which helps not only to characterise but to individualise
+him, is his subordination not only of his own existence, but of life in
+general, to his conception of art. It is not enough to say that he lived
+for his art: he saw nothing in the world or in life but material for
+that art,--_Hostis quid aliud quam perpetua materia gloriae?_--and if it
+be true that others have died of their ambition, it could literally be
+said of Flaubert that he was killed by his art.
+
+It is this point that I should like to bring out in this
+Introduction,--where we need not speak of his Norman origin, or (as his
+friend Ducamp has written in his _Literary Souvenirs_ with a
+disagreeable persistence, and so uselessly!) of his nervousness and
+epilepsy; of his loves or his friendships, but solely of his work. We
+know, in fact, to-day, that if all such details are made clear in the
+biography of a great writer, in no way do they explain his work. The
+author of _Gil Blas_, Alain Rene Lesage, was a Breton, like the author
+of _Atala_; the Corneille brothers had almost nothing in common. Of all
+our great writers, the one nearest, perhaps, to Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
+who died a victim to delirium from persecution, was Madame Sand, who
+had, without doubt, the sanest and best balanced temperament.
+
+Other writers have sought,--for instance, our great classical authors,
+Pascal, Bossuet and perhaps Corneille,--to influence the thought of
+their time; some, like Moliere, La Fontaine, and La Bruyere, to correct
+customs. Others still,--such as our romantic writers, Hugo or De
+Musset,--desired only to express their personal conception of the world
+and of life. And then Balzac, whose object,--almost scientific,--was to
+make a "natural history," a study and description, of the social
+species, as an animal or vegetable species is described in zoology or
+botany. Gustave Flaubert attempted only to work out his art, for and
+through the love of art. Very early in life, as we clearly see from his
+correspondence, his consideration for art was not even that of a social
+but of a _sacred_ function, in which the artist was the priest. We hear
+sometimes, in metaphor and not without irony, of the "priesthood" of the
+artist and the "worship" of art. These expressions must be taken
+literally in Flaubert's case. He was cloistered in his art as a monk in
+his convent or by his discipline; and he truly lived only in meditation
+upon that art, as a Mystic in contemplation of the perfections of his
+God. Nothing outside of art truly interested him, neither science, nor
+things political or religious, nor men, nor women, nor anything in the
+world; and if, sometimes, it was his duty to occupy himself with them,
+it was never in a degree greater than could benefit his art. "The
+accidents of the world"--this is his own expression--appeared to him
+only as things permitted _for the sake of description_, so much so that
+his own existence, even, seemed to him to have no other excuse.
+
+It is that which explains the mixture of "romanticism," "naturalism,"
+and I will add, of "classicism"--which has been pointed out more than
+once in Flaubert's work. _Madame Bovary_ is the masterpiece of
+naturalistic romance and has not been surpassed by the studies of Zola
+or the stories of De Maupassant. On the other hand, there is nothing in
+Hugo, even, more romantic than _The Temptation of Saint Antony_. But it
+is necessary to look for many things in romanticism; and the romanticism
+of Hugo, which was one of the delights of Flaubert, did not resemble
+that of De Musset, (Lord de Musset, as Flaubert called him) which he
+strongly disliked. What he loved in romanticism was the "colour," and
+nothing but the colour. He loved the romanticism of the Orientals, of
+Hugo and Chateaubriand, that plastic romanticism, whose object is to
+substitute in literature "sensations of art" for the "expression of
+ideas," or even of sentiments. It is precisely here that naturalism and
+romanticism--or at least French naturalism, which is very different from
+that of the Russians or the English--join hands. In the one case, as in
+the other, the attempt is made to "represent"--as he himself puts it;
+and when one represents nothing except the vulgar, the common, the
+mediocre, the everyday, commonplace, or grotesque, he is a "naturalist,"
+like the author of _Madame Bovary_; but one is a "romanticist" when,
+like the author of _Salammbo_, he makes this world vanish, and recreates
+a strange land filled with Byzantine or Carthaginian civilization, with
+its barbaric luxury, its splendour of corruption, immoderate appetites,
+and monstrous deities.
+
+We have done wrong in considering Flaubert a naturalist impeded by his
+romanticism, or a romanticist impenitent, irritated with himself because
+of his tendency to naturalism. He was both naturalist and romanticist.
+And in both he was an artist, so much of an artist (I say this without
+fear of contradiction) that he saw nothing in his art but
+"representation," the telling of the truth in all its depth and
+fidelity. _Les Fileuses_ and _La Reddition de Breda_ are always by
+Velasquez; but the genius of the painter has nothing in common with the
+subject he has chosen or the circumstances that inspired him.
+
+From this source proceeds that insensibility in Flaubert with which he
+has so often been reproached, not without reason, and which divides his
+naturalism from that of the author of _Adam Bede_ or that of the author
+of _Anna Karenina_ by an abyss. Honest, as a man, a good citizen, a good
+son, a good brother, a good friend, Flaubert was indifferent, as an
+artist, to all that did not belong to his art. "I believe that it is
+necessary to love nothing," he has written somewhere, and even
+underscored it--that is to say, it is necessary to hover impartially
+above all objective points. And, in fact, as nothing passed before his
+eyes that he considered did not lie within the possibility of
+representation, he made it a law unto himself to look nothing in the
+face except from this point of view.
+
+In this regard one may compare his attitude in the presence of his model
+to that of his contemporaries, Renan, for example, or Taine, in the
+presence of the object of their studies. With them also critical
+impartiality resembles not only indifference but insensibility. Not only
+have they refused to confound their emotions with their judgments, but
+their judgments have no value in their eyes except as they separate them
+from their emotions,--as they emancipate themselves from them or even
+place themselves in opposition to them. In like manner did Flaubert. The
+first condition of an exact representation of things is to dominate
+them; and in order to dominate them, is it not necessary to begin by
+detaching yourself from them? We see dimly through tears, and we are
+too much absorbed in that which gives us pleasure to be good judges of
+it. "An ideal society would be one where each individual performed his
+duty according to his ability. Now, then, I do my duty as best I can;
+I am forsaken.... No one pities my misfortunes; those of others
+occupy their attention! I give to humanity what it gives to
+me--_indifference!_" Is not the link between Flaubert's "indifference"
+and his conception of art evident here?
+
+But Flaubert said besides: "Living does not concern me! It is only
+necessary to shun suffering." Should we not change the name of this to
+"egotism" or "insensibility?" We might, indeed, did we not know that
+this egotism germinated in Flaubert as a means of discipline. The object
+of this discipline was to concentrate, for the profit of his art, those
+qualities or forces which the ordinary man dissipates in the pursuit of
+useless pleasures, or squanders in intensity of life.
+
+We may take account at the same time of the nature of his pessimism. For
+there are many ways of being a pessimist, and Flaubert's was not at all
+like that of Schopenhauer or Leopardi. His pessimism, real and sincere,
+proceeded neither from personally grievous experiences of life, as did
+that of the recluse of Recanati, nor from a philosophic or logical view
+of the conditions of existence in which humanity is placed, like the
+pessimism of the Frankfort philosopher. Flaubert was rather a victim of
+what Theophile Gautier, in his well-known _Emaux et Camees_, calls by
+the singularly happy name of "the Luminous Spleen of the Orient." To
+tell the truth, what Flaubert could not pardon in humanity was that it
+did not make enough of art, and so his pessimism was a consequence of
+his aestheticism. "As lovers of the beautiful," he tells us, "we are all
+outlaws! Humanity hates us; we do not serve it; we hate it because it
+wounds us! Let us love, then, in art, as the Mystics love their God; and
+let all pale before this love."
+
+These lines are dated 1853, before he had published anything. Therefore,
+Flaubert did not express himself thus because he was not successful. His
+self-love was not in question! No one had yet criticised or discussed
+him. But he felt that his ideal of art, an art which he could not
+renounce, was opposed to the ideal methods, if they are ideal, held by
+his contemporaries; and the vision of the combats that he must face at
+once exalted and exasperated him. His pessimism was of the elite, or
+rather the minority of one who feels himself, or at least believes
+himself to be, superior, and who, knowing well that he will always be in
+the minority, fears, and rightly too, that he will not be recognised. It
+is a form of pessimism less rare in our day than one would think, and
+Taine, among others, said practically the same thing when he averred
+that "one writes only for one or two hundred people in Europe, or in the
+world." It may be that this is too individual a case! A more liberal
+estimate would be that we write for all those who can comprehend us;
+that style has for its first object the increase of such a number; and,
+after that, if there still be those who cannot comprehend us, no reason
+for despair exists on our part or on theirs.
+
+Let us follow, now, the consequences of this principle in Flaubert's
+work, and see successively all that his work means, and the dogma of
+art which proceeds from it.
+
+At first you are tempted to believe that Flaubert's work is diverse,
+though inconsiderable in volume; and, primarily do not see clearly the
+threads which unite the _Education Sentimentale_ with the _Tentation de
+Saint Antoine_ or _Salammbo_ with _Madame Bovary_.
+
+On the one side Christian Egypt, and on the other the France of 1848,
+Madame Arnoux, Rosanette, and Frederick Moreau, the Orleanist carnival,
+and the "underwood" of Fontainebleau. Here, Carthage, Hamilcar,
+Hannibal, Narr' Havas, the Numidian hero, and Spendius, the Greek slave,
+the lions in bondage, the pomegranate trees which they sprinkled with
+silphium, the whole a strange and barbaric world; then Charles Bovary,
+the chemist Homais, his son Napoleon and his daughter Athalie,
+provincial life in the time of the Second Empire; _bourgeois_ adultery,
+_diligences_ and notaries' clerks. Then again Herodias, Salome, Saint
+Jean-Baptiste, or Saint Julien l'Hospitalier, the middle ages and
+antiquity,--all, at first sight, seem far removed, one from the other.
+At first one must admire, in such a contrast of subjects and colors, the
+extraordinary skill, let us say the _virtuosite_, of the artist. But, if
+we look more closely, we shall not be slow to perceive that no work is
+more homogeneous than that of Flaubert, and that, in truth, the
+_Education Sentimentale_, differs from _Salammbo_ only as a Kermesse of
+Rubens, for example, or a Bacchante of Poussin differs from the
+apotheoses or the Church pictures of the painters themselves. The making
+is the same, and you immediately recognise the hand. The difference is
+in the choice of subjects, which is of no importance, since Flaubert is
+only attempting to "represent" something, and in the choice of material,
+when he is "representing," he is no longer free. That is the reason why,
+if one seek for lessons in "naturalism" in _Salammbo_, he will find
+them, and will also find all the "romanticism" he seeks in the
+_Education Sentimentale_ and in _Madame Bovary_.
+
+From the other lessons that flow from this work, I find some in
+rhetoric, in art, in invention, in composition, and two or three of
+great import, eloquent in their bearing upon the history of contemporary
+French literature.
+
+A master does not mingle or engage his personality in his subject; but,
+as a God creates from the height of his serenity, without passion, if
+without love, so the poet or the artist expands the thing he touches,
+and, on each occasion, brings to bear upon it all the faculties that are
+his by toil but not innate. Nothing is demanded of the workers, and they
+make no confessions or confidences. Literature and art are not, nor
+should be, the expression of men's emotions, and still less the history
+of their lives. That is the reason why, while from reading _Rene_, for
+example, or _Fraziella_, _Delphine_, _Corinne_, _Adolphe_, _Indiana_,
+_Volupte_, or some of the romances of Balzac--_La Muse du Departement_,
+or _Un Grand Homme de Province a Paris_,--you could induct Balzac's
+entire psychology, or Sainte-Beuve's, or Madame Sand's, Benjamin
+Constant's, Madame de Stael's or Chateaubriand's, you would find in
+_Madame Bovary_ or _Salammbo_ nothing of Flaubert, except his
+temperament, his taste, and his ideals as an artist. Let us suppose
+another Flaubert, who did not live at Rouen, whose life is not that
+related in his correspondence, who was not the friend of Maxime Ducamp
+or of Louise Colet, and the _Education Sentimentale_ or the _Tentation
+de Saint Antoine_ would not be in the least different from what they are
+now, nor should we see one line of change to be made. This is a triumph
+in objective art. "I do not wish to consider art as an overflow of
+passion," he wrote once, a little brutally. "I love my little niece as
+if she were my daughter, and I am sufficiently active in her behalf to
+prove that these are not empty phrases. But may I be flayed alive rather
+than exploit that kind of thing in style!" It has been but a short
+hundred years since, as he expressed it, romanticism "exploited its
+emotions in style," and made art from the heart.
+
+"Ah! strike upon the heart, 'tis there that genius lies!" But, for a
+whole generation, _Madame Bovary_, _Salammbo_ and _Education
+Sentimentale_ have been teaching the contrary. "The author in his work
+should be like God in the universe, everywhere present but nowhere
+visible. Art being second nature, the creator of this nature should act
+through analogous procedure. He must be felt in each atom, under every
+aspect, concealed but infinite; the effect upon the spectator should be
+a kind of amazement." Furthermore, he remarks that this principle was
+the core of Greek art. I know not, or at least I do not recall, whether
+he had observed (as he should, since Anglo-Saxons have been quick to
+notice it) that this "principle" underlies the art of Shakespeare.
+
+To realize this principle in work you must proceed scientifically, and,
+in this connection, we may notice that Flaubert's idea is that of
+Leconte de Lisle in the preface to his _Poemes Antiques_, and of Taine
+in his lectures upon _L'Ideal dans l'art_.
+
+Romanticism had confounded the picturesque with the anecdotal; character
+with accident; colour with oddity. _Han d'Islande_, _Notre-Dame de
+Paris_ and some romances of Balzac, the first and poorest, not signed
+with his name, may serve as an example. The classic writers on their
+side, had not always distinguished very profoundly the difference
+between the general and the universal, the principal and the accessory,
+the permanent and the superficial. We see this in the French comedies of
+the eighteenth century, even in some of Moliere's--in his _L'Avare_ and
+his _Le Misanthrope_, for example. Flaubert believed that a means of
+terminating this conflict is to be found in method; and that is the
+reason why, if we confine ourselves wholly to the consideration of the
+medium in his works, we shall find the _Tentation de Saint Antoine_
+entirely romantic; while, as a retaliation, nothing is more classic than
+_Madame Bovary_.
+
+The reason for this is, that in his subject, whatever it was,
+Carthaginian or low Norman, refined or _bourgeois_, modern or antique,
+he saw only the subject itself, with the eyes and after the manner of a
+naturalist, who is concerned only in knowing thoroughly the plant or the
+animal under observation. There is no sentiment in botany or in
+chemistry, and in them the desideratum is truth. Singleness of aim is
+the primary virtue in a _savant_. Things are what they are, and we
+demand of him that he show them to us as they are. We accuse him of
+lying if he disguises, weakens, alters or embellishes them.
+
+Likewise the artist! His function is ever to "represent:" and in order
+to accomplish this, he should, like the savant, mirror only the facts.
+After this, what do the names "romanticism" or "classicism" signify?
+Their sole use is to indicate the side taken; they are, so to speak, an
+acknowledgment that the writer is adorning the occurrence he is about to
+represent. He may make it more universal or more characteristic than
+nature! But, inversely, if all art is concentrated upon the
+representation, what matters the subject? Is one animal or plant more
+interesting than another to the naturalist? Does a name matter? All
+demand the same attention. Art can make exception in its subjects no
+more than science.
+
+If we ask in what consists the difference between science and art, on
+this basis, Flaubert, with Leconte de Lisle and with Taine, will tell us
+that it is in the beauty which communicates prestige to the work, or in
+the power of form.
+
+"What I have just written might be taken for something of Paul de
+Kock's, had I not given it a profoundly literary form," wrote Flaubert,
+while he was at work on _Madame Bovary_; "but how, out of trivial
+dialogue, produce style? Yet it is absolutely necessary! It must be
+done!" He went further still, and persuaded himself that style had a
+value in itself, intrinsic and absolute, aside from the subject. In
+fact, if the subject had no importance of its own, and if there were no
+personal motives for choosing one subject rather than another, what
+reason would there be for writing _Madame Bovary_ or _Salammbo_? One
+alone: and that to "make something out of nothing," to produce a work of
+art from things of no import. For though everyone has some ideas, and
+everyone has had experience in some kind of life, it is given to few to
+be able to express their experience or their ideas in terms of beauty.
+This, precisely, is the goal of art.
+
+Form, then, is the great preoccupation of the artist, since, if he is an
+artist, it is through form, and in the perfection or originality of that
+form, that his triumph comes. Nothing stands out from the general
+mediocrity except by means of form; nothing becomes concrete, assuming
+immortality, save through form. Form in art is queen and sovereign. Even
+truth makes itself felt only through the attractiveness of form. And
+further, we cannot part one from the other; they are not opposed to each
+other; they are at one; and art in every phase consists only in this
+union. It is the end of art to give the superior life of form to that
+which has it not; and finally, this superior life of form, this magic
+wand of style, rhythmic as verse and terse as science, by firmly
+establishing the thing it touches, withdraws it from that law of change,
+constant in its inconstancy, which is the miserable condition of
+existence.
+
+    All passes; art in its strength
+    Alone remains to all eternity;
+          The bust
+    Survives the city.
+
+This it is that makes up the charm, the social dignity, and the lasting
+grandeur of art.
+
+This is not the place to discuss the "aesthetic" quality, and I shall
+content myself with indicating briefly some of the objections it has
+called forth.
+
+Has form indeed all the importance in literature that Flaubert claimed
+for it? And what importance has it in sculpture, for example, or in
+painting? Let us grant its necessity. Colour and line, which are, so to
+speak, the primal elements in the alphabet of painting and of sculpture,
+have not in themselves determined and precise significance. Yellow and
+red, green and blue are only general and confused sensations. But words
+express particular sentiments and well-defined ideas, and have a value
+that does not depend upon the form or the quality of the words. You
+cannot, then, in using them, distinguish between significance and form,
+or combine them independently of the idea they are intended to convey,
+as is possible with colours and with lines, solely for the beauty that
+results from combination. If literary art is a "representation," it is
+also something more; and the lapse in Flaubert, as in all those who have
+followed him in the letter, lies in having missed this distinction. You
+cannot write merely to represent; you write also to express ideas, to
+determine or to modify convictions; you write that you may act, or impel
+others to act: these are effects beyond the power of painting or of
+sculpture. A statue or a picture never brought about a revolution; a
+book, a pamphlet, nay, a few fiery words, have overturned a dynasty.
+
+It is no longer true, as a whole generation of writers has believed,
+that art and science may be one and the same thing; or that the first,
+as Taine has said, may be an "anticipation of the second." We could not
+in the presence of our fellow-creatures and their suffering affect the
+indifference of a naturalist before the plant or the animal he is
+studying. Whatever the nature of "human phenomena" may be, we in our
+quality as man can only look at them with human eyes, and could
+temptation make us change our point of view, it would properly be called
+inhuman.
+
+One might add that, if it is not certain that nature was made for man,
+and if, for that reason, science is wholly independent of conscience,
+as we take it, it is otherwise with art. We know that man was not made
+for art, but that art was made for man. We forget each time we speak of
+"art for art's sake" that there is need precisely to define the meaning
+of the expression and to recall that but for truth art could not have
+for its object the perfecting of political institutions, the uplifting
+of the masses, the correction of customs, the teachings of religion, and
+that although this may lead finally to the realization of beauty, it
+nevertheless remains the duty of man, and consequently, is human in its
+origin, human in its development, and human in its aim.
+
+Upon all these points, it is only necessary to think sensibly, as also
+upon the question--which we have not touched upon,--of knowing under
+what conditions, in what sense, and in what degree the person of the
+artist can or should remain foreign to his work.
+
+But a peculiarity of Flaubert's,--and one more personal, which even most
+of the naturalists have not shared with him, neither the Dutch in their
+paintings, nor the English in the history of romance (the author of _Tom
+Jones_ or of _Clarissa Harlowe_), nor the Russians, Tolstoi or
+Dostoiefski,--is to despise the role of irony in art. "My personages are
+profoundly repugnant to me," he wrote, _a propos_ of _Madame Bovary_.
+But they were not always repugnant to him, at least not all of them,
+and, in verification of this, we find that he has not for Spendius,
+Matho, Hamilcar, and Hanno, the boundless scorn that he affects for
+Homais or for Bournisien, for Bouvard or for Pecuchet.
+
+We recognise here the particular and special form of Flaubert's
+pessimism. That there could be people in the world, among his
+contemporaries, who were not wholly absorbed and preoccupied with art,
+surpassed his comprehension, and when this indifference did not arouse
+an indignation which exasperated him even to blows, it drew from him a
+scornful laughter that one might call Homeric or Rabelaisian, since it
+incited more to anger than to gaiety. And this is the reason why _Madame
+Bovary_, _Education Sentimentale_, _Un Coeur Simple_, and _Bouvard et
+Pecuchet_ would be more truly named were they called satires and not
+representations.
+
+The exaggeration of the principle here recoils upon itself. That
+disinterestedness, that impartiality, that serenity which permitted him
+to "hover impartially above all objects" deserted him. A satirist, or to
+be more exact, a caricaturist, awoke within the naturalist. He raged at
+his own characters. He railed at them and mocked them. The interest of
+the representation had undergone a change. He was no longer in the
+attitude of mere fidelity to facts, but in a state of scorn and violent
+derision. Homais and Bournisien are no longer studies in themselves, but
+a burden to Flaubert. His _Education Sentimentale_, in spite of him,
+became, to use his own expression, an overflow of rancour. In _Bouvard
+et Pecuchet_ he gave way to his hatred of humanity; here, as a favour,
+and under the mask of irony, he brings himself into his work, and, like
+a simple Madame Sand, or a vulgar De Musset, we perceive Flaubert
+himself, bull-necked and ruddy, with the moustaches of a Gallic chief,
+agonizing at each turn in the romance.
+
+It is not necessary to exaggerate Flaubert's influence. In his time
+there were ten other writers, none of whom equalled him,--Parnassians in
+poetry, positivists in criticism, realists in romance or in dramatic
+writing,--who laboured at the same work. His aestheticism is not his
+alone, yet _Madame Bovary_ and _Salammbo_ shot like unexpected meteors
+out of a grey sky, the dull, low sky of the Second Empire. In 1860 the
+sky was not so grey or so low; and the _Poemes Antiques_ of Leconte de
+Lisle, the _Etudes d'histoire religieuse_ of Renan, and the _Essais de
+Critique_ of Taine, are possibly not unworthy to be placed in parallel
+or comparison with the first writings of Flaubert. An exquisite judge of
+things of the mind, J. J. Weiss, very clearly saw at that time what
+there was in common in all these works, in the glory of which he was not
+deceived when he added the _Fleurs du Mai_ by Charles Baudelaire, and
+the first comedies of Alexandre Dumas _fils_. But the truth is, not one
+of these works was marked with signs of masterly maturity in like degree
+with _Madame Bovary_.
+
+It is, then, natural that, from day to day, Flaubert should become a
+guide, and here, if we consider the nature of the lessons he gives, we
+cannot deny their towering excellence.
+
+If there was need to agitate against romanticism, _Madame Bovary_
+performed the duty; and if in this agitation there was need to save what
+was worth salvation, _Salammbo_ saved it. If it was fitting to recall to
+poets and to writers of romance, to Madame Sand herself and Victor Hugo,
+that art was not invented as a public carrier for their confidences, it
+is still Flaubert who does it. He taught the school of hasty writers
+that talent, or even genius, is in need of discipline,--the discipline
+of a long and painful prenticehood in the making and unmaking of their
+work. He has widened, and especially has he hollowed and deepened, the
+notion that romanticism was born of nature, and, in doing this, has
+brought art back to the fountain-head of inspiration. His rhetoric and
+aestheticism brought him face to face with Nature, enabled him to see
+her, a gift as rare as it is great, and to "represent" her--the proof of
+the preceding. It is the artist that judges the model. Poets and
+romance-writers, like painters, we value only in as much as they
+represent life--by and for the fidelity, the originality, the novelty,
+the depth, the distinction, the perfection with which they represent it.
+It is the rule of rules, the principle of principles! And if Flaubert
+had no other merit than to have seen this better than any other writer
+of his age, it would be enough to assure for him a place, and a very
+exalted place, in the Pantheon of French Literature.
+
+F. BRUNETIERE
+
+
+
+
+BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE
+
+
+Gustave Flaubert was born at Rouen, December 12, 1821. His father was a
+physician, who later became chief surgeon in the Hotel Dieu of that
+city, and his mother, Anne-Justine-Carline Fleuriot, was of Norman
+extraction.
+
+Fourth of a family of six children, as a child Flaubert exhibited marked
+fondness for stories, and, with his favourite sister, Caroline, would
+invent them for pastime. As a youth, he was exceedingly handsome, tall,
+broad-shouldered and athletic, of independent turn of mind, fond of
+study, and caring little for the luxuries of life. He attended the
+college of Rouen, but showed no marked characteristic save a pronounced
+taste for history. After graduating, he went to Paris to read law, at
+the Ecole de Droit. At this time disease, the nature of which he always
+endeavored to conceal from the world, attacked him and compelled a
+return to Rouen. The complaint, as revealed after his death by Maxime
+Ducamp, was epilepsy, and the constant fear of suffering an attack in
+public led Flaubert to live the life of a recluse.
+
+The death of his father occurring at this critical period, Flaubert
+abandoned the study of law, which he had begun only in obedience to the
+formally expressed wish of his family. Having a comfortable income, he
+turned his thoughts to literature, and from that time all other work was
+distasteful. He read and wrote incessantly, although at this period he
+never completed anything. Among his papers were found several fragments
+written between his eighteenth and twentieth years. Some bear the stamp
+of his individuality, if not in the substance, which is romantic,--at
+least in the form, which is peculiarly lucid and concise,--for instance,
+the slight, romantic, autobiographic sketch entitled _Novembre_.
+
+Flaubert wrote neither for money nor for fame. To him, art was religion,
+and to it he sacrificed his life. Perfection of style was his goal; and
+unremitting devotion to his ideal slew him. That he was never satisfied
+with what he wrote, his letters show; and all who knew him marvelled at
+his laborious and pathetic application to his work. He settled first in
+Croisset, near Rouen, with his family, but shortly afterwards went to
+Brittany with Maxime Ducamp. On his return he planned _La Tentation de
+Saint Antoine_, which grew out of a fragmentary sketch entitled _Smarh_
+(a mediaeval Mystery, the manuscript tells us), written in early youth.
+_La Tentation_ proved a source of labor, for he never ceased revising it
+until it appeared in book form in 1874. In 1847, he wrote a modern play,
+entitled _Le Candidat_, produced in 1874 at the Vaudeville. It was not
+his first dramatic effort, as he had already written a sort of lyric
+fairy-play, _Le Chateau des Coeurs_, which was published in his
+_Oeuvres Posthumes_.
+
+In 1849 Flaubert visited Greece, Egypt, and Syria, again accompanied by
+his friend Maxime Ducamp. After his return he planned a book of
+impressions similar to _Par les Champs et par les Greves_, which was the
+result of the trip to Brittany; but the beginning only was achieved.
+Still he gathered many data for his future great novel, _Salammbo_. The
+year 1851 found him back in Croisset, working at _La Tentation de Saint
+Antoine_, which he dropped suddenly, when half finished, for an entirely
+different subject--_Madame Bovary_, a novel of provincial life,
+published first in 1857 in the _Revue de Paris_. For this Flaubert was
+prosecuted, on the charge of offending against public morals, but was
+acquitted after the remarkable defense offered by Maitre Senard.
+
+Flaubert's fame dates from _Madame Bovary_, which was much discussed by
+press and public. Many, including his friend, Maxime Ducamp, condemned
+it, but Sainte-Beuve gave it his decisive and courageous approval. It
+was generally considered, however, as the starting point of a new phase
+in letters, frankly realistic, and intent on understanding and
+expressing everything. Such success might have influenced Flaubert's
+artistic inclinations but did not, for while _Madame Bovary_ was
+appearing in the _Revue de Paris_, the _Artiste_ was publishing
+fragments of _La Tentation de Saint Antoine_.
+
+In 1858 Flaubert went to Tunis, visited the site of ancient Carthage,
+and four years afterwards wrote _Salammbo_, a marvellous reconstitution,
+more than half intuitive, of a civilisation practically unrecorded in
+history. This extraordinary book did not call forth the enthusiasm that
+greeted _Madame Bovary_. Flaubert, in whom correctness of detail was a
+passion, was condemned, even by Sainte-Beuve, for choosing from all
+history a civilisation of which so little is known. The author replied,
+and a lengthy controversy ensued, but it was not a subject that could be
+settled definitely in one way or another.
+
+In _L'Education Sentimentale, roman d'un jeune homme_, published in
+1869, Flaubert returns momentarily to the style which brought him such
+rapid and deserved celebrity. In 1877 appeared _Trois Contes_, three
+short stories written in the impersonal style of _Salammbo_, contrasting
+strangely with _La Legende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier_ and
+_Herodias_, wherein Flaubert shows himself supreme in the art of
+word-painting.
+
+Death came to him on May 8, 1880, as he was writing the last chapters of
+a new work, _Bouvard et Pecuchet_, which was published in part after he
+died and later appeared in book form (1881).
+
+At the age of twenty-five, Flaubert met the only woman who in any way
+entered his sentimental life. She was an author, the wife of Lucien
+Colet, and the "Madame X" of the Correspondence. Their friendship lasted
+eight years and ended unpleasantly, Flaubert being too absorbed by his
+worship for art to let passion sway him.
+
+He remained unmarried because his love for his mother and family made
+calls upon him that he would not neglect. He was indifferent to women,
+treated them with paternal indulgence, and often avowed that "woman is
+the undoing of the just." Yet a warm friendship existed between him and
+George Sand, and many of his letters are addressed to her, touching upon
+various questions in art, literature, and politics.
+
+The misanthropy which haunted Flaubert, of which so much has been said,
+was not innate, but was acquired through the constant contemplation of
+human folly. It was natural for him to be cheerful and kind-hearted,
+and of his generosity and disinterestedness not enough can be said. At
+the close of his life financial difficulties assailed him, for he had
+given a great part of his fortune to the support of a niece, restricting
+his own expenses and living as modestly as possible. In 1879, M. Jules
+Ferry, then Minister of Public Instruction, offered him a place in the
+Bibliotheque Mazarine, but the appointment was not confirmed.
+
+Flaubert's method of production was slow and laborious. Sometimes weeks
+were required to write a few pages, for he accumulated masses of notes
+and, it must be said, so much erudition as at times to impede action. He
+thought no toil too great, did it but aid him in his pursuit of literary
+perfection, and when the work that called for such expenditure of
+strength and thought was finished, he looked for no reward save that of
+a satisfied soul. Alien to business wisdom, he believed that to set a
+price upon his work disparaged it.
+
+In Flaubert, a Romanticist and a Naturalist at first were blended. But
+the latter tendency was fostered and acknowledged, while the former was
+repressed. He was an ardent advocate of the impersonal in art, declaring
+that an author should not in a page, a line, or a word, express the
+smallest part of an opinion. To him a writer was a mirror, but a mirror
+that reflected life while adding that divine effulgence which is Art. Of
+him a French Romanticist still living says:
+
+     "Imagination was espoused by Unremitting-Toil-in-Faith and bore
+     Flaubert. France fed the child, but Art stepped in and gave him to
+     the Nations as a Beacon for the worshippers of
+     Truth-in-Letters-and-in-Life."
+
+The city of Rouen reared a monument to Flaubert's memory, but on the
+spot where he breathed his last are reared the chimneys and the
+buildings of a factory, a tribute--possibly unconscious--to reality in
+life.
+
+
+Before writing _Madame Bovary_ Flaubert had tested himself, and an idea
+of the scope and variety of his ideas may be gained from the following
+list of inedited and unfinished fragments:
+
+HISTORICAL
+
+    The Death of the Due de Guise, 1835
+    Norman Chronicle of the Tenth Century, 1836
+    Two Hands on a Crown, or, During the Fifteenth Century, 1836.
+    Essay on the Struggle between Priesthood and Empire, 1838.
+    Rome and the Caesars, 1839.
+
+TRAVELS
+
+    Various notes on Travels to the Pyrenean Mountains, Corsica,
+    Spain and the Orient, from 1840 to 1850.
+
+TALES AND NOVELS
+
+    The Plague in Florence, 1836
+    Rage and Impotence, 1836
+    The Society Woman, fantastic verses, 1836
+    Bibliomania, 1836
+    An Exquisite Perfume, or, The Buffoons, 1836.
+    Dreams of the Infernal Regions, 1837
+    Passion and Chastity, 1837
+    The Funeral of Dr. Mathurin, or, During the XVth Century, 1839.
+    Frenzy and Death, 1843
+    Sentimental Education (not the novel published under same title).
+    1843.
+
+PLAYS
+
+    Louis XI, Drama, 1838
+    Discovery of Vaccination, a parody of tragic style; one act only
+    was written.
+
+CRITICISMS
+
+    On Romantic Literature in France
+
+MISCELLANY
+
+    Quidquid volueris? A psychological study, 1837.
+    Agony (Sceptical Thoughts), 1838
+    Art and Commerce, 1839.
+    Several nameless sketches.
+
+Unfortunately, nearly all the works of Flaubert's youth were mere
+sketches, laid aside by him. Their publication would have added nothing
+to his fame. Still, the loss of some would have been deplorable, to wit,
+such gems as _Novembre_, _The Dance of Death_, _Rabelais_, and the
+travels, _Over Strand and Field_. These sketches will be found in this
+edition.
+
+ROBERT ARNOT
+
+
+
+
+MADAME BOVARY
+
+PART I.
+
+I.
+
+THE NEW BOY.
+
+
+We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a "new
+fellow," not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a
+large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if
+just surprised at his work.
+
+The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the
+class-master, he said to him in a low voice:
+
+"Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be
+in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into
+one of the upper classes, as becomes his age."
+
+The "new fellow," standing in the corner behind the door so that he
+could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller
+than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village
+chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was
+not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black
+buttons must have been tight about the armholes, and showed at the
+opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in
+blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by
+braces. He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots.
+
+We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as
+attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean
+on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was
+obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.
+
+When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on
+the floor so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to
+toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a
+lot of dust: it was "the thing."
+
+But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt
+it, the "new fellow" was still holding his cap on his knees even after
+prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in
+which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin
+cap, and cotton nightcap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb
+ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval,
+stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in
+succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;
+after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with
+complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long, thin cord,
+small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new;
+its peak shone.
+
+"Rise," said the master.
+
+He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to
+pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked
+it up once more.
+
+"Get rid of your helmet," said the master, who was a bit of a wag.
+
+There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the
+poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap
+in his hand, leave it on the floor, or put it on his head. He sat down
+again and placed it on his knee.
+
+"Rise," repeated the master, "and tell me your name."
+
+The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name.
+
+"Again!"
+
+The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of
+the class.
+
+"Louder!" cried the master; "louder!"
+
+The "new fellow" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately
+large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling some one
+the word, "Charbovari."
+
+A hubbub broke out, rose in _crescendo_ with bursts of shrill voices
+(they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated "Charbovari! Charbovari!"), then
+died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty,
+and now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence
+rose here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.
+
+However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established
+in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of
+"Charles Bovary," having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read,
+at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form
+at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going
+hesitated.
+
+"What are you looking for?" asked the master.
+
+"My c-a-p," timidly said the "new fellow," casting troubled looks round
+him.
+
+"Five hundred verses for all the class!" shouted in a furious voice,
+stopped, like the _Quos ego_, a fresh outburst "Silence!" continued the
+master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he had
+just taken from his cap. "As to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate
+'_ridiculus sum_' twenty times." Then, in a gentler tone, "Come, you'll
+find your cap again; it hasn't been stolen."
+
+Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the "new fellow" remained
+for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some
+paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he
+wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.
+
+In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk,
+arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him
+working conscientiously, looking out every word in the dictionary, and
+taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he
+showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his
+rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure of
+his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from
+motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.
+
+His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired
+assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription
+scandals, and forced at that time to leave the service, had then taken
+advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand
+francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen
+in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his
+spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache,
+his fingers always garnished with rings, and dressed in loud colors, he
+had the dash of a military man with the easy air of a commercial
+traveller. Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's
+fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not
+coming in at night till after the theater, and haunting cafes. The
+father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, "went in
+for the business," lost some money in it, then retired to the country,
+where he thought he would make money. But, as he knew no more about
+farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to
+plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the
+finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the
+fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he would do better
+to give up all speculation.
+
+For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of the
+provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half
+private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his
+luck, jealous of every one, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five,
+sick of men, he said, and determined to live in peace.
+
+His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a
+thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once,
+expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the
+fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered,
+grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at
+first, when she had seen him going after all the village drabs, and when
+a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking
+drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her
+anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was
+constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the
+lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them
+renewed, and at home, ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen,
+paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally
+besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say
+disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into
+the cinders.
+
+When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,
+the lad was spoiled as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with
+jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the
+philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the
+young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain
+virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing
+him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong
+constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink
+off large draughts of rum, and to jeer at religious processions. But,
+peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His
+mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him
+tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety
+and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the
+child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of
+high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an
+engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even on an old piano
+she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Monsieur
+Bovary, caring little for letters, said: "It is not worth while. Shall
+we ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a
+practice, or to start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always
+gets on in the world." Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child knocked
+about the village.
+
+He went after the laborers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens
+that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the
+geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in
+the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and
+at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he
+might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward
+by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong of
+hand, fresh of color.
+
+When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began his
+lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and
+irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare
+moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a
+burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil
+after the _Angelus_. They went up to his room and settled down; the
+flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell
+asleep and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his
+stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,
+when Monsieur le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum
+to some sick person in the neighborhood, caught sight of Charles playing
+about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour,
+and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the
+foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All
+the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the "young man"
+had a very good memory.
+
+Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.
+Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a
+struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take
+his first communion.
+
+Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to
+school at Rouen, whither his father took him towards the end of October,
+at the time of the St. Romain fair.
+
+It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him.
+He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in
+school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, and
+ate well in the refectory. He had _in loco parentis_ a wholesale
+ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays
+after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the
+boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before
+supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with
+red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or
+read an old volume of "Anarchasis" that was knocking about the study.
+When we went for walks he talked to the servant who, like himself, came
+from the country.
+
+By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once
+even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his
+third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study
+medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself.
+
+His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she
+knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his board,
+got him furniture, a table and two chairs, sent home for an old
+cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with
+the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child. Then at the end of a
+week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to be good, now that he
+was going to be left to himself.
+
+The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him: lectures on
+anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on
+pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,
+without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose
+etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to
+sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.
+
+He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did
+not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all
+the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task
+like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not
+knowing what work he is doing.
+
+To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a
+piece of veal baked in the oven, on which he lunched when he came back
+from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall. After
+this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the
+hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the
+evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his room
+and set to work again in his wet clothes, that smoked as he sat in front
+of the hot stove.
+
+On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are
+empty, when the servants are playing shuttlecock at the doors, he opened
+his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter of
+Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the bridges
+and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling on the
+banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting from the
+attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite, beyond the
+roofs, spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How pleasant it
+must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he expanded his
+nostrils to breathe in the sweet odors of the country which did not
+reach him.
+
+He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look
+that made it almost interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he
+abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the
+next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little
+he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the
+public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every
+evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the
+small sheep-bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his
+freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see
+life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his
+hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things
+hidden within him come out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to
+his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to
+make punch, and, finally, how to make love.
+
+Thanks to these preparatory labors, he failed completely in his
+examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night
+to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning
+of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused him,
+threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners,
+encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight.
+It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was
+old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man
+born of him could be a fool.
+
+So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,
+ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty
+well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.
+
+Where should he go to practise? To Tostes, where there was only one old
+doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his
+death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was
+installed, opposite his place, as his successor.
+
+But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him
+taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practise it; he
+must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe,
+who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs. Though
+she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the
+spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her ends
+Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in very
+cleverly baffling the intrigues of a pork-butcher backed up by the
+priests.
+
+Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he
+would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his
+wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast
+every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients
+who did not pay. She opened his letters, watched his comings and goings,
+and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his
+surgery.
+
+She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She
+constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of
+footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to
+her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles
+returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from
+beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit
+down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he
+was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be
+unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little
+more love.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+A GOOD PATIENT.
+
+
+One night toward eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of a
+horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the
+garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.
+He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Nastasie came downstairs
+shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left
+his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He
+pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in
+a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested his elbow on the
+pillow to read it. Nastasie, standing near the bed, held the light.
+Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.
+
+This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur
+Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken
+leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across
+country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;
+Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was
+decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three
+hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and
+show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.
+
+Towards four o'clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his
+cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,
+he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped
+of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that
+are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly
+remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures
+he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of
+the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers
+bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as
+eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals
+seemed like dark violet stains on the vast gray surface, that on the
+horizon faded into the gloom of the sky, Charles from time to time
+opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and sleep coming upon him, he soon
+fell into a doze wherein his recent sensations blending with memories,
+he became conscious of a double self, at once student and married man,
+lying in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation theater as of
+old. The warm smell of poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh
+odor of dew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of
+the bed, and saw his wife sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came
+upon a boy sitting on the grass at the edge of a ditch.
+
+"Are you the doctor?" asked the child.
+
+And on Charles's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on
+in front of him.
+
+The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk
+that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers. He had
+broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a Twelfth-night
+feast at a neighbor's. His wife had been dead for two years. There was
+only his daughter, who helped him to keep house, with him.
+
+The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux. The
+little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared; then he
+came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The horse slipped
+on the wet grass; Charles had to stoop to pass under the branches. The
+watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their chains. As he
+entered the Bertaux the horse took fright and stumbled.
+
+It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the
+open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new
+racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from
+which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys five or six
+peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of
+it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your
+hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with
+their whips, shafts, and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool
+were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The
+courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and
+the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.
+
+A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the
+threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the
+kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servants' breakfast was
+boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were
+drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of
+the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while
+along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the
+hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the
+window, was mirrored fitfully.
+
+Charles went up to the first floor to see the patient. He found him in
+his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton
+nightcap far away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white
+skin and blue eyes, the fore part of his head was bald, and he wore
+ear-rings. Near him on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence
+he poured himself out a little from time to time to keep up his spirits;
+but as soon as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and
+instead of swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, he
+began to groan feebly.
+
+The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication. Charles
+could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind the
+devices of his masters at the bedside of patients, he comforted the
+sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon
+that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some
+splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Charles
+selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment of
+window-pane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and
+Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before
+she found her workcase, her father grew impatient; she did not answer,
+but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her
+mouth to suck. Charles was much surprised at the whiteness of her nails.
+They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of
+Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not
+white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too
+long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in
+her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and
+her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.
+
+The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself
+to "pick a bit" before he left.
+
+Charles went down into the room on the ground-floor. Knives and forks
+and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a
+huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing
+Turks. There was an odor of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from
+a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were
+sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the
+neighboring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of
+decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the
+wall, whose green paint had scaled off from the effects of saltpeter,
+was a crayon head of Minerva in a gold frame, underneath which was
+written in Gothic letters "To dear Papa."
+
+First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold,
+of the wolves that infested the fields at night. Mademoiselle Rouault
+did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look
+after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she
+ate. This showed something of her full lips, that she had a habit of
+biting when silent.
+
+Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose two
+black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was
+parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the
+curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined
+behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the
+country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of
+her cheek was rose-colored. She had, like a man, thrust in between two
+buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.
+
+When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the
+room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the
+window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked
+down by the wind. She turned round.
+
+"Are you looking for anything?" she asked.
+
+"My whip, if you please," he answered.
+
+He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It
+had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle
+Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks. Charles, out of politeness,
+made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment
+felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath
+him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder
+as she handed him his whip.
+
+Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised, he
+went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without
+counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.
+
+Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favorably; and
+when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk
+alone in his "den," Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man of
+great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured
+better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.
+
+As to Charles, he did not stay to ask himself why it was a pleasure to
+him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have
+attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the
+money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits
+to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of
+his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on
+his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black
+gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing
+the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads
+run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old
+Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his savior; he liked the
+small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the
+kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in
+front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp
+sound against the leather of her boots.
+
+She always reconducted him to the first step of the stairs. When his
+horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said
+"Good-bye;" there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round,
+playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro
+on her hips her apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once,
+during a thaw, the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on
+the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold,
+and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade, of silk of
+the color of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up
+with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the
+tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on
+the stretched silk.
+
+During the first period of Charles's visits to the Bertaux, Madame
+Bovary, junior, never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had
+even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a
+clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a
+daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt that Mademoiselle
+Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called
+"a good education;" and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to
+embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.
+
+"So it is for this," she said to herself, "that his face beams when he
+goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of
+spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! that woman!"
+
+And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by
+allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations
+that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to
+which he knew not what to answer. "Why did he go back to the Bertaux now
+that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet?
+Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who knew how to
+talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted
+town misses." And she went on:
+
+"The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was
+a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes
+for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss,
+or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown, like a countess.
+Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year,
+would have had much ado to pay up his arrears."
+
+For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made
+him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more,
+after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He
+obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the
+servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive
+hypocrisy, that this interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to
+love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all
+weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her
+shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they
+were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the
+laces of her large boots crossed over gray stockings.
+
+Charles's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few
+days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then,
+like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and
+observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much. Why did he always
+offer a glass of something to every one who came? What obstinacy not to
+wear flannels!
+
+In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of
+the widow Dubuc's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all
+the money in his office. Heloise, it is true, still possessed, besides a
+share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the Rue St.
+Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted
+abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes,
+had appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone into. The house
+at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations;
+what she had placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the
+boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In
+his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the
+flags, accused his wife of having caused the misfortune of their son by
+harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide.
+They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise
+in tears, throwing her arms about her husband, conjured him to defend
+her from his parents. Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry
+and left the house.
+
+But the blow had struck home. A week after, as she was hanging up some
+washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the
+next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the
+window-curtain, she said, "O God!" gave a sigh and fainted. She was
+dead! What a surprise!
+
+When all was over at the cemetery, Charles went home. He found no one
+downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress
+still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the
+writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful
+reverie. She had loved him, after all!
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+A LONELY WIDOWER.
+
+
+One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his
+leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard
+of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.
+
+"I know what it is," said he, clapping him on the shoulder; "I've been
+through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be
+quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I
+talked nonsense to him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the
+branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And
+when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their
+nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on
+the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very
+idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well,
+quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an
+autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb;
+it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something
+always remains at the bottom, as one would say--a weight here, at one's
+heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way
+altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must
+pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see
+us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you
+are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some
+rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit."
+
+Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all
+as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear
+trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again,
+came and went, making the farm more full of life.
+
+Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor
+because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off,
+spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended
+to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him
+than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He
+told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his
+wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in;
+he thought no more about her.
+
+He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new
+delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now
+change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was
+very tired stretch himself full length on his bed. So he nursed and
+coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. On
+the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his
+business, since for a month people had been saying, "The poor young man!
+what a loss!" His name had been talked about, his practice had
+increased; and, moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked.
+He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better
+looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.
+
+One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields.
+He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the
+outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun
+sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners
+of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table
+were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they
+drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in
+by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and
+touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth
+Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of
+perspiration on her bare shoulders.
+
+After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to
+drink. He said no; she insisted and at last laughingly offered to have a
+glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacoa from
+the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim,
+poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after clinking their
+glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back
+to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the
+strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her
+tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the
+bottom of her glass.
+
+She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was
+darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did
+Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the
+flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in
+his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the
+yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her
+hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.
+
+She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from
+giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began
+talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They
+went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little
+prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a
+cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even
+showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every
+month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But their
+gardeners had understood nothing about it; servants were so careless.
+She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town,
+although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more
+wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her
+voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden, all languor, lingering out in
+modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself; now
+joyous, opening big, naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her
+look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.
+
+Going home at night, Charles went over her words, one by one, trying to
+recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life
+she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts
+other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her.
+Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married,
+and to whom? Alas! old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But
+Emma's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the
+humming of a top, sounded in his ears, "If you should marry, after all!
+if you should marry!" At night he could not sleep; his throat was
+parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and
+opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing
+in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head toward the
+Bertaux.
+
+Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised
+himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each
+time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words
+sealed his lips.
+
+Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was
+of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her
+too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one
+never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it, the
+good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in
+which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture
+properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him
+less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his
+pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself,
+liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old
+cider, underdone legs of mutton, _glorias_[1] well beaten up. He took
+his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table
+brought to him all ready laid, as on the stage.
+
+[Footnote 1: A mixture of coffee and spirits.--TRANS.]
+
+When, therefore, he perceived that Charles's cheeks grew red if near his
+daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days,
+he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a
+little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he
+was said to be well-conducted, economical, very learned, and no doubt
+would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old
+Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of "his property,"
+as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the
+shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, "If he asks for her," he said
+to himself, "I'll give her to him."
+
+At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux. The last
+had passed like the others, in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old
+Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of
+ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave himself
+as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it:
+
+"Monsieur Rouault," he murmured, "I should like to say something to
+you."
+
+They stopped. Charles was silent.
+
+"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?" said old Rouault,
+laughing softly.
+
+"Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault," stammered Charles.
+
+"I ask nothing better," the farmer went on. "Although, no doubt, the
+little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get
+off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes,' you needn't return because of
+all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so
+that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter
+of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning
+over the hedge."
+
+And he went off.
+
+Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited.
+Half-an-hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch.
+Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown
+back; the hook was still swinging.
+
+The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as he
+entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in
+countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion
+of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before
+them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out
+of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.
+
+The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with
+her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself
+chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When
+Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked
+over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed
+of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be the
+entrees.
+
+Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding
+with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So
+there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which
+they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to
+some extent on the days following.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+CONSOLATION.
+
+
+The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled
+cars, old open gigs, wagonettes with leather hoods, and the young people
+from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows,
+holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well
+shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville,
+from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had
+been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long
+since lost sight of written to.
+
+From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then
+the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the
+steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all
+sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies wearing bonnets,
+had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with
+the ends tucked into belts, or little colored fichus fastened down
+behind with a pin, that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,
+dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes
+(many that day handselled their first pair of boots), and by their
+sides, speaking never a word, wearing the white dress of their first
+communion lengthened for the occasion, were some big girls of fourteen
+or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered,
+their hair greasy with rose-pomade, and very much afraid of soiling
+their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the
+carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it
+themselves. According to their different social positions, they wore
+tail-coats, overcoats, shooting-jackets, cutaway-coats: fine tail-coats,
+redolent of family respectability, that came out of the wardrobe only on
+state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and
+round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting-jackets of coarse cloth,
+usually worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short
+cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a
+pair of eyes, the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a
+carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at
+the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with
+collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small
+plaits and the waist fastened very far down with a worked belt.
+
+And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Every one had
+just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been
+close-shaven; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and
+not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or
+cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air
+_en route_ had inflamed, so that the great, white, beaming faces were
+mottled here and there with red dabs.
+
+The _mairie_ was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither
+on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The
+procession, first united like one long colored scarf that undulated
+across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn,
+soon lengthened out, and broke up in different groups that loitered to
+talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons in
+its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all
+following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves
+plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing among themselves
+unseen. Emma's skirt, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from
+time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her
+gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,
+while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault,
+with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands
+up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary, senior. As to Monsieur
+Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply
+in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing
+compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and
+did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their
+business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another
+on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the
+squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he
+saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly
+rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set
+off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark
+time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove the little birds far
+away.
+
+The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six
+chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle
+a fine roast sucking-pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At
+the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round
+the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine
+beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least
+shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of
+the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot
+had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up
+in the place, he had taken great trouble, and at dessert he himself
+brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin
+with, at its base was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple
+with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the
+niches were constellations of gilt paper stars; on the second stage was
+a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied
+angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the
+upper layer was a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell
+boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing, whose
+two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.
+
+Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they
+went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the
+granary, and then returned to table. Toward the finish some went to
+sleep and snored. But with the coffee every one woke up. Then they began
+songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with
+their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad
+jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed up
+to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they
+kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore; and
+all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were
+runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over
+yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning
+out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.
+
+Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.
+The children had fallen asleep under the seats.
+
+The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage
+pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even
+brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water
+from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in
+time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position of
+his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the
+same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused
+old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a
+corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running
+served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been
+badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints
+hoping he would ruin himself.
+
+Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been
+consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the
+arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead
+of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till
+daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This
+added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.
+
+Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.
+He answered feebly to the puns, _doubles entendres_, compliments, and
+chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup
+appeared.
+
+The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who
+might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before,
+whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did
+not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near
+them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed
+nothing. He called her "my wife," _tutoyed_ her, asked for her of every
+one, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards
+where he could be seen from afar, among the trees putting his arm round
+her waist, and walking half bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of
+her bodice with his head.
+
+Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of
+his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back
+in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here he
+embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.
+When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the
+cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.
+Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of
+his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her
+from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,
+trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the
+country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from
+the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois head-dress so
+that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head
+he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently
+under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from
+time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would
+have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the
+road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling
+with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he
+felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was
+afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went
+directly home.
+
+Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock. The
+neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.
+
+The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not
+having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should
+look over her house.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+THE NEW MENAGE.
+
+
+The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.
+Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black
+leather cap, and on the floor in a corner, were a pair of leggings still
+covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment that was both
+dining and sitting room. A canary-yellow paper, relieved at the top by a
+garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the
+badly-stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung
+crosswise the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a
+clock with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate
+candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was
+Charles's consulting-room, a little room about six paces wide, with a
+table, three chairs, and an office-chair. Volumes of the "Dictionary of
+Medical Science," uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the
+successive sales through which they had gone, occupied almost alone the
+six shelves of a deal bookcase. The smell of melted butter penetrated
+the thin walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could
+hear the people coughing in the consulting-room and recounting their
+whole histories. Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a
+large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar,
+and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements
+past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to
+guess.
+
+The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered
+apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the
+middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower-beds with
+eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen-garden bed.
+At the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster reading
+his breviary.
+
+Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second,
+which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red
+drapery. A shell-box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary
+near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin
+ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other
+one's. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it
+up to the attic, while Emma, seated in an armchair (they were putting
+her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a
+bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she
+were to die.
+
+During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in
+the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wall-paper
+put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the
+sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain
+and fishes. Finally, her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,
+picked up a second-hand dog-cart, which, with new lamps and a
+splash-board in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.
+
+He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together, a
+walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her
+hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and
+many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now
+made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by
+her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down
+on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her nightcap. Seen thus
+closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up,
+she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the shade, dark
+blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different
+colors, that, darker in the center, grew paler toward the surface of the
+eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in
+miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head
+and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window to see
+him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium,
+clad in her dressing-gown hanging loosely about her. Charles in the
+street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she
+talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or
+leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating, described
+semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the
+ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless
+at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a kiss; she answered with
+a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And then along the highroad,
+spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the
+trees bent over as in arbors, along paths where the corn reached to the
+knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his
+heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at
+ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner
+taste again the truffles which they are digesting.
+
+Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when he
+remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of
+companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his
+accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school
+with cakes in their muffs? Or later, when he studied medicine, and never
+had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have
+become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the
+widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life
+this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend
+beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself
+with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,
+ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;
+he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.
+
+He could not keep from continually touching her comb, her rings, her
+fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on
+her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from
+the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away
+half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.
+
+Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that
+should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought,
+have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in
+life by the words _felicity_, _passion_, _rapture_, that had seemed to
+her so beautiful in books.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A MAIDEN'S YEARNINGS.
+
+
+She had read "Paul and Virginia," and she had dreamed of the little
+bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all the
+sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for
+you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand,
+bringing you a bird's nest.
+
+When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her
+in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter,
+where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the
+story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped
+here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the
+tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.
+
+Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the
+society of the good sisters who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,
+which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very
+little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she
+who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living
+thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the class-rooms, and
+amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was
+softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the
+altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.
+Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with
+their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred
+heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the
+cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a
+whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfill.
+
+When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she
+might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her
+face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The
+comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal
+marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of
+unexpected sweetness.
+
+In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the
+study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the
+Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the
+"Genie du Christianisme," as a recreation. How she listened at first to
+the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies re-echoing
+through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the
+shop-parlor of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her
+heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us
+only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;
+she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the plow. Accustomed to calm
+aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement.
+She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields
+only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out
+of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to
+the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more
+sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.
+
+At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to
+mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an
+ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the
+refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit
+of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped
+out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love-songs
+of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.
+She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the
+sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the
+pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long
+chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,
+sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions
+killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, somber
+forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by
+moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, "gentlemen" brave as lions,
+gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and
+weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of
+age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. With
+Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed
+of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in
+some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the
+shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in
+hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse
+from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and
+enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc,
+Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferronniere, and Clemence Isaure
+stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also
+were seen, lost in shadow and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak,
+the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St.
+Bartholomew's, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of
+the plates painted in honor of Louis XIV.
+
+In the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but
+little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;--mild
+compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity
+of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria
+of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought "keepsakes"
+given them as New Year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;
+it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately
+handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at
+the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the
+most part as counts or viscounts.
+
+She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and
+saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the
+balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his
+arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or
+there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who
+looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear
+eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through
+parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage, driven at a
+trot by two small postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on
+sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open
+window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their
+cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,
+smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a
+marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked
+shoes. And you too were there, Sultans with long pipes, reclining
+beneath arbors in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabers, Greek
+caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that
+often show us at once palm-trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion
+to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very
+neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in
+the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a
+steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.
+
+And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma's head
+lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one
+by one in the silence of the dormitory, to the distant noise of some
+belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.
+
+When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a
+funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter
+sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be
+buried some day in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,
+and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at
+a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
+hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
+to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
+the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the
+Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
+confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
+herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
+brow.
+
+The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
+great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping from
+them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
+novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
+saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
+the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
+horses: she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
+nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
+church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
+songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the
+mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
+antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
+no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
+had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.
+
+Emma at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
+servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
+When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought
+herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing
+more to feel.
+
+But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
+caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
+that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
+great bird with rose-colored wings, had hung in the splendor of the
+skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she
+lived was the happiness she had dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+DISILLUSION.
+
+
+She thought sometimes that, after all, this was the happiest time of her
+life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of
+it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with
+sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most
+suave. In post-chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up
+steep roads, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the
+mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a
+waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of
+lemon-trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in
+hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her
+that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar
+to the soil, that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over
+balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch
+cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails,
+and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills?
+
+Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to some one.
+But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable
+as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage.
+
+If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but
+once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have
+gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a
+hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater
+became the gulf that separated her from him.
+
+Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and every
+one's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting
+emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said,
+while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from
+Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could
+not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in
+a novel.
+
+A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold
+activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements
+of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing,
+wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm,
+this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.
+
+Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand
+there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes
+half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers,
+little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers
+glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb,
+and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken
+up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the
+other end of the village when the window was open, and often the
+bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bareheaded and in list
+slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.
+
+Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the
+patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a
+bill. When they had a neighbor to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have
+some dainty dish--piled up pyramids of green-gages on vine leaves,
+served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying
+finger-glasses for dessert. From all this, much consideration was
+extended to Bovary.
+
+Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.
+He showed with pride in the sitting-room two small pencil sketches by
+her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the
+wall-paper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at
+his door in his wool-work slippers.
+
+He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked
+for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on
+him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one
+after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been,
+the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he
+finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off
+the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to
+bed, and lay on his back and snored.
+
+As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief
+would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was
+all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of
+the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore
+thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely
+towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight
+line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that was "quite good
+enough for the country."
+
+His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly
+when there had been some violent scene at her place; and yet Madame
+Bovary senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought
+"her ways too fine for their position;" the wood, the sugar, and the
+candles disappeared as at "a grand establishment," and the amount of
+firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses.
+She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to
+keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with
+these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words
+"daughter" and "mother" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by
+little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice
+trembling with anger.
+
+In Madame Dubuc's time the old woman felt that she was still the
+favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion
+from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched
+her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the
+windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as
+remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with
+Emma's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to
+adore her so exclusively.
+
+Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved
+his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,
+and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madame
+Bovary had gone he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or
+two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma Emma
+proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his
+patients.
+
+And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make
+herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the
+passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many
+melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before,
+and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.
+
+When she had thus for a while struck the flint of her heart without
+getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not
+experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in
+conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that
+Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became
+regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among
+other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony
+of dinner.
+
+A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had
+given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for
+she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see
+before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far
+as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an
+angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amid the vegetation of
+the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut.
+
+She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last
+she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and
+wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the
+patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always
+closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts,
+aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round
+and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing
+the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield. Then
+gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that
+she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to herself,
+"Good heavens! why did I marry?"
+
+She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would not have
+been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would
+have been these unrealized events, this different life, this unknown
+husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been
+handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old
+companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In
+town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theaters, and the
+lights of the ball-room, they were living lives where the heart expands,
+the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose
+dormer-window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was
+weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. She
+recalled the prize-days, when she mounted the platform to receive her
+little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and
+open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her
+seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was
+full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows;
+the music-master with his violin-case bowed in passing by. How far off
+all this! How far away!
+
+She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long,
+delicate head, saying, "Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles."
+
+Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned
+slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud
+as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.
+
+Occasionally there came gusts of wind, breezes from the sea rolling in
+one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even
+to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,
+whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their
+summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl
+round her shoulders and rose.
+
+In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lighted the short moss
+that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky
+showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,
+and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out
+against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali,
+and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the highroad, threw herself into an
+armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.
+
+But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her
+life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.
+
+Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to
+re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the
+Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a
+great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically
+demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had
+suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by
+giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes
+to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some
+superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry-trees did not
+thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it
+his business to thank him personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty
+figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not
+think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other
+hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.
+
+One Wednesday at three o'clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in
+their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on
+behind and a bonnet-box in front on the apron. Besides these Charles
+held a bandbox between his knees.
+
+They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being
+lighted to show the carriage-drive.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+GLIMPSES OF THE WORLD.
+
+
+The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting
+wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense
+green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees
+set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,
+syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green
+along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;
+through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs
+scattered over the field bordered by two gently-sloping well-timbered
+hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel
+lines the coach-houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old
+chateau.
+
+Charles's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants
+appeared; the Marquis came forward, and offering his arm to the doctor's
+wife, conducted her to the vestibule.
+
+It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of
+footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.
+Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery
+overlooking the garden led to the billiard-room, through whose door one
+could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the
+drawing-room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces,
+their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled
+silently as they made their strokes. On the dark wainscoting of the
+walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black
+letters. She read:
+
+     "Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yverbonville, Count de la
+     Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnaye, killed at the battle of
+     Coutras on the 20th of October 1587."
+
+And on another:
+
+     "Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral
+     of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the
+     battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May 1692; died at
+     Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693."
+
+One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the
+lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room.
+Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in
+delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all
+these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there
+some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked
+at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the
+buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf.
+
+The Marquis opened the drawing-room door; one of the ladies (the
+Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on
+an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her
+a long time. She was about forty years old, with fine shoulders, a hook
+nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair
+a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young
+woman was by her side in a high-backed chair, and gentlemen with flowers
+in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.
+
+At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down
+at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the
+dining-room with the Marquis and Marchioness.
+
+Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a
+blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes
+of the viands, and the odor of the truffles. The silver dish-covers
+reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal
+covered with light steam reflected pale rays from one to the other;
+bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the
+large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a
+bishop's miter, held between its two gaping folds a small oval-shaped
+roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open
+baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke
+was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and
+frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offered ready-carved
+dishes between the shoulders of the guests, and with a touch of the
+spoon gave the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with
+copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed
+motionless on the room full of life.
+
+Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their
+glasses.
+
+But at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent
+over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child,
+an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His
+eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black
+ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere,
+once on a time favorite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the
+Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it
+was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de
+Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch,
+full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and
+frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him
+in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly
+Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as
+to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed
+of queens!
+
+Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it
+cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted
+pine-apples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than
+elsewhere.
+
+The ladies afterward went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.
+
+Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her
+debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,
+and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed. Charles's trousers
+were tight across the belly.
+
+"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing," he said.
+
+"Dancing?" repeated Emma.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.
+Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor," she added.
+
+Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish
+dressing.
+
+He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes
+seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating toward the ears, shone
+with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,
+with artificial dewdrops on the tips of the leaves. She wore a gown of
+pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
+green.
+
+Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.
+
+"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."
+
+One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
+went downstairs restraining herself from running.
+
+Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She
+sat down on a form near the door.
+
+The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
+and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line
+of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid smiling
+faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed
+hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
+at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
+trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair,
+well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or
+bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of
+corn, and cornflowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with
+forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.
+
+Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
+tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and
+waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,
+swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight
+movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate
+phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
+instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the
+louis-d'or that were being thrown down upon the card-tables in the next
+room; then all struck in again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous
+note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and
+parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again.
+
+A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here
+and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished
+themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their
+differences in age, dress, or face.
+
+Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,
+brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate
+pomades. They had the complexion of wealth,--that clear complexion that
+is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the
+veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite
+nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low
+cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they
+wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs, with embroidered initials, that
+gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an
+air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the
+young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily
+satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that
+peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in
+which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of
+thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women.
+
+A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy
+with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.
+
+They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoli,
+Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum
+by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation
+full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very
+young man who the week before had beaten "Miss Arabella" and "Romulus,"
+and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained
+that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors
+that had disfigured the name of his horse.
+
+The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim. Guests
+were flocking to the billiard-room. A servant got upon a chair and broke
+the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary turned her
+head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the
+window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to
+her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse
+under the apple-trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming
+with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the
+refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then,
+faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was
+there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She
+was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a
+silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth.
+
+A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentleman was passing.
+
+"Would you be so good," said the lady, "as to pick up my fan that has
+fallen behind the sofa?"
+
+The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw
+the hand of the young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,
+into his hat. The gentleman picking up the fan, offered it to the lady
+respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began
+smelling her bouquet.
+
+After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups _a la
+bisque_ and _au lait d'amandes_, puddings _a la Trafalgar_, and all
+sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the
+carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corner of
+the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering
+through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were
+still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on
+their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back propped against a door.
+
+At three o'clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.
+Every one was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the
+Marquis only the guests staying at the castle were still there about a
+dozen persons.
+
+One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and
+whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time
+to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and
+that she would get through it very well.
+
+They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them
+was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like
+a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma's dress
+caught against his trousers. Their legs commingled; he looked down at
+her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They
+started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging
+her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where,
+panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his
+breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to
+her seat. She leant back against the wall and covered her eyes with her
+hands.
+
+When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing-room three
+waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool. She chose the
+Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.
+
+Every one looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid
+body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure
+curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how
+to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.
+
+Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the good-nights, or
+rather good-mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed.
+
+Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His knees were going up
+into his body. He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright
+at the card-tables, watching them play whist, without understanding
+anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled
+off his boots.
+
+Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.
+
+The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the
+damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still
+murmuring in her ears, and she tried to keep herself awake in order to
+prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to
+give up.
+
+Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau,
+trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the
+evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,
+blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and
+cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.
+
+There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten
+minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor. Next,
+Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small
+basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went
+to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs,
+rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from overfilled nests
+of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was
+at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau.
+The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables.
+Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the
+horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when
+any one went near and said "Tchk! tchk!" The boards of the harness-room
+shone like the flooring of a drawing-room. The carriage harness was
+piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the
+whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.
+
+Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The
+dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and all the parcels being
+crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and
+Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.
+
+Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge
+of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little
+horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose
+reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened
+on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.
+
+They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen
+with cigars between their lips passed, laughing. Emma thought she
+recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the
+movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the
+trot or gallop.
+
+A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces
+that had broken.
+
+But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the
+ground between the horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a
+green silk border and blazoned in the center like the door of a
+carriage.
+
+"There are even two cigars in it," said he; "they'll do for this evening
+after dinner."
+
+"Why, do you smoke?" she asked.
+
+"Sometimes, when I get a chance."
+
+He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.
+
+When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper.
+Nastasie answered rudely.
+
+"Leave the room!" said Emma. "You are forgetting yourself. I give you
+warning."
+
+For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.
+Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.
+
+"How good it is to be at home again!"
+
+Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She
+had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowerhood, kept him
+company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest
+acquaintance in the place.
+
+"Have you given her warning for good?" he asked at last.
+
+"Yes. Who is to prevent me?" she replied.
+
+Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being
+made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with his lips protruded,
+spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.
+
+"You'll make yourself ill," she said scornfully.
+
+He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the
+pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar-case threw it quickly to the back
+of the cupboard.
+
+The next day was a long one. She walked above her little garden, up and
+down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier,
+before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of
+once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed
+already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day
+before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard
+had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevasses that a
+storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was
+resigned. She devoutly put away in her closets her beautiful dress, down
+to the satin shoes whose sole were yellowed with the slippery wax of the
+dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth
+something had come over it that could not be effaced.
+
+The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma. Whenever
+the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, "Ah! I was
+there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago." And little by little the
+faces grew confused in her remembrance. She forgot the tune of the
+quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so
+distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+IDLE DREAMS.
+
+
+Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds
+of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar-case. She
+looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odor of the lining--a
+mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps it
+was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some
+rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had
+occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the
+pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the
+canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and
+all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same
+silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with
+him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-manteled chimneys
+between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at
+Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague name! She
+repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her
+ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the
+labels of her pomade-pots.
+
+At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts
+singing the "Marjolaine," she awoke, and listened to the noise of the
+iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon
+deadened by the soil. "They will be there to-morrow!" she said to
+herself.
+
+And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing
+villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the
+end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into
+which her dream died.
+
+She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map
+she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at
+every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white
+squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of
+her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind
+and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles
+of theatres.
+
+She took in "La Corbeille," a lady's journal, and the "Sylphe des
+Salons." She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of
+first nights, races, and soirees, took an interest in the debut of a
+singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the
+addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In
+Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and
+George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.
+Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while
+Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always
+returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made
+comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened
+round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened
+out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.
+
+Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes in an
+atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult
+were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma
+perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in
+themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over
+polished floors in drawing-rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables
+covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were skirts with
+trains; deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the
+society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the
+women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men,
+unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to
+death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards
+the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,
+where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the
+motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as
+kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence
+outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of
+storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it
+was lost, with no particular place, and as if non-existent. The nearer
+things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All
+her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class
+imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a
+peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched as
+far as eye could see an immense land of joys and of passions. She
+confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of
+the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love,
+like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Sighs
+by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the
+fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be
+separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from
+boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled
+flower-stands, a bed on a raised dais, nor from the flashing of precious
+stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.
+
+The lad from the posting-house, who came to groom the mare every
+morning, passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there
+were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this
+was the groom in knee-breeches with whom she had to be content! His work
+done, he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put
+up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the
+servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could
+into the manger.
+
+To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma
+took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet
+face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in
+the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before
+coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her,--tried to make a
+lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not
+to be sent away; and, as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,
+Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone
+in her bed after she had said her prayers.
+
+Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions. Madame
+was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing-gown, that showed
+between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chemisette with three
+gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her
+small garnet-colored slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over
+her instep. She had bought herself a blotting-book, writing-case,
+pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she
+dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,
+and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She
+longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same
+time to die and to live in Paris.
+
+Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on
+farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt
+of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined
+basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he
+found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed
+woman, charming with an odor of freshness, though no one could say
+whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous
+her chemise.
+
+She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of
+arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on
+her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the
+servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last
+mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on
+their watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her
+mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory
+_necessaire_ with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood
+these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the
+pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a
+golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life.
+
+He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established. The
+country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children,
+never went to the public-house, and, moreover, his morals inspired
+confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest
+complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact,
+prescribed only sedatives, from time to time an emetic, a footbath, or
+leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people
+copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the
+"devil's own wrist."
+
+Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in "La Ruche Medicale," a
+new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little
+after dinner, but in about five minutes, the warmth of the room added to
+the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin
+on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the
+lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was
+not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their
+books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age when rheumatism
+sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coats? She
+could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been
+illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the
+newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition. An Yvetot
+doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated
+him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives.
+When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma inveighed
+loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He kissed her
+forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she
+felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the
+passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.
+
+"What a man! what a man!" she said in a low voice, biting her lips.
+
+Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his
+manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles;
+after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he
+made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting
+fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up
+to the temples.
+
+Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest into his
+waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the soiled gloves he
+was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it
+was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.
+Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in
+a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the "upper ten" that she had
+seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an
+ever-open ear, an ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to
+her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to
+the pendulum of the clock.
+
+At bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to
+happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the
+solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of
+the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would
+bring it her, toward what shore it would drive her, if it would be a
+shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the
+port-holes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that
+day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that
+it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for
+the morrow.
+
+Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear-trees
+began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.
+
+From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to
+October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give
+another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or
+visits.
+
+After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained
+empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would
+thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing
+nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some
+event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences,
+and the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it
+so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.
+
+She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?
+Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking
+with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel
+the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while
+boring herself with practising. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery
+she left in the cupboard. What was the good? what was the good? Sewing
+irritated her. "I have read everything," she said to herself. And she
+sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.
+
+How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull
+attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over
+some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the
+highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and
+the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away
+over the fields.
+
+But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the
+peasants in new blouses, the little bareheaded children skipping along
+in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six
+men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door
+of the inn.
+
+The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with rime,
+and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass,
+sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp
+had to be lighted.
+
+On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the
+cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one
+to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the
+espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent
+under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the
+many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the
+cure in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right
+foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white
+scabs on his face.
+
+Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with
+the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever.
+She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of
+shame restrained her.
+
+Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skull-cap opened
+the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre
+over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by
+three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the
+bell of a public-house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear
+the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop
+creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving
+of a fashion-plate stuck against a window-pane and the wax bust of a
+woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted
+calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big
+town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbor, near the
+theater--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church,
+sombre, and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she
+always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skull-cap over
+his ears and his waistcoat of lasting.
+
+Sometimes in the afternoon, outside the window of her room, the head of
+a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with
+a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately
+began, and on the organ, in a little drawing-room, dancers the size of a
+finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in
+frock-coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the
+sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking-glass held
+together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his
+handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and
+again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the
+milestone, with his knee he raised his instrument, whose hard straps
+tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried,
+the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink
+taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other
+places at the theaters, sung in drawing-rooms, danced to at night under
+lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless
+sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing-girl on the
+flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leaped with the notes, swung from
+dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some
+coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his
+organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him
+going.
+
+But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this
+small room on the ground-floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking
+door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness of life
+seemed served up on her plate, and with the smoke of the boiled beef
+arose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow
+eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused
+herself with drawing lines along the oil-cloth table-cover with the
+point of her knife.
+
+She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame
+Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much
+surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now
+passed whole days without dressing, wore gray cotton stockings, and
+burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they
+were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that
+Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth
+of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow
+her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that
+mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she
+had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good
+woman did not mention it again.
+
+Emma was growing _difficile_, capricious. She ordered dishes for
+herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, and
+the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out,
+then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light frocks. After
+she had well scolded her servant, she gave her presents or sent her out
+to see the neighbors, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver
+in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily
+accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who
+always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the
+paternal hands.
+
+Toward the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself
+brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes.
+Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in
+the room, spat on the fire-dogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry,
+and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him
+with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover,
+she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at
+times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with
+that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral,
+all which made her husband open his eyes widely.
+
+Would this misery last forever? Would she never issue from it? Yet she
+was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen
+duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she
+execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls to
+weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent
+pleasures, with all the wildness, that she did not know, but that these
+must surely yield.
+
+She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart. Charles
+prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only
+seemed to irritate her the more.
+
+On certain days she chattered with feverish rapidity, and this
+over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she
+remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was
+pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.
+
+As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her
+illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea,
+began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.
+
+From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and
+completely lost her appetite.
+
+It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and
+when he was "beginning to get on there." Yet if it must be! He took her
+to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of
+air was needed.
+
+After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that in
+the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market-town
+called Yonville l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a
+week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number
+of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his
+predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being
+satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma's
+health did not improve.
+
+One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,
+something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding-bouquet. The
+orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver-bordered satin
+ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up
+more quickly than dry straw. Then it was like a red bush in the cinders,
+slowly devoured. She watched it burn. The little pasteboard berries
+burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shrivelled paper
+corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at
+last flew up the chimney.
+
+When they left Tostes in the month of March, Madame Bovary was
+pregnant.
+
+
+
+
+PART II.
+
+I.
+
+A NEW FIELD.
+
+
+Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not
+even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen,
+between the Abbeville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley
+watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after
+turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout
+that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.
+
+We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of
+the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it
+makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies,--all
+on the left is pasture land, all on the right arable. The meadow
+stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the
+pasture land of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain,
+gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond
+cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line
+the color of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a
+great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of
+silver.
+
+Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of
+Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to
+bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain-tracks, and these
+brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the gray color of the
+mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the
+neighboring country.
+
+Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France,
+a bastard land, whose language is without accent as its landscape is
+without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel
+cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is
+costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full
+of sand and flints.
+
+Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but
+about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Abbeville to
+that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their
+way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of
+its "new outlet." Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping
+up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the
+lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread
+riverwards. It is seen from afar sprawling along the banks like a
+cowherd taking a siesta by the waterside.
+
+At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with
+young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the
+place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full
+of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds, and distilleries
+scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to
+the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach
+down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses
+have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the
+plaster wall, diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree
+sometimes leans, and the ground floors have at their door a small
+swing-gate, to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread
+steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the
+houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns
+swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a
+blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts
+outside that partly block up the way. Then across an open space appears
+a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on
+his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps;
+scutcheons[2] blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the
+finest in the place.
+
+[Footnote 2: The _panonceaux_ that have to be hung over the doors of
+notaries.--TRANS.]
+
+The church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther
+down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds
+it, closed in by a wall breast-high, is so full of graves that the old
+stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the
+grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was
+rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Charles X. The wooden roof
+is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows
+in its blue color. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft
+for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden
+shoes.
+
+The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon
+the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a
+straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, "Monsieur
+So-and-so's pew." And at the spot where the building narrows, the
+confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a
+satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and
+with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a
+copy of the "Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,"
+overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the
+perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted.
+
+The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts,
+occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town
+hall, constructed "from the designs of a Paris architect," is a sort of
+Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On the
+ground floor are three Ionic columns, and on the first floor a
+semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a
+Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the "Charte" and holding in the other
+the scales of Justice.
+
+But that which most attracts the eye is, opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the
+chemist's shop of Monsieur Homais. In the evening especially its argand
+lamp is lighted, and the red and green jars that embellish his
+shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of color; then
+across them, as if in Bengal lights, is seen the shadow of the chemist
+leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with
+inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: "Vichy,
+Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine,
+Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths,
+hygienic chocolate," &c. And the signboard, which takes up all the
+breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, "Homais, Chemist." Then at
+the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the
+word "Laboratory" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about
+half-way up once more repeats "Homais" in gold letters on a black
+ground.
+
+Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only
+one) a gunshot in length, and flanked by a few shops on either side,
+stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand
+and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed, the cemetery is soon
+reached.
+
+At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall
+was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all
+the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue
+to crowd together toward the gate. The keeper, who is at once
+gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the
+parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to
+plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows
+smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to
+rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.
+
+"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!" the cure at last said to him one
+day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time;
+but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and
+even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.
+
+Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at
+Yonville. The tin tricolor flag still swings at the top of the
+church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from
+the linendraper's; the chemist's foetuses, like lumps of white amadou,
+rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the
+inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its
+poodle mane.
+
+On the evening when the Bovarys were to arrive at Yonville, Widow
+Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated
+great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The
+meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee
+made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meals to see to, and that of the
+doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with
+bursts of laughter; three millers in the small parlor were calling for
+brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the
+long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of
+plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which the spinach
+was being chopped. From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the
+fowls which the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.
+
+A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and
+wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the
+chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he
+appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head
+in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.
+
+"Artemise!" shouted the landlady, "chop some wood, fill the water
+bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to
+offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers
+are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has
+been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when
+it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only to think,
+Monsieur Homais, that since morning they have had about fifteen games,
+and drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me," she
+went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.
+
+"That wouldn't be much of a loss," replied Monsieur Homais. "You would
+buy another."
+
+"Another billiard-table!" exclaimed the widow.
+
+"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again
+you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want
+narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is
+changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!"
+
+The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on:
+
+"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one
+were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or
+the sufferers from the Lyons floods"--
+
+"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us," interrupted the
+landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. "Come, come, Monsieur Homais; as
+long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered
+our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed
+with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!" she went
+on, speaking to herself, "the table that comes in so handy for folding
+the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six
+visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!"
+
+"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?"
+
+"Wait for him! And what about Monsieur Binet? As the clock strikes six
+you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for
+punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlor. He'd
+rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so
+particular about the cider! Not like Monsieur Leon; he sometimes comes
+at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he
+eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!"
+
+"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and
+an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector."
+
+Six o'clock struck. Binet came in.
+
+He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin
+body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his
+head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead,
+flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth
+waistcoat, a hair collar, gray trousers, and, all the year round,
+well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking
+out of his big toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair
+whiskers, which encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a
+garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose
+hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine
+hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning
+napkin-rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an
+artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.
+
+He went to the small parlor, but the three millers had to be got out
+first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Binet
+remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and
+took off his cap in his usual way.
+
+"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue," said
+the chemist, as soon as he was alone with the landlady.
+
+"He never talks more," she replied. "Last week two travelers in the
+cloth line were here--such clever chaps, who told such jokes in the
+evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a
+dab fish and never said a word."
+
+"Yes," observed the chemist; "no imagination, no sallies, nothing that
+makes the society man."
+
+"Yet they say he has parts," objected the landlady.
+
+"Parts!" replied Monsieur Homais; "he parts! In his own line it is
+possible," he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--
+
+"Ah! that a merchant, who has large connections, a juris-consult, a
+doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become
+whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in
+history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something.
+Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the
+bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had
+put it behind my ear?"
+
+Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the "Hirondelle"
+were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into
+the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his
+face was rubicund and his form athletic.
+
+"What can I do for you, Monsieur le Cure?" asked the landlady, as she
+reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with
+their candles in a row. "Will you take something? A thimbleful of
+_cassis_? A glass of wine?"
+
+The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he
+had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking
+Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the
+evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.
+
+When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the
+square, he thought the priest's behavior just now very unbecoming. This
+refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy;
+all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days
+of the tithe.
+
+The landlady took up the defense of her cure.
+
+"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year
+he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six
+trusses at once, he is so strong."
+
+"Bravo!" said the chemist. "Now just send your daughters to confess to
+fellows with such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have
+the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a
+good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals."
+
+"Be quiet, Monsieur Homais. You are an infidel; you've no religion."
+
+The chemist answered: "I have a religion, my religion, and I even have
+more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I
+adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a
+Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below
+to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't
+need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my
+pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one
+can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the
+eternal vault like the ancients. My God! mine is the God of Socrates, of
+Franklin, of Voltaire, and Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of
+the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't
+admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane
+in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies
+uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd
+in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws,
+which proves to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in
+torpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them."
+
+He ceased looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the
+chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town
+council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a
+distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled
+with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground,
+and at last the "Hirondelle" stopped at the door.
+
+It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt,
+prevented travelers from seeing the road and soiled their shoulders. The
+small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach
+was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old
+layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away.
+It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came
+down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.
+
+Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all
+spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert
+did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place
+in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the
+shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his
+mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hairdresser's, and
+all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels,
+which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of
+his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.
+
+An accident had delayed him. Madame Bovary's greyhound had run across
+the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had
+even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight
+of her; but it had been necessary to go on. Emma had wept, grown angry;
+she had accused Charles of this misfortune. Monsieur Lheureux, a draper,
+who happened to be in the coach with her had tried to console her by a
+number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of
+long years. One, he said, had been told of who had come back to Paris
+from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a
+straight line, and swam four rivers; and his own father had possessed a
+poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped
+on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+NEW FRIENDS.
+
+
+Emma got out first, then Felicite, Monsieur Lheureux, and a nurse, and
+they had to wake up Charles in his corner, where he had slept soundly
+since night set in.
+
+Homais introduced himself; he offered his homages to Madame and his
+respects to Monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render
+them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had
+ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.
+
+When Madame Bovary was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney. With
+the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having
+thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to
+the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole
+of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gown, the fine
+pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and
+again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind
+through the half-open door. On the other side of the chimney a young man
+with fair hair watched her silently.
+
+As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the
+notary's, Monsieur Guillaumin Monsieur Leon Dupuis (it was he who was
+the second _habitue_ of the "Lion d'Or") frequently put back his
+dinner-hour in the hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with
+whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done
+early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and
+endure from soup to cheese a _tete-a-tete_ with Binet. It was therefore
+with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should
+dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large
+parlor where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had
+the table laid for four.
+
+Homais asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza;
+then turning to his neighbor--
+
+"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in
+our 'Hirondelle.'"
+
+"That is true," replied Emma; "but moving about always amuses me. I like
+change of place."
+
+"It is so tedious," sighed the clerk, "to be always riveted to the same
+places."
+
+"If you were like me," said Charles, "constantly obliged to be in the
+saddle"--
+
+"But," Leon went on, addressing himself to Madame Bovary, "nothing, it
+seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can," he added.
+
+"Moreover," said the chemist, "the practice of medicine is not very hard
+work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the
+use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are well off, they pay pretty
+well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of
+enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few
+intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a
+serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of
+scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our
+peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Monsieur
+Bovary, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your
+science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse
+to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the
+doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad,
+and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I
+have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees and in the
+hottest season rises to 25 or 30 degrees Centigrade at the outside,
+which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or otherwise 54
+degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a matter of fact,
+we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the
+one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and
+this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapors given off
+by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which,
+as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen,
+and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into
+itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different
+emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the
+electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in
+the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious
+miasmata,--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side
+whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the
+southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled
+themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once, like
+breezes from Russia."
+
+"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighborhood?" continued Madame
+Bovary, speaking to the young man.
+
+"Oh, very few," he answered. "There is a place they call La Pature, on
+the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I
+go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset."
+
+"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets," she resumed; "but
+especially by the side of the sea."
+
+"Oh, I adore the sea!" said Monsieur Leon.
+
+"And then, does it not seem to you," continued Madame Bovary, "that the
+mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of
+which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?"
+
+"It is the same with mountainous landscapes," continued Leon. "A cousin
+of mine who traveled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not
+picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls,
+the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size
+across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand
+feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must
+stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer
+marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his
+imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing
+site."
+
+"You play?" she asked.
+
+"No, but I am very fond of music," he replied.
+
+"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Bovary," interrupted Homais,
+bending over his plate. "That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the
+other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I
+heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor."
+
+Leon, in fact, lodged at the chemist's, where he had a small room on the
+second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his
+landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to
+him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He
+was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was
+not known exactly, and "there was the Tuvache household," who made a
+good deal of show.
+
+Emma continued, "And what music do you prefer?"
+
+"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream."
+
+"Have you been to the opera?"
+
+"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish
+reading for the bar."
+
+"As I had the honor of putting it to your husband," said the chemist,
+"with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find
+yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the
+most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a
+doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen.
+Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a
+laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, etc. He was a
+gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the
+side of the water, he had an arbor built just for the purpose of
+drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be
+able"--
+
+"My wife doesn't care about it," said Charles; "although she has been
+advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room
+reading."
+
+"Like me," replied Leon. "And indeed, what is better than to sit by
+one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against
+the window and the lamp is burning?"
+
+"What, indeed?" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon
+him.
+
+"One thinks of nothing," he continued; "the hours slip by. Motionless we
+traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the
+fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the
+adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were
+yourself palpitating beneath their costumes."
+
+"That is true! that is true!" she said.
+
+"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague
+idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from
+afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
+
+"I have experienced it," she replied.
+
+"That is the reason why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think
+verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to
+tears."
+
+"Still in the long run it is tiring," continued Emma. "Now I, on the
+contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one.
+I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are
+in nature."
+
+"In fact," observed the clerk, "these works, not touching the heart, it
+seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the
+disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble
+characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself,
+living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville
+affords so few resources."
+
+"Like Tostes, no doubt," replied Emma; "and so I always subscribed to a
+lending library."
+
+"If madame will do me the honor of making use of it," said the chemist,
+who had just caught the last words, "I have at her disposal a library
+composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott,
+the 'Echo des Feuilletons;' and in addition I receive various
+periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage
+to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel,
+Yonville and vicinity."
+
+For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant
+Artemise, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags,
+brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly
+left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against
+the wall with its hooks.
+
+Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the
+bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary was sitting. She wore a small
+blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar,
+and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently
+sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus, side by side, while
+Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague
+conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to
+the fixed center of a common sympathy. The Paris theaters, titles of
+novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where
+she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked
+of everything till to the end of dinner.
+
+When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the
+new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was
+asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was
+waiting to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home. Bits of straw
+stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had
+taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started.
+
+The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the
+earth was all gray as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was
+only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost
+immediately, and the company dispersed.
+
+As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold of the plaster
+fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the
+wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish
+light passed through the curtainless windows. She could catch glimpses
+of tree-tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay
+reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of
+the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt
+poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the floor,--the two
+men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly.
+
+This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place. The
+first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her
+arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth.
+And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in
+her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in
+the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life
+lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be
+better.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+ADDED CARES.
+
+
+The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She
+had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and
+reclosed the window.
+
+Leon waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going
+to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The
+dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he
+had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a "lady." How
+then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of
+things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy,
+and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and
+dissimulation. At Yonville he was considered "well-bred." He listened to
+the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about
+politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some
+accomplishments; he painted in water-colors, could read the key of _G_,
+and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards.
+Monsieur Homais respected him for his education; Madame Homais liked him
+for his good-nature, for he often took the little Homaises into the
+garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoiled, and
+somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look after
+them, they had Justin, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of
+Monsieur Homais, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who
+was useful at the same time as a servant.
+
+The chemist proved the best of neighbors. He gave Madame Bovary
+information as to the tradespeople, sent expressly for his own cider
+merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly
+placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply
+of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the
+sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funereal functions, looked
+after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,
+according to the taste of the customers.
+
+The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the
+chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it
+all.
+
+He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi, article 1, which
+forbade all persons not having a diploma to practice medicine; so that,
+after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen
+to see the procureur of the king in his own private room; the magistrate
+receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in
+the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard the
+heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise
+great locks that were shut. The chemist's ears tingled as if he were
+about to have an apoplectic stroke: he saw the depths of dungeons, his
+family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was
+obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover
+his spirits.
+
+Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he
+continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his
+back-parlor. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous,
+everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his
+attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out
+later, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him
+"the paper," and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments
+to have a chat with the Doctor.
+
+Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours
+without speaking, went into his consulting-room to sleep, or watched his
+wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a
+workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been
+left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had spent
+so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the
+moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped
+away in two years. Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during
+their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster
+cure, who, falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been
+dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavement of Quincampoix!
+
+A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his
+wife. As the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the
+more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it
+were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he
+saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her
+hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she
+took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he
+got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little
+mamma, wanted to make her dance, and, half-laughing, half-crying,
+uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The
+idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He
+knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.
+
+Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be
+delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not being
+able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a
+swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit
+of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the
+whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing
+anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that
+stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the
+very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.
+
+As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to
+think of him more consecutively.
+
+She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him
+George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected
+revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he
+may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste
+of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once
+inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and
+legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a
+string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws
+her, some conventionality that restrains.
+
+She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was
+rising.
+
+"It is a girl!" said Charles.
+
+She turned her head away and fainted.
+
+Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost
+immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as a man of
+discretion, offered only a few provisional felicitations through the
+half-open door. He wished to see the child, and thought it well made.
+
+While she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name
+for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian
+endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde very
+well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better. Charles wanted the child to
+be called after her mother; Emma opposed this. They ran over the
+calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders.
+
+"Monsieur Leon," said the chemist, "with whom I was talking about it the
+other day, wonders you do not choose Madeleine. It is very much in
+fashion just now."
+
+But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a
+sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that
+recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it
+was on this system that he baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon
+represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to
+romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the
+French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with
+his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of
+sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination
+and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the
+ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded
+all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic
+over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,
+but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for
+their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in
+which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with
+both his hands and argue with him for a good quarter of an hour.
+
+At last Emma remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard
+the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was
+chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested
+to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment,
+to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of
+marsh-mallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy, into the bargain,
+that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony
+there was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much
+excitement. Monsieur Homais toward liqueur-time began singing "Le Dieu
+des bonnes gens." Monsieur Leon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary,
+senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally,
+M. Bovary, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began
+baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head.
+This mockery of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien
+angry; old Bovary replied by a quotation from "La Guerre des Dieux;" the
+cure wished to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they
+succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on
+with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.
+
+Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the
+natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in
+the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the
+habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to
+the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's
+account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his
+daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne.
+
+The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the
+world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier
+times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had
+partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs
+or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, "Charles, look
+out for yourself."
+
+Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and
+fearing that her husband might in the long run have an immoral influence
+upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure.
+Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was
+not the man to respect anything.
+
+One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl,
+who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and without looking
+at the almanac to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were yet
+passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme end
+of the village, between the highroad and the fields.
+
+It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed, and the slate
+roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to
+strike sparks from the crest of their gables. A heavy wind was blowing;
+Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she
+was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to
+rest.
+
+At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighboring door with a
+bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the
+shade in front of Lheureux's shop under the projecting gray awning.
+
+Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was
+beginning to grow tired.
+
+"If--" said Leon, not daring to go on.
+
+"Have you any business to attend to?" she asked.
+
+And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same
+evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's
+wife, declared in the presence of her servant that "Madame Bovary was
+compromising herself."
+
+To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving
+the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little
+houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in
+bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the
+sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the
+hedges one could see into the huts, some pig on a dung-heap, or tethered
+cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by
+side, walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace,
+which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges
+fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.
+
+They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it. Low,
+and covered with brown tiles, outside it hung, beneath the dormer-window
+of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence
+surrounded a bed of lettuces, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet
+peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the
+grass, and several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico
+jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen, were spread over the hedge.
+At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling
+on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little
+fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom
+his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country.
+
+"Go in," she said; "your little one is there asleep."
+
+The room on the ground floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its
+farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a
+kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was
+mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,
+shining hobnailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,
+near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a _Matthieu
+Laensberg_ lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gun-flints, candle-ends,
+and bits of amadou. Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a
+"Fame" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some
+perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.
+
+Emma's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the
+wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked
+herself to and fro.
+
+Leon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this
+beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.
+Madame Bovary reddened, he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been
+an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the baby girl, who
+had just vomited over her frock. The nurse at once came to dry her,
+protesting that it wouldn't show.
+
+"She gives me other doses," she said; "I am always a-washing of her. If
+you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a
+little soap; it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't
+trouble you then."
+
+"Very well! very well!" said Emma. "Good morning, Madame Rollet," and
+she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.
+
+The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the
+time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.
+
+"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you
+might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a
+month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk."
+
+After submitting to her thanks, Madame Bovary left. She had gone a
+little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned
+round. It was the nurse.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began
+talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year
+that the captain--
+
+"Oh, be quick!" said Emma.
+
+"Well," the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, "I'm afraid
+he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone; you know men--"
+
+"But you are to have some," Emma repeated; "I will give you some. You
+bother me!"
+
+"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see, in consequence of his wounds he
+has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him."
+
+"Do make haste, Mere Rollet!"
+
+"Well," the latter continued, making a curtsey, "if it weren't asking
+too much," and she curtsied once more, "if you would"--and her eyes
+begged--"a jar of brandy," she said at last, "and I'd rub your little
+one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue."
+
+Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Leon's arm. She walked
+fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of
+her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat
+had a black-velvet collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and
+carefully arranged. She noticed his nails, which were longer than one
+wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to
+trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his
+writing-desk.
+
+They returned to Yonville by the waterside. In the warm season the
+bank, wider than at other times, showed to its foot the garden walls,
+whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift, and
+cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the
+current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like
+streaming hair; sometimes at the top of the reeds or on the leaf of a
+water-lily an insect with thin legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced
+with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed
+each other; branchless old willows mirrored their gray backs in the
+water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the
+dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard
+nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the
+path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma's skirts rustling
+around her.
+
+The walls of the gardens, with pieces of bottle on their coping, were as
+hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up
+between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary,
+as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow
+dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its
+fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.
+
+They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected
+shortly at the Rouen theatre.
+
+"Are you going?" she asked.
+
+"If I can," he answered.
+
+Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of
+more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial
+phrases they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the
+whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices.
+Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of
+speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like
+tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn
+softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication
+without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.
+
+In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to
+step on large green stones put here and there in the mud. She often
+stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on the
+stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look
+of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of
+water.
+
+When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the
+little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.
+
+Leon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the
+briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went
+out.
+
+He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of
+the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and gazed
+at the sky through his fingers.
+
+"How bored I am!" he said to himself, "how bored I am!"
+
+He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais
+for a friend and Monsieur Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely
+absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red
+whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements,
+although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had
+impressed the clerk.
+
+As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as
+a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins,
+weeping for others' woes, letting everything go in her household, and
+detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so
+common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although
+she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each
+other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a
+woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than
+the gown.
+
+And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three
+publicans, the cure, and, finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his
+two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and
+had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable
+companions.
+
+But from the general background of all these human faces Emma's stood
+out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to
+see a vague abyss.
+
+In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the
+druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him
+again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being
+indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost
+impossible.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SILENT HOMAGE.
+
+
+When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the
+sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on
+the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the
+looking-glass. Seated in her armchair near the window, she could see
+the villagers pass along the pavement.
+
+Twice a day Leon went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Emma could hear
+him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man
+glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without
+turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her
+left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she
+often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past.
+She would get up and order the table to be laid.
+
+Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on
+tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase,
+"Good evening, everybody." Then, when he had taken his seat at table
+between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter
+consulted him as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked
+of what was in the paper. Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart,
+and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the
+penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had
+occurred in France or abroad. But the subject becoming exhausted, he was
+not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him.
+Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to Madame the
+tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the
+manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning. He talked aroma,
+osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. Moreover,
+Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled
+in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew
+also all the last inventions in economic stoves, together with the art
+of preserving cheeses and of curing sick wines.
+
+At eight o'clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop. Then
+Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite was there,
+for he had noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house.
+
+"The young dog," he said, "is beginning to have ideas, and the devil
+take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!"
+
+But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his
+constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could
+not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called
+him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the armchairs,
+and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too
+large.
+
+Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his
+scandal-mongering and political opinions having successively alienated
+various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be
+there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took
+her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that
+she wore over her boots when there was snow.
+
+First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais
+played ecarte with Emma; Leon behind her gave her advice. Standing up
+with his hands on the back of her chair, he saw the teeth of her comb
+that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made to throw
+her cards the right side of her bodice was drawn up. From her turned-up
+hair a dark color fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost
+itself little by little in the shade. Then her skirt fell on both sides
+of her chair, puffing out, full of folds, and reaching the floor. When
+Leon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back
+as if he had trodden upon some one.
+
+When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played
+dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table,
+turning over the leaves of "L'Illustration." She had brought her ladies'
+journal with her. Leon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings
+together, and waited for each other at the bottom of the pages. She
+often begged him to read her the verses; Leon declaimed them in a
+languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love
+passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais was
+strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.
+Then, the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in
+front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the
+cinders; the teapot was empty, Leon was still reading. Emma listened to
+him, mechanically turning round the lamp-shade, on the gauze of which
+were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dancers with their
+balancing-poles. Leon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping
+audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed
+the more sweet to them because it was unheard.
+
+Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of
+books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did
+not trouble himself about it.
+
+On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked
+with figures to the thorax, and painted blue. This was an attention of
+the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at
+Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses
+fashionable, Leon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on
+his knees in the "Hirondelle," pricking his fingers with their stiff
+hairs.
+
+She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the
+pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other
+tending their flowers at their windows.
+
+Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for
+on Sundays, from morning to night, and every morning when the weather
+was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of a garret the profile
+of Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could
+be heard at the Lion d'Or.
+
+One evening on coming home Leon found in his room a rug in velvet and
+wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur
+Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;
+every one wished to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the
+clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be in love
+with him.
+
+He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and
+of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him:
+
+"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?"
+
+He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to
+her, and, always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the
+shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.
+Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put
+it off to times that he again deferred. Often he set out with the
+determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in
+Emma's presence, and when Charles, dropping in, invited him to jump into
+his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighborhood, he at
+once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not
+something belonging to her?
+
+As to Emma, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she
+thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,--a
+hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots
+up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She
+did not know that on the terraces of houses lakes are formed when the
+pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when
+she suddenly discovered a rent in its wall.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+SMOTHERED FLAMES.
+
+
+It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.
+
+They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Leon,
+gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and
+half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give
+them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas
+on his shoulder.
+
+Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great
+piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and
+stones, were a few brake-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a
+quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The
+building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the
+roofing. Attached to the top-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed
+with corn-ears fluttered its tricolored ribbons in the wind.
+
+Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance of
+this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the
+thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick
+such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.
+
+Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she
+looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale
+splendor. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over his
+eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of
+stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to
+behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the
+bearer.
+
+While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of
+depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale
+seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and
+his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the
+lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large
+blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more
+beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.
+
+"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.
+
+And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of
+lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was
+being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes
+with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his.
+
+"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carries a knife in his pocket like a
+peasant."
+
+The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.
+
+In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbor's, and when
+Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison recurred
+with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that
+lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from
+her bed at the clear fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had
+down there, Leon standing up with one hand bending his cane, and with
+the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She
+thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she
+recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the
+sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
+lips as if for a kiss--
+
+"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself; "but
+with whom? With me?"
+
+All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of
+the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back,
+stretching out her arms.
+
+Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had but willed it!
+And why not? What prevented it?"
+
+When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened,
+and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then
+asked carelessly what had happened that evening.
+
+"Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early."
+
+She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a
+new delight.
+
+The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lheureux, the
+draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but
+bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of
+the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction
+of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen
+brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been
+formerly; a pedlar, said some, a banker at Routot, according to others.
+What was certain was, that he made complex calculations in his head that
+would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always
+held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who
+invites.
+
+After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a
+green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with
+many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without
+gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract a
+"fashionable lady;" he emphasized the words; yet she had only to
+command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might
+wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he
+went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the
+best houses. You could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe
+d'Or," or at the "Grand Sauvage;" all these gentlemen knew him as well
+as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then, he had come to show
+madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the
+most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered
+collars from the box.
+
+Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she said.
+
+Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves,
+several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and,
+finally, four eggcups in cocoa-nut wood, carved in open-work by
+convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out,
+his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma's look, who was
+walking up and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if
+to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves
+spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making
+in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like
+little stars.
+
+"How much are they?"
+
+"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no hurry;
+whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews."
+
+She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur
+Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly:
+
+"Very well. We shall understand each other by and by. I have always got
+on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!"
+
+Emma smiled.
+
+"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, "that
+it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some,
+if need be."
+
+She made a gesture of surprise.
+
+"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go far to
+find you some, rely on that."
+
+And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the "Cafe
+Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.
+
+"What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his
+whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than
+a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! That sort of people,
+madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still
+it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off."
+
+And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's
+patients.
+
+"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the floor,
+"that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these
+days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my
+back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble
+servant." And he closed the door gently.
+
+Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she
+was a long time over it; everything was well with her.
+
+"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.
+
+She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and took
+from the chest of drawers the first of a pile of dusters to be hemmed.
+When he came in she seemed very busy.
+
+The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes,
+while he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near
+the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She
+stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with
+her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence,
+as he would have been by her speech.
+
+"Poor fellow!" she thought.
+
+"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.
+
+At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these days, to
+go to Rouen on some office business.
+
+"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?"
+
+"No," she replied.
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because--"
+
+And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of gray thread.
+
+This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers.
+A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.
+
+"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.
+
+"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to
+look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many
+duties that must be considered first?"
+
+She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then she affected anxiety.
+Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!"
+
+The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness in his behalf
+astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up his praises, which
+he said every one was singing, especially the chemist.
+
+"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.
+
+"Certainly," replied the clerk.
+
+And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance
+generally made them laugh.
+
+"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does not
+trouble about her appearance."
+
+Then she relapsed into silence.
+
+It was the same on the following days; her talk, her manners, everything
+changed. She took interest in the house-work, went to church regularly,
+and looked after her servant with more severity.
+
+She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite brought her
+in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared
+she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and
+she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outbursts which would have
+reminded any one but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de
+Paris."
+
+When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire.
+His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was
+quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the nightcaps arranged in piles
+of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn
+in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not
+understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when
+Leon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
+his two feet on the fender, his cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist
+with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with
+the slender waist who came behind his armchair to kiss his forehead:
+
+"What madness!" he said to himself. "And how to reach her!"
+
+And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all
+hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an
+extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly
+attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she
+rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent
+manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure
+feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because
+they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion
+rejoices.
+
+Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black
+hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always
+silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely
+touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine
+destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,
+that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in
+churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the
+marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist
+said--
+
+"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a
+sub-prefecture."
+
+The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the
+poor her charity.
+
+But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with
+the narrow folds hid a distracted heart, of whose torment those chaste
+lips said nothing. She was in love with Leon, and sought solitude that
+she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his form
+troubled the voluptuousness of this meditation. Emma thrilled at the
+sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and
+afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended
+in sorrow.
+
+Leon did not know that when he left her in despair, she rose after he
+had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his
+comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history
+to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy
+to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centred
+upon this house, like the "Lion d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip
+their red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma
+recognized her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be
+evident, that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess
+it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.
+What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of
+shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was
+past, that all was lost. Then pride, the joy of being able to say to
+herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at herself in the glass taking
+resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she
+was making.
+
+Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy
+of passion, all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of
+turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself
+to pain, and seeking everywhere occasions for it. She was irritated by
+an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had
+not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow
+home.
+
+What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her
+anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an
+imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose
+sake, then, was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all
+felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of
+that complex strap that buckled her in on all sides?
+
+On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that
+resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented
+it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,
+and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own
+gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity
+drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tendernesses to adulterous desires.
+She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better
+right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised
+sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and
+she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she
+was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.
+
+Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
+temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at once a
+vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.
+
+"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become of me?
+What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?"
+
+She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with
+flowing tears.
+
+"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came in
+during these crises.
+
+"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it would
+worry him."
+
+"Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere
+Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at
+Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, that to see her
+standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a
+winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was
+a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do
+anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went off
+quite alone to the seashore, so that the customs officer, going his
+rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle.
+Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say."
+
+"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it began."
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+SPIRITUAL COUNSEL.
+
+
+One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been
+watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard
+the Angelus ringing.
+
+It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a
+warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like
+women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars
+of the arbor and away beyond, the river could be seen in the fields,
+meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapors
+rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet
+tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart
+their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps
+nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the
+air, kept up its peaceful lamentation.
+
+With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost
+themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered
+the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the
+altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked
+to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here
+and there by the stiff black hoods of the good sisters bending over
+their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the
+gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense.
+Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the
+down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she
+went towards the church, inclined to no matter what devotions, so that
+her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.
+
+On the Place she met Lestiboudois on his way back, for, in order not to
+shorten his day's labor, he preferred interrupting his work, then
+beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own
+convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads
+of catechism hour.
+
+Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the
+cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their
+clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the
+newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but
+stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.
+
+The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure
+made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the
+humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the
+great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on
+the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the
+air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow
+nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was
+burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a
+distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of
+the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and
+the corners.
+
+"Where is the cure?" asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was
+amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it.
+
+"He is just coming," he answered.
+
+And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbe Bournisien appeared;
+the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.
+
+"These young scamps!" murmured the priest, "always the same!" Then,
+picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with his foot,
+"They respect nothing!" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame Bovary,
+"Excuse me," he said; "I did not recognize you."
+
+He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing
+the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.
+
+The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the
+lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, ravelled at the hem. Grease
+and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the
+buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his
+neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was
+dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of
+his greyish beard. He had just dined, and was breathing noisily.
+
+"How are you?" he added.
+
+"Not well," replied Emma; "I am ill."
+
+"Well, and so am I," answered the priest. "These first warm days weaken
+one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer,
+as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?"
+
+"He!" she said with a gesture of contempt.
+
+"What!" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, "doesn't he prescribe
+something for you?"
+
+"Ah!" said Emma, "it is no earthly remedy I need."
+
+But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the
+kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs
+of cards.
+
+"I should like to know--" she went on.
+
+"You look out, Riboudet," cried the priest in an angry voice; "I'll warm
+your ears, you imp!" Then turning to Emma. "He's Boudet the carpenter's
+son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he
+could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes
+for a joke I call him _Ri_boudet (like the road one takes to go to
+Maromme), and I even say '_Mon_ Riboudet.' Ha! ha! '_Mont_ Riboudet.'
+The other day I repeated that jest to Monsignor, and he laughed at it;
+he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?"
+
+She seemed not to hear him. And he went on:
+
+"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest
+people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body," he added with a
+thick laugh, "and I of the soul."
+
+She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. "Yes," she said, "you
+solace all sorrows."
+
+"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to
+Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a
+spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me!
+Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! will you leave off?"
+
+And with a bound he ran into the church.
+
+The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over
+the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were
+just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly
+distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of
+their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their
+knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them
+there.
+
+"Yes," said he, when he returned to Emma, unfolding his large cotton
+handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, "farmers are
+much to be pitied."
+
+"Others, too," she replied.
+
+"Assuredly. Town-laborers, for example."
+
+"It is not they--"
+
+"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I
+assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread."
+
+"But those," replied Emma, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she
+spoke, "those, Monsieur le Cure, who have bread and have no--"
+
+"Fire in the winter," said the priest.
+
+"Oh, what does that matter?"
+
+"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and
+food--for, after all--"
+
+"My God! my God!" she sighed.
+
+"Do you feel unwell?" he asked, approaching her anxiously. "It is
+indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Bovary; drink a little
+tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a
+little moist sugar."
+
+"Why?" And she looked like one awaking from a dream.
+
+"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought
+you felt faint." Then, bethinking himself, "But you were asking me
+something? What was it? I really don't remember."
+
+"I? Nothing! nothing!" repeated Emma.
+
+And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the
+cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking.
+
+"Then, Madame Bovary," he said at last, "excuse me, but duty first, you
+know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will
+soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after
+Ascension Day I keep them _recta_ an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor
+children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as,
+moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of His Divine
+Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband."
+
+And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached
+the door.
+
+Emma saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with
+heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two
+hands half-open behind him.
+
+Then she turned on her heel with one movement, like a statue on a pivot,
+and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices
+of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her.
+
+"Are you a Christian?"
+
+"Yes, I am a Christian?"
+
+"What is a Christian?"
+
+"He who, being baptized--baptized--baptized--"
+
+She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and
+when she was in her room threw herself into an armchair.
+
+The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations. The
+furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose
+itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the
+clock went on ticking, and Emma vaguely marvelled at this calm of all
+things while within herself was such tumult. But little Berthe was there,
+between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes,
+and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her
+apron-strings.
+
+"Leave me alone," said the latter, putting her from her with her hand.
+
+The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on
+them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a
+small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron.
+
+"Leave me alone," repeated the young woman quite irritably.
+
+Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.
+
+"Will you leave me alone?" she said, pushing her with her elbow.
+
+Berthe fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting
+against it her cheek, which began to bleed. Madame Bovary sprang to lift
+her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might,
+and she was just going to curse herself when Charles appeared. It was
+the dinner-hour; he had come home.
+
+"Look, dear!" said Emma, in a calm voice, "the little one fell down
+while she was playing, and has hurt herself."
+
+Charles reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for
+some sticking plaster.
+
+Madame Bovary did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to
+remain alone to look after the child. Then, watching her sleep, the
+little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid
+to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little.
+Berthe, in fact, no longer sobbed. Her breathing now imperceptibly
+raised the cotton covering. Big tears lay in the corner of the
+half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken
+pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely.
+
+"It is very strange," thought Emma, "how ugly this child is!"
+
+When at eleven o'clock Charles came back from the chemist's shop,
+whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the
+sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle.
+
+"I assure you it's nothing," he said, kissing her on the forehead.
+"Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill."
+
+He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed
+much moved, Homais, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to
+"keep up his spirits." Then they had talked of the various dangers that
+threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Homais knew
+something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin
+full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her
+good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not
+sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows
+and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Homaises, in spite of
+their spirit, could not stir without some one watching them; at the
+slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they
+were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded
+head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Homais's; her
+husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences
+of such compression to the intellectual organs, he even went so far as
+to say to her, "Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?"
+
+Charles, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation.
+"I should like to speak to you," he had whispered in the clerk's ear,
+who went upstairs in front of him.
+
+"Can he suspect anything?" Leon asked himself. His heart beat, and he
+racked his brain with surmises.
+
+At last, Charles, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what
+would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotype. It was a
+sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his
+portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know how much it would
+be. The inquiries would not put Monsieur Leon out, since he went to town
+almost every week.
+
+Why? Monsieur Homais suspected some "young man's affair" at the bottom
+of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Leon was after no love-making.
+He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of
+food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the
+tax-collector. Binet answered roughly that he wasn't paid by the
+police.
+
+All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Leon often
+threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained
+vaguely of life.
+
+"It's because you don't take enough recreation," said the collector.
+
+"What recreation?"
+
+"If I were you I'd have a lathe."
+
+"But I don't know how to turn," answered the clerk.
+
+"Ah! that's true," said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of
+mingled contempt and satisfaction.
+
+Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover, he was beginning
+to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of
+life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored
+with Yonville and the Yonvillers, that the sight of certain persons, of
+certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good
+fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the
+prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced
+him.
+
+This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar
+sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he
+was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented
+him? And he began making home preparations; he arranged his occupations
+beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an
+artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have
+a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already
+was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a
+death's-head on the guitar above them.
+
+The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed
+more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other
+chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course,
+then, Leon looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none,
+and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he
+set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She
+consented.
+
+He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises,
+parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and
+when Leon had packed up his wardrobe, had his three armchairs
+restuffed, bought a stock of cravats, in a word, had made more
+preparations than for a voyage round the world, he put it off from week
+to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to
+leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation.
+
+When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Homais wept, Justin
+sobbed; Homais, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to
+carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary,
+who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage. The latter had just time
+to bid farewell to Monsieur Bovary.
+
+When he reached the head of the stairs he stopped, he was so out of
+breath. On his coming in, Madame Bovary rose hurriedly.
+
+"It is I again!" said Leon.
+
+"I was sure of it!"
+
+She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her
+red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained
+standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot.
+
+"The doctor is not here?" he went on.
+
+"He is out." She repeated, "He is out."
+
+Then there was silence. They looked one at the other, and their
+thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two
+throbbing breasts.
+
+"I should like to kiss Berthe," said Leon.
+
+Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite.
+
+He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the brackets,
+the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But
+she returned, and the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a
+windmill roof downward at the end of a string. Leon kissed her several
+times on the neck.
+
+"Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!"
+
+And he gave her back to her mother.
+
+"Take her away," she said.
+
+They remained alone--Madame Bovary, her back turned, her face pressed
+against a window-pane; Leon held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly
+against his thigh.
+
+"It is going to rain," said Emma.
+
+"I have a cloak," he answered.
+
+"Ah!"
+
+She turned round, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward. The light
+fell on it as on a piece of marble to the curve of the eyebrows, without
+one's being able to guess what Emma was seeing in the horizon or what
+she was thinking within herself.
+
+"Well, good-bye," he sighed.
+
+She raised her head with a quick movement.
+
+"Yes, good-bye--go!"
+
+They advanced toward each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.
+
+"In the English fashion, then," she said, giving her own hand wholly to
+him, and forcing a laugh.
+
+Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being
+seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their
+eyes met again, and he disappeared.
+
+When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to
+look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds.
+He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the
+curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it,
+slowly opened its long oblique folds, that spread out with a single
+movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Leon
+set off running.
+
+From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a
+coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and Monsieur Guillaumin were
+talking. They were waiting for him.
+
+"Embrace me," said the chemist with tears in his eyes. "Here is your
+coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after
+yourself."
+
+"Come, Leon, jump in," said the notary.
+
+Homais bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs,
+uttered these three sad words:
+
+"A pleasant journey!"
+
+"Good-night," said Monsieur Guillaumin. "Give him his head."
+
+They set out, and Homais went back.
+
+          *     *     *     *     *
+
+Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched
+the clouds. They were gathering round the sunset on the side of Rouen,
+and swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays
+of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy,
+while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust
+of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered
+against the green leaves. Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked,
+sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water
+on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an
+acacia.
+
+"Ah! how far off he must be already!" she thought.
+
+Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.
+
+"Well," said he, "so we've sent off our young friend!"
+
+"So it seems," replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair: "Any news
+at home?"
+
+"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know
+women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be wrong
+to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more
+malleable than ours."
+
+"Poor Leon!" said Charles. "How will he live at Paris? Will he get used
+to it?"
+
+Madame Bovary sighed.
+
+"Get along!" said the chemist, smacking his lips. "The outings at
+restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly
+enough, I assure you."
+
+"I don't think he'll go wrong," objected Bovary.
+
+"Nor do I," said Monsieur Homais quickly; "although he'll have to do
+like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what
+a life those dogs lead in the Latin Quarter with actresses. Besides,
+students are thought a great deal of at Paris. Provided they have a few
+accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even
+ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which
+subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches."
+
+"But," said the doctor, "I fear for him that down there--"
+
+"You are right," interrupted the chemist; "that is the reverse of the
+medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket
+there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual
+presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, whom any one
+would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself;
+offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more
+intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house,
+introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three
+fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into
+some pernicious step."
+
+"That is true," said Charles; "but I was thinking especially of
+illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the
+provinces."
+
+Emma shuddered.
+
+"Because of the change of regimen," continued the chemist, "and of the
+perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the
+water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the
+spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever
+people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always
+preferred plain living; it is more healthful. So when I was studying
+pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boardinghouse; I dined with the
+professors."
+
+And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal
+likings, until Justin came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was
+wanted.
+
+"Not a moment's peace!" he cried; "always at it! I can't go out for a
+minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling.
+What drudgery!" Then, when he was at the door, "By the way, do you know
+the news?"
+
+"What news?"
+
+"That it is very likely," Homais went on, raising his eyebrows and
+assuming one of his most serious expressions, "that the agricultural
+meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at
+Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumor, at all events, is going the round. This
+morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance
+for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you;
+Justin has the lantern."
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+A WOMAN'S WHIMS.
+
+
+The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Every thing seemed to her
+enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of
+things, and sorrow was engulphed within her soul with soft shrieks such
+as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we
+give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after
+everything done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every
+wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings
+on.
+
+As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in
+her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. Leon
+reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though
+separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of
+the house seemed to hold his shadow. She could not detach her eyes from
+the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had
+sat. The river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the
+slippery banks. They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves,
+over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been! What happy
+afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! He
+read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh
+wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the
+nasturtiums of the arbor. Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life,
+the only possible hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happiness
+when it came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with
+both knees, when it was about to flee from her? And she cursed herself
+for not having loved Leon. She thirsted for his lips. The wish took
+possession of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his
+arms and say to him, "It is I; I am yours." But Emma recoiled beforehand
+at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by
+regret, became only the more acute.
+
+Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her boredom; it burnt
+there more brightly than the fire travelers leave on the snow of a
+Russian steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she
+stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything that
+could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most
+immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined,
+her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness
+that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost
+hopes, the domestic tete-a-tete,--she gathered it all up, took
+everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy.
+
+The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted
+itself, or because it had been piled up too much. Love, little by
+little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this
+incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and
+faded by degrees. In the supineness of her conscience she even took her
+repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the
+burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still
+raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help
+came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the
+terrible cold that pierced her.
+
+Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now far
+more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty
+that it would not end.
+
+A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself
+certain whims. She bought a gothic prie-Dieu, and in a month spent
+fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen
+for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of Lheureux's finest scarves,
+and wore it knotted round her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with
+closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch
+in this garb.
+
+She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair _a la Chinoise_, in
+flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted it on one side and rolled it
+under like a man's.
+
+She wished to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a
+supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history, and
+philosophy. Sometimes in the night Charles woke up with a start,
+thinking he was being called to a patient. "I'm coming," he stammered;
+and it was the noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But
+her reading fared like her pieces of embroidery, all of which, only
+just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to
+other books.
+
+She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any
+folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she
+could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid
+enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop.
+
+In spite of her vaporish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called
+them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the
+corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of
+old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all
+over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils,
+her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three gray hairs on
+her temples, she talked much of her old age.
+
+She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Charles fussed
+round her showing his anxiety--
+
+"Bah!" she answered, "what does it matter?"
+
+Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table,
+sitting in an armchair at his bureau under the phrenological head.
+
+Then he wrote to his mother to beg her to come, and they had many long
+consultations together on the subject of Emma.
+
+What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all
+medical treatment?
+
+"Do you know what your wife wants?" replied Madame Bovary, senior. "She
+wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she were
+obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have
+these vapors, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her
+head, and from the idleness in which she lives."
+
+"Yet she is always busy," said Charles.
+
+"Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works against
+religion, in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire.
+But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Any one who has no
+religion always ends by turning out badly."
+
+So they decided to stop Emma from reading novels. The enterprise did not
+seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she passed through
+Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Emma had
+discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply to
+the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous
+trade?
+
+The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three
+weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen
+words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in
+the evening before going to bed.
+
+Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day at Yonville.
+
+The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on
+end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses
+from the church to the inn. On the other side there were canvas booths,
+where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together
+with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends
+fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground
+between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky
+straw stuck out. Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks
+through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place
+and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the
+shop-front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and
+the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations, so great
+was Homais's reputation in the neighboring villages. His robust aplomb
+had fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than
+all the doctors.
+
+Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in
+the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, and she amused
+herself with watching the crowd of boors, when she saw a gentleman in a
+green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy
+gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant
+walking with bent head and quite a thoughtful air.
+
+"Can I see the doctor?" he asked Justin, who was talking on the
+doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a servant of the house:
+"Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger of La Huchette is here."
+
+It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added "of La
+Huchette" to his name, but to make himself the better known. La
+Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just bought
+the chateau and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however,
+troubling very much about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed
+to have at least fifteen thousand francs a year.
+
+Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his man, who
+wanted to be bled because he felt "a tingling all over."
+
+"That'll purge me," he urged as an objection to all reasoning.
+
+So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Justin to hold it.
+Then addressing the countryman, already pale--
+
+"Don't be afraid, my lad."
+
+"No, no, sir," said the other; "get on."
+
+And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the prick of
+the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass.
+
+"Hold the basin nearer," exclaimed Charles.
+
+"Lor!" said the peasant, "one would swear it was a little fountain
+flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign isn't it?"
+
+"Sometimes," answered the doctor, "one feels nothing at first, and then
+syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution
+like this man."
+
+At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between
+his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. His
+hat fell off.
+
+"I thought as much," said Bovary, pressing his finger on the vein.
+
+The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin's hands; his knees shook,
+he turned pale.
+
+"Emma! Emma!" called Charles.
+
+With one bound she came down the staircase.
+
+"Some vinegar," he cried. "O dear! two at once!"
+
+And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress.
+
+"It is nothing," said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking Justin in his
+arms. He seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall.
+
+Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings of his shirt had
+got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers
+about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her
+cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and
+then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived, but Justin's syncope
+still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in their pale sclerotic like
+blue flowers in milk.
+
+"We must hide this from him," said Charles.
+
+Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the table. With the
+movement she made in bending down, her skirt (it was a summer frock with
+four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread
+out around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma, stooping,
+staggered a little as she stretched out her arms, the stuff here and
+there gave with the inflections of her bust. Then she went to fetch a
+bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the
+chemist arrived. The servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing
+his pupil with his eyes open he drew a long breath; then going round him
+he looked at him from head to foot.
+
+"Fool!" he said, "really a little fool! A fool in four letters! A
+phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid of
+anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous
+heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about
+yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for
+under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in
+order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to
+keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an
+imbecile."
+
+Justin did not answer. The chemist went on--
+
+"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doctor and madame.
+On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. There are
+now twenty people in the shop. I left everything because of the interest
+I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep an eye on
+the jars."
+
+When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a
+little while about fainting-fits. Madame Bovary said she had never
+fainted.
+
+"That is extraordinary for a lady," said Monsieur Boulanger; "but some
+people are very susceptible. Thus, in a duel, I have seen a second lose
+consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols."
+
+"For my part," said the chemist, "the sight of other people's blood
+doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would
+make me faint, if I reflected upon it too much."
+
+Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm
+himself, since his fancy was over.
+
+"It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance," he added,
+and he looked at Emma as he said this. Then he put three francs on the
+corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out.
+
+He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La
+Huchette), and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars,
+slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects.
+
+"She is very pretty," he said to himself; "she is very pretty, this
+doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a
+Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from? Wherever did this fat
+fellow pick her up?"
+
+Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was of brutal
+temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to
+do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him;
+so he was thinking about her and her husband.
+
+"I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He has dirty
+nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is trotting after his
+patients, she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored! She would
+like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman!
+She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.
+With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be
+tender, charming! Yes; but how get rid of her afterwards?"
+
+Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by
+contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at Rouen, whom he
+kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in
+remembrance, he was satiated--
+
+"Ah! Madame Bovary," he thought, "is much prettier, especially fresher.
+Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so finikin with her
+pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns."
+
+The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe heard only the regular
+beating of the grass striking against his boots, with the cry of the
+grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He again saw Emma in
+her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.
+
+"Oh, I will have her," he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a
+clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political
+part of the enterprise. He asked himself--
+
+"Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be having the brat
+on our hands, and the servant, the neighbors, the husband, all sorts of
+worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it."
+
+Then he resumed, "She really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a
+gimlet. And that pale complexion; I adore pale women!"
+
+When he reached the top of the Argueil hills he had made up his mind.
+"It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in now and then.
+I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if need be. We
+shall become friends; I'll invite them to my place. By Jove!" added he,
+"there's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. I shall see
+her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+A VILLAGE FESTIVAL.
+
+
+At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the
+solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the
+preparations. The pediment of the townhall had been hung with garlands
+of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the
+middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to
+announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful
+farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was
+none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet
+was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and,
+tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless
+that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into
+his legs; which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement.
+As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,
+both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw
+the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and repass
+alternately; there was no end to it, and it continually began again.
+There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had
+washed down their houses the evening before; tricolored flags hung from
+half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely
+weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the colored
+neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved
+with their motley colors the somber monotony of the frock-coats and blue
+smocks. The neighboring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses,
+pulled out a long pin that fastened round them their skirts, turned up
+for fear of mud; the husbands, on the contrary, in order to save their
+hats, kept their handkerchiefs round them, holding one corner between
+their teeth.
+
+The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village.
+People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time
+to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women
+with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most
+admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a
+platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were
+against the four columns of the townhall four kinds of poles, each
+bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with
+inscriptions in gold letters. On one was written, "To Commerce;" on the
+other, "To Agriculture;" on the third, "To Industry;" and on the fourth,
+"To the Fine Arts."
+
+But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of
+Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she
+muttered to herself, "What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas
+booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a
+tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place!
+Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a
+cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!"
+
+The chemist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers,
+beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.
+
+"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry." And as the fat widow asked
+where he was going--
+
+"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, to see me, who am always more cooped
+up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese, taking a holiday?"
+
+"What cheese?" asked the landlady.
+
+"Oh, nothing! nothing!" Homais continued. "I merely wished to convey to
+you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse.
+To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--"
+
+"Oh, you're going down there!" she said contemptuously.
+
+"Yes, I am going," replied the chemist, astonished. "Am I not a member
+of the consulting commission?"
+
+Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying
+with a smile:
+
+"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?
+Do you understand anything about it?"
+
+"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist,--that is to say, a
+chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the
+knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,
+it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in
+fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the
+analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is
+all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?"
+
+The landlady did not answer. Homais went on:
+
+"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled
+the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the
+composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the
+atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,
+the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.
+And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to
+direct, criticise the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,
+the diet of the domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must
+know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand,
+which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are
+unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and
+re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must
+keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be
+always on the alert to find out improvements."
+
+The landlady never took her eyes off the "Cafe Francais," and the
+chemist went on:
+
+"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they
+would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus, lately I
+myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of more than seventy-two
+pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with
+some New Reflections on this Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural
+Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honor of being received
+among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if
+my work had been given to the public--" But the druggist stopped, Madame
+Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.
+
+"Just look at them!" she said. "It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop
+as that!" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her
+breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands
+at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. "Well, it won't
+last long," she added; "it'll be over before a week."
+
+Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and
+whispered in his ear:
+
+"What! you didn't know it? There'll be an execution in next week. It's
+Lheureux who is selling him up; he has killed him with bills."
+
+"What a terrible catastrophe!" cried the chemist, who always found
+expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.
+
+Then the landlady began telling him this story, that she had heard from
+Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, and although she detested
+Telher, she blamed Lheureux. He was "a wheedler, a sneak."
+
+"There!" she said. "Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to
+Madame Bovary, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Monsieur
+Boulanger's arm."
+
+"Madame Bovary!" exclaimed Homais. "I must go at once and pay her my
+respects. Perhaps she'd be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure
+under the peristyle." And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was
+calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off
+rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing
+exuberantly right and left, and taking up much room with the large
+tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.
+
+Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame
+Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her,
+said in a rough tone:
+
+"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist."
+She pressed his elbow.
+
+"What's the meaning of that?" he asked himself. And he looked at her out
+of the corner of his eyes.
+
+Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood
+out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it
+like the leaves of reeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked
+straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered
+by the cheekbones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the
+delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.
+Her head leaned towards her shoulder, and the pearly tips of her white
+teeth were seen between her lips.
+
+"Is she making fun of me?" thought Rodolphe.
+
+Emma's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur
+Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter
+into the conversation.
+
+"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!"
+
+And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, while at the
+slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, "I beg your
+pardon!" and raised his hat.
+
+When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up
+to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him
+Madame Bovary. He called out:
+
+"Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently."
+
+"How you got rid of him!" she said, laughing.
+
+"Why," he went on, "allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as
+to-day I have the happiness of being with you----"
+
+Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine
+weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had
+sprung up again.
+
+"Here are some pretty Easter daisies," he said, "and enough of them to
+furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place." He added, "Shall
+I pick some? What do you think?"
+
+"Are you in love?" she asked, coughing a little.
+
+"H'm, h'm! who knows?" answered Rodolphe.
+
+The meadow began to fill, and the housewives, hustled one with their
+great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get
+out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue
+stockings, flat shoes, and silver rings, who smelled of milk when one
+passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,
+and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to
+the banquet tent. But this was the examination time, and the farmers one
+after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord
+supported on sticks.
+
+The beasts were there, their noses toward the cord, and making a
+confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in
+the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the
+cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,
+slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats
+that buzzed round them. Ploughmen with bare arms were holding by the
+halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils, looking
+toward the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and
+flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then
+came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded
+animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some
+sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart,
+outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,
+muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, who moved no more than if he
+had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.
+
+Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,
+examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One
+who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he
+walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de
+la Panville. As soon as he recognized Rodolphe he came forward quickly,
+and smiling amiably, said:
+
+"What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?"
+
+Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had
+disappeared:
+
+"_Ma foi!_" said he, "I shall not go. Your company is better than his."
+
+And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,
+showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in
+front of some fine beast which Madame Bovary did not at all admire. He
+noticed this and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses;
+then he apologized for the negligence of his own. He had that
+incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think
+they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations
+of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for
+social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric
+shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his
+waistcoat of gray ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at
+the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters. These were so
+polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses' dung with
+them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one
+side.
+
+"Besides," added he, "when one lives in the country----"
+
+"It's waste of time," said Emma.
+
+"That is true," replied Rodolphe. "To think that not one of these people
+is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!"
+
+Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,
+the illusions lost there.
+
+"And I too," said Rodolphe, "am drifting into depression."
+
+"You!" she said in astonishment; "I thought you very light-hearted."
+
+"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to
+wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the
+sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were
+not better to join those sleeping there!"
+
+"Oh! and your friends?" she said. "You do not think of them."
+
+"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?" And he
+accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.
+
+But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great
+pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen
+with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the
+ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,
+who was carrying the church chairs about among the people. Alive to all
+that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the
+show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew
+which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for
+these seats, whose straw smelled of incense, and they lent against the
+thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.
+
+Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe's arm; he went on as if speaking to
+himself:
+
+"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim
+in life, if I had met some love, if I had found some one! Oh, how I
+would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted
+everything, overcome everything!"
+
+"Yet it seems to me," said Emma, "that you are not to be pitied."
+
+"Ah! you think so?" said Rodolphe.
+
+"For, after all," she went on, "you are free----" she hesitated,
+"rich----"
+
+"Do not mock me," he replied.
+
+And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a
+cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell
+toward the village.
+
+It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the
+members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to
+begin the meeting or still wait.
+
+At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by
+two thin horses, whom a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily.
+Binet had only just time to shout, "Present arms!" and the colonel to
+imitate him. All ran toward the enclosure; every one pushed forward. A
+few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to
+anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their
+harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town
+hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,
+beating drums and marking time.
+
+"Present!" shouted Binet.
+
+"Halt!" shouted the colonel. "Left about, march."
+
+And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting
+loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns
+were lowered. Then were seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman
+in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft
+of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most
+benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were
+half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his
+sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognized the
+mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able
+to come. He himself was a councilor at the prefecture; then he added a
+few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the
+other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face,
+their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round,
+the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and
+the crowd. The councilor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast
+repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled,
+stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the
+monarchy and the honor that was being done to Yonville.
+
+Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the
+coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of
+the "Lion d'Or," where a number of peasants collected to look at the
+carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one
+by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet
+armchairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.
+
+All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned
+by the sun, were the color of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers
+emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows.
+All the waistcoats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had,
+at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; every one rested
+his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of his
+trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the
+leather of his heavy boots.
+
+The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between
+the pillars, while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting
+on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all
+those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back
+every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion
+with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to
+the small steps of the platform.
+
+"I think," said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his
+place, "that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something
+rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty
+effect."
+
+"To be sure," replied Homais; "but what can you expect? The mayor took
+everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and
+he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art."
+
+Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first floor
+of the townhall, to the "council-room," and as it was empty, he declared
+that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three
+stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having
+carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other.
+
+There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying.
+At last the councilor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain,
+and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had
+collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began:
+
+"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on
+the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment, will, I am sure,
+be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to
+the higher administration, to the government, to the monarch, gentlemen,
+our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or
+private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a
+hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the
+incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace
+respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine
+arts."
+
+"I ought," said Rodolphe, "to get back a little further."
+
+"Why?" said Emma.
+
+But at this moment the voice of the councilor rose to an extraordinary
+pitch. He declaimed:
+
+"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined
+our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man
+himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled
+lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins,
+when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations."
+
+"Well, some one down there might see me," Rodolphe resumed, "then I
+should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad
+reputation----"
+
+"Oh, you are slandering yourself," said Emma.
+
+"No! It is dreadful, I assure you."
+
+"But, gentlemen," continued the councilor, "if, banishing from my memory
+the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the
+actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there? Everywhere
+commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of
+communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state,
+establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centers have
+recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all
+hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France
+breathes once more!"
+
+"Besides," added Rodolphe, "perhaps from the world's point of view they
+are right."
+
+"How so?" she asked.
+
+"What!" said he. "Do you not know that there are souls constantly
+tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions
+and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all
+sorts of fantasies, of follies."
+
+Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveler who has voyaged over
+strange lands, and went on:
+
+"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!"
+
+"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it."
+
+"But is it ever found?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; one day it comes," he answered.
+
+"And this is what you have understood," said the councilor. "You
+farmers, agricultural laborers! you pacific pioneers of a work that
+belongs wholly to civilization! you men of progress and morality, you
+have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable
+than atmospheric disturbances!"
+
+"It comes one day," repeated Rodolphe, "one day suddenly, and when one
+is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice
+cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your
+life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There
+is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen
+each other in dreams!" He looked at her. "In fine, here it is, this
+treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet
+one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if
+one went out from darkness into light!"
+
+And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his
+hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it
+fall on Emma's. She took hers away.
+
+"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who was so blind,
+so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of
+another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural
+populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the
+country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a
+word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain
+ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced
+intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus
+contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the
+support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of
+duty----"
+
+"Ah! again!" said Rodolphe. "Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They
+are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with
+foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty,
+duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the
+beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the
+ignominy that it imposes upon us."
+
+"Yet--yet----" objected Madame Bovary.
+
+"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one
+beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of
+poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?"
+
+"But one must," said Emma, "to some extent bow to the opinion of the
+world and accept its moral code."
+
+"Ah! but there are two," he replied. "The small, the conventional, that
+of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that
+makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthy, like the mass of
+imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is about
+us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens
+that give us light."
+
+Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief.
+He continued:
+
+"And what should I do here, gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of
+agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of
+subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,
+who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country,
+brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by
+means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,
+and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the
+baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it
+not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks
+in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish
+ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even
+necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected
+on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the
+ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow
+for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should
+never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different
+products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother,
+lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the
+apple-tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax.
+Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of
+late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention."
+
+He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide
+open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him
+with starting eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed
+his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between
+his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.
+The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in
+their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the
+platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with
+out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could
+hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his
+helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of
+Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on
+his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled
+beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little
+face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and
+sleepiness.
+
+The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk
+leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors,
+and Justin, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by
+the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur
+Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of
+phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the
+crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the
+bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In
+fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and
+these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down
+some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.
+
+Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,
+speaking rapidly:
+
+"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single
+sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest
+sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do
+meet, all is so organized that they cannot blend together. Yet they will
+make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon
+each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,
+they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they
+are born one for the other."
+
+His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face toward
+Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes
+small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelled the
+perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy. Then a faintness came
+over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at
+Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this hair an odor of vanilla
+and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to
+breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leaned back in her
+chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the
+old diligence the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of
+Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow
+carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down
+there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his
+window; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that
+she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lusters on the
+arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming;
+and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head
+by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old
+desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to
+and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She
+opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the
+ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands,
+then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing
+of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the
+councilor intoning his phrases. He said:
+
+"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor
+to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism. Apply yourselves, above
+all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the
+development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these
+shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold
+forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternize with him in the
+hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose
+hard labor no Government up to this day has taken into consideration,
+come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured
+that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages
+you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and
+alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices."
+
+Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning
+another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councilor,
+but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by
+more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise
+of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture
+more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had
+always contributed to civilization. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was
+talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of
+society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns
+in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had
+put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in
+this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur
+Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little
+Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing
+Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian planting his cabbages, and the
+emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the young
+man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible
+attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.
+
+"Thus we," he said, "why did we come to know one another? What chance
+willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that
+flow but to unite, our special bents of mind had driven us toward each
+other."
+
+And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.
+
+"For good farming generally!" cried the president.
+
+"Just now, for example, when I went to your house."
+
+"To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix."
+
+"Did I know I should accompany you?"
+
+"Seventy francs."
+
+"A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained."
+
+"Manures!"
+
+"And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!"
+
+"To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!"
+
+"For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a
+charm."
+
+"To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin."
+
+"And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you."
+
+"For a merino ram!"
+
+"But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow."
+
+"To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."
+
+"Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I
+not?"
+
+"Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg,
+sixty francs!"
+
+Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering
+like a captive dove that tries to fly away; but, whether she was trying
+to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure, she made a
+movement with her fingers. He exclaimed--
+
+"Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand
+that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!"
+
+A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the
+table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women
+were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.
+
+"Use of oil-cakes," continued the president. He was hurrying on:
+"Flemish manure--flax-growing--drainage--long leases--domestic service."
+
+Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme
+desire made their dry lips tremble, and softly, without an effort, their
+fingers intertwined.
+
+"Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for
+fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value,
+twenty-five francs!"
+
+"Where is Catherine Leroux?" repeated the councilor.
+
+She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering:
+
+"Go up!"
+
+"Don't be afraid!"
+
+"Oh, how stupid she is!"
+
+"Well, is she there?" cried Tuvache.
+
+"Yes; here she is."
+
+"Then let her come up!"
+
+Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid
+bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she
+wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her
+pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered
+russet apple, and from the sleeves of her red jacket hung down two large
+hands with knotty joints. The dust of barns, the potash of washings, and
+the grease of wools had so incrusted, roughened, hardened these, that
+they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and by
+dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble
+witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of
+monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion
+weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had
+caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she
+found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by
+the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the
+councilor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run
+away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at
+her. Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of
+servitude.
+
+"Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!" said the
+councilor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;
+and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he
+repeated in a fatherly tone:
+
+"Approach! approach!"
+
+"Are you deaf?" said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began
+shouting in her ear, "Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!
+Twenty-five francs! For you!"
+
+Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude
+spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her
+muttering:
+
+"I'll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!"
+
+"What fanaticism!" exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.
+
+The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had
+been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into
+the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the
+animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green crown on
+their horns.
+
+The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the
+townhall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the
+battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe's
+arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about
+alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.
+
+The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that
+they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for
+forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one
+stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a
+whitish steam, like the vapor of a stream on an autumn morning, floated
+above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against the
+calico of the tent, was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard
+nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty
+plates; his neighbors were talking; he did not answer them; they filled
+his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing
+noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;
+her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the
+folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to
+all infinity before him in the vistas of the future.
+
+He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with
+her husband. Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the
+danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and
+give some advice to Binet.
+
+The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess
+of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would not
+light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon
+biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meager Roman-candle
+went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the
+cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma
+silently nestled gently against Charles's shoulder; then, raising her
+chin, she watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky.
+Rodolphe gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.
+
+They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few drops of rain began
+to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.
+
+At this moment the councilor's carriage came out from the inn. His
+coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from the
+distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his
+body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.
+
+"Truly," said the chemist, "one ought to proceed most rigorously against
+drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door of the
+townhall on a board _ad hoc_ the names of all those who during the week
+got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to statistics, one
+would thus have, as it were, public records that one could refer to in
+case of need. But excuse me!"
+
+And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to
+see his lathe again.
+
+"Perhaps you would not do ill," Homais said to him, "to send one of your
+men, or to go yourself----"
+
+"Leave me alone!" answered the tax-collector. "It's all right!"
+
+"Do not be uneasy," said the chemist, when he returned to his friends.
+"Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No
+sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest."
+
+"_Ma foi!_ I want it," said Madame Homais, yawning at large. "But never
+mind; we've had a beautiful day for our fete."
+
+Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, "Oh, yes! very
+beautiful."
+
+And having bowed to one another, they separated.
+
+Two days later, in the "Fanal de Rouen," there was a long article on the
+show. Homais had composed it with _verve_ the very next morning.
+
+"Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this
+crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical
+sun pouring its heat upon our heads?"
+
+Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government
+was doing much, but not enough. "Courage!" he cried to it; "a thousand
+reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!" Then touching on the
+entry of the councilor, he did not forget "the martial air of our
+militia," nor "our most merry village maidens," nor the "bald-headed
+old men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants
+of our immortal phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly
+sound of the drums." He cited himself among the first of the members of
+the jury, and he even called attention in a note to the fact that
+Monsieur Homais, chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural
+society. When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the
+joy of the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. "The father embraced
+the son, the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one
+showed his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his
+good housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.
+
+"About six o'clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard
+brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest
+cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed. Monsieur Lieuvain,
+the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,
+Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin
+sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant
+fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a
+veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our
+little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of
+a dream of the 'Thousand and One Nights.'
+
+"Let us state that no untoward event disturbed this family meeting." And
+he added: "Only the absence of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the
+priests understand progress in another fashion. Just as you please,
+messieurs the followers of Loyola!"
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+A WOODLAND IDYLL.
+
+
+Six weeks passed. Rodolphe did not come again. At last one evening he
+appeared.
+
+The day after the show he had said to himself:
+
+"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake."
+
+And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he
+had thought he was too late, and then he reasoned thus:
+
+"If from the first day she loved me, she must, from impatience to see me
+again, love me more. Let's go on with it!"
+
+And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the
+room, he saw Emma turn pale. She was alone. The day was drawing in. The
+small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the
+gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in
+the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral.
+
+Rodolphe remained standing, and Emma hardly answered his first
+conventional phrases.
+
+"I," he said, "have been busy. I have been ill."
+
+"Seriously?" she cried.
+
+"Well," said Rodolphe, sitting down at her side on a footstool, "no; it
+was because I did not want to come back."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Can you not guess?"
+
+He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing.
+He went on:
+
+"Emma!"
+
+"Sir," she said, drawing back a little.
+
+"Ah! you see," replied he in a melancholy voice, "that I was right not
+to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and
+that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Bovary! why all the world
+calls you thus! Besides it is not your name; it is the name of another!"
+he repeated, "of another!" And he hid his face in his hands. "Yes, I
+think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah!
+forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that
+you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what force
+impelled me toward you. For one does not struggle against Heaven; one
+cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is
+beautiful, charming, adorable."
+
+It was the first time that Emma had heard such words spoken to herself,
+and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly
+and fully at this glowing language.
+
+"But if I did not come," he continued, "if I could not see you, at least
+I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night--every night--I
+arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its roof glimmering in the
+moonlight, the trees in the garden before your window, and the little
+lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you
+never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!"
+
+She turned toward him with a sob.
+
+"Oh, you are good!" she said.
+
+"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one
+word--only one word!"
+
+And Rodolphe imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the floor; but a
+sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and, he noticed the door
+of the room was not closed.
+
+"How kind it would be of you," he went on, rising, "if you would humor a
+whim of mine." It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and
+Madame Bovary seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Charles
+came in.
+
+"Good morning, doctor," Rodolphe said to him.
+
+The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into
+obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself
+together a little.
+
+"Madame was speaking to me," he then said, "about her health."
+
+Charles interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's
+palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Rodolphe asked if
+riding would not be good.
+
+"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to
+follow it up."
+
+And as she objected that she had no horse, Monsieur Rodolphe offered
+one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit
+he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered
+from giddiness.
+
+"I'll call round," said Bovary.
+
+"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient
+for you."
+
+"Ah! very good! I thank you."
+
+And as soon as they were alone, "Why don't you accept Monsieur
+Boulanger's kind offer?"
+
+She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally
+declared that perhaps it would look odd.
+
+"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?" said Charles, making a
+pirouette. "Health before everything! You are wrong."
+
+"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?"
+
+"You must order one," he answered.
+
+The riding-habit decided her.
+
+When the habit was ready, Charles wrote to Monsieur Boulanger that his
+wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.
+
+The next day at noon Rodolphe appeared at Charles's door with two
+saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin
+side-saddle.
+
+Rodolphe had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she
+had never seen anything like them. In fact, Emma was charmed with his
+appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white
+corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.
+
+Justin escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also
+came out. He was giving Monsieur Boulanger a little good advice.
+
+"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are
+mettlesome."
+
+She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the
+window-panes to amuse little Berthe. The child blew her a kiss; her
+mother answered with a wave of her whip.
+
+"A pleasant ride!" cried Monsieur Homais. "Prudence! above all,
+prudence!" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.
+
+As soon as he felt the ground, Emma's horse set off at a gallop.
+Rodolphe galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her
+figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out,
+she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in
+her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Rodolphe gave his horse its head;
+they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses
+stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.
+
+It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds
+hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent
+asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the
+clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roofs of
+Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls,
+and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house,
+and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From
+the height on which they were, the whole valley seemed an immense pale
+lake sending off its vapor into the air. Clumps of trees here and there
+stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose
+above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.
+
+Beside them, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in
+the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco,
+deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the
+horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.
+
+Rodolphe and Emma thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away
+from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine
+trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy.
+The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.
+
+Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.
+
+"God protects us!" said Rodolphe.
+
+"Do you think so?" she said.
+
+"Forward! forward!" he continued.
+
+He "tchk'd" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot. Long
+ferns by the roadside caught in Emma's stirrup. Rodolphe leant forward
+and removed them as they rode along. At other times to turn aside the
+branches, he passed close to her, and Emma felt his knee brushing
+against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred.
+There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets
+alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were gray, fawn,
+or golden colored, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the
+thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry
+of the ravens flying off amid the oaks.
+
+They dismounted. Rodolphe fastened up the horses. She walked on in front
+on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way,
+although she held it up by the skirt; and Rodolphe, walking behind her,
+saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white
+stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.
+
+She stopped. "I am tired," she said.
+
+"Come, try again," he went on. "Courage!"
+
+Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her
+veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face
+appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure
+waves.
+
+"But where are we going?"
+
+He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Rodolphe looked round
+him biting his mustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice
+had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Rodolphe
+began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her
+with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.
+
+Emma listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on
+the ground with the tip of her foot.
+
+But at the words, "Are not our destinies now one?----"
+
+"Oh, no!" she replied. "You know that well. It is impossible!"
+
+She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having
+gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said
+hurriedly:
+
+"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back."
+
+He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:
+
+"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?"
+
+Then smiling a strange smile, his pupils fixed, his teeth set, he
+advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:
+
+"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let us go!"
+
+"If it must be," he went on, his face changing; and he again became
+respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He
+said:
+
+"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were
+mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a
+place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I want you for my life. I must have
+your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!"
+
+And he put out his arm around her waist. She feebly tried to disengage
+herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.
+
+But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.
+
+"Oh! one moment!" said Rodolphe. "Do not let us go! Stay!"
+
+He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness
+on the water. Faded waterlilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the
+noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves.
+
+"I am wrong! I am wrong!" she said. "I am mad to listen to you!"
+
+"Why? Emma! Emma!"
+
+"Oh, Rodolphe!" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.
+
+The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw
+back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with
+a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him.
+
+The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the
+branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or
+on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as if humming-birds flying
+about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something
+sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose
+beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a
+stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she
+heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she
+heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing
+nerves. Rodolphe, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his
+penknife one of the two broken bridles.
+
+They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again
+the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same
+stones in the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her
+something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved
+in their places. Rodolphe now and again bent forward and took her hand
+to kiss it.
+
+She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee
+bent on the mane of her horse, her face something flushed by the fresh
+air in the red of the evening.
+
+On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People
+looked at her from the windows.
+
+At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to
+hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there
+with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.
+
+"'Emma!" he said.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well, I spent the afternoon at Monsieur Alexandre's. He has an old cob,
+still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, that could be bought, I am
+very sure, for a hundred crowns." He added, "And thinking it might
+please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell
+me!"
+
+She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--
+
+"Are you going out to-night?" she asked.
+
+"Yes. Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!"
+
+And as soon as she had got rid of Charles she went and shut herself up
+in her room.
+
+At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches,
+Rodolphe, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves
+rustled and the reeds whistled.
+
+But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never
+had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something
+subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, "I have a lover!
+a lover!" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her.
+So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness
+of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all
+would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her,
+the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary
+existence appeared remote, far below in the shade, through the
+interspaces of these heights.
+
+Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the
+lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with
+the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were,
+an actual part of these imaginings, and realized the love-dream of her
+youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so
+envied. Besides, Emma felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not
+suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up
+burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse,
+without anxiety, without trouble.
+
+The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one
+another. She told him of her sorrows. Rodolphe interrupted her with
+kisses; and she, looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to
+call her again by her name--to say that he loved her. They were in the
+forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some wooden-shoe maker. The walls
+were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated
+side by side on a bed of dry leaves.
+
+From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening.
+Emma placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a
+fissure of the wall. Rodolphe came to fetch it, and put another there,
+that she always found fault with as too short.
+
+One morning, when Charles had gone out before daybreak, she was seized
+with the fancy to see Rodolphe at once. She would go quickly to La
+Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while every
+one was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she soon
+found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps,
+without looking behind her.
+
+Day was just breaking. Emma from afar recognized her lover's house. Its
+two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn.
+
+Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must
+be the chateau. She entered it as if the doors at her approach had
+opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to
+the corridor, Emma raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end
+of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Rodolphe. She uttered a cry.
+
+"You here? You here?" he repeated, "How did you manage to come? Ah! your
+dress is damp."
+
+"I love you," she answered, passing her arms round his neck.
+
+This first piece of daring successful, now every time Charles went out
+early Emma dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led
+to the waterside.
+
+But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls
+alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she
+caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across
+ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling, and clogging her thin
+shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the
+meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out
+of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a
+fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Rodolphe
+still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.
+
+The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter
+softly. Emma felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops
+of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around
+her face. Rodolphe, laughing, drew her to him and pressed her to his
+breast.
+
+Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables,
+combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his
+shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that
+lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a
+bottle of water.
+
+It took them a good quarter of an hour to say good-bye. Then Emma wept.
+She would have wished never to leave Rodolphe. Something stronger than
+herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come
+unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.
+
+"What is the matter with you?" she said. "Are you ill? Tell me!"
+
+At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming
+imprudent--that she was compromising herself.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+LOVERS' VOWS.
+
+
+Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had
+intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he
+was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or
+even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she
+looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the
+horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She
+listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped
+short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.
+
+One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the
+long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out
+sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the
+edge of a ditch. Emma, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked
+on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had
+gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes,
+trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Binet lying in ambush for
+wild ducks.
+
+"You ought to have called out long ago!" he exclaimed. "When one sees a
+gun, one should always give warning."
+
+The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a
+prefectorial order having prohibited duck-hunting except in boats,
+Monsieur Binet, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them,
+and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this
+anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he
+congratulated himself on his luck and on his cleverness.
+
+At sight of Emma he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once
+entered upon a conversation.
+
+"It isn't warm; it's nipping."
+
+Emma answered nothing. He went on--
+
+"And you're out so early?"
+
+"Yes," she said stammering; "I am just coming from the nurse where my
+child is."
+
+"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me,
+since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the
+bird at the mouth of the gun----"
+
+"Good evening, Monsieur Binet," she interrupted him, turning on her
+heel.
+
+"Your servant, madame," he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.
+
+Emma regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he
+would form unfavorable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the
+worst possible excuse, every one at Yonville knowing that the little
+Bovary had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was
+living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Binet,
+then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he
+would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her
+brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before
+her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.
+
+Charles after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of
+distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she
+caught sight of in the shop was the tax-collector again. He was standing
+in front of the counter, lighted by the gleams of the red bottle, and
+was saying:
+
+"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol."
+
+"Justin," cried the druggist, "bring us the sulphuric acid." Then to
+Emma, who was going up to Madame Homais' room, "No, stay here; it isn't
+worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the
+stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor" (for the chemist
+much enjoyed pronouncing the word "doctor," as if addressing another by
+it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). "Now,
+take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from
+the little room; you know very well that the armchairs are not to be
+taken out of the drawing-room."
+
+And to put his armchair back in its place he was darting away from the
+counter, when Binet asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.
+
+"Sugar acid!" said the chemist contemptuously, "don't know it; I'm
+ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid,
+isn't it?"
+
+Binet explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some
+copper-water with which to remove rust from his hunting things.
+
+Emma shuddered. The chemist began, saying:
+
+"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp."
+
+"Nevertheless," replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, "there are
+people who like it."
+
+She was stifling.
+
+"And give me----"
+
+"Will he never go?" thought she.
+
+"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and
+three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the
+varnished leather of my togs."
+
+The chemist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Homais appeared,
+Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat
+down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a
+footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her
+papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on
+labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to
+time were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words
+from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.
+
+"And how's the little woman?" suddenly asked Madame Homais.
+
+"Silence!" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in
+his waste-book.
+
+"Why didn't you bring her?" she went on in a low voice.
+
+"Hush! hush!" said Emma, pointing with her finger to the chemist.
+
+But Binet, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard
+nothing. At last he went out. Then Emma, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.
+
+"How hard you are breathing!" said Madame Homais.
+
+"Well, you see, it's rather warm," she replied.
+
+The next day the lovers discussed how to arrange their rendezvous. Emma
+wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to
+find some safe house at Yonville. Rodolphe promised to look for one.
+
+All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night
+he came to the garden. Emma had on purpose taken away the key of the
+gate, which Charles thought lost.
+
+To call her, Rodolphe threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She
+jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Charles had a
+mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild
+with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled
+him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up
+a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But
+Charles, who was in bed, called to her to come too.
+
+"Come, now, Emma," he said, "it is time."
+
+"Yes, I am coming," she answered.
+
+Then, as the candles dazzled him, he turned to the wall and fell asleep.
+She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed.
+
+Rodolphe had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm
+around her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden.
+
+It was in the arbor, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Leon
+had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought
+of him now.
+
+The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they
+heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of
+the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the
+darkness and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and
+swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The
+cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips
+seemed to them deeper; their eyes, that they could hardly see, larger;
+and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their
+souls sonorous, crystalline, and reverberating in multiplied vibrations.
+
+When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room
+between the car-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen
+candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down
+there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the
+whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not
+refrain from making jokes about Charles, which rather embarrassed Emma.
+She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more
+dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of
+approaching steps in the alley.
+
+"Some one is coming!" she said.
+
+He blew out the light.
+
+"Have you your pistols?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Why, to defend yourself," replied Emma.
+
+"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!" And Rodolphe finished his sentence
+with a gesture that said, "I could crush him with a flip of my finger."
+
+She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort
+of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalized her.
+
+Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had
+spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for
+he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called
+devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had treated him to a
+lecture, which he did not think in the best taste.
+
+Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on
+exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was
+asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She
+often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then
+she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! Rodolphe
+had lost his twenty years ago. Emma none the less consoled him with
+caressing words as one would soothe a forsaken child, and she sometimes
+even said to him, gazing at the moon:
+
+"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love."
+
+But she was so pretty! He had possessed so few women of such
+ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for
+him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride
+and his sensuality. Emma's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense
+disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was
+lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up
+appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.
+
+He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry,
+nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love,
+which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water
+of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it.
+She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe
+concealed his indifference less and less.
+
+She did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether she
+did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of
+feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their
+voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual
+seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.
+
+Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Rodolphe having
+succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the
+end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another
+like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.
+
+It was the time of year when old Rouault sent his turkey in remembrance
+of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter.
+Emma cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following
+lines:--
+
+    "MY DEAR CHILDREN,--I hope this will find you in good health, and
+    that it will be as good as the others, for it seems to me a little
+    more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time,
+    for a change, I'll give you a turkey-cock, unless you have a
+    preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you
+    please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my
+    cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees.
+    The harvest has not been over-good either. Finally, I don't know
+    when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the
+    house since I am alone, my poor Emma."
+
+Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped
+his pen to dream a little while.
+
+    "For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other
+    day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd,
+    having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be
+    pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I
+    heard from a pedlar, who, traveling through your part of the country
+    this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Bovary was as usual working
+    hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had
+    some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said
+    not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I
+    conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear
+    children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It
+    grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter,
+    Berthe Bovary. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the
+    garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it is to
+    have jam made for her by-and-bye, that I will keep in the cupboard
+    for when she comes.
+
+    "Good-bye my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my
+    son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best
+    compliments, your loving father,
+
+    "THEODORE ROUAULT."
+
+She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The mistakes
+in spelling interwove with one another, but Emma followed the kindly
+thought that chattered through it all like a hen half hidden in a hedge
+of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a
+little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she
+almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the
+tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in
+the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in
+the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the summer evenings
+all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when any one passed by, and
+galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes
+the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like
+rebounding balls of gold. What happiness she had had at that time, what
+freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of
+them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her
+successive conditions of life,--maidenhood, her marriage, and her
+love;--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a
+traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his
+road.
+
+But what, then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary
+catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking
+round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.
+
+An April ray was dancing on the china of the _etagere_; the fire burned;
+beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was
+bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.
+
+In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst
+of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach
+at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt.
+Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she
+leant forward, beating the air with both her arms.
+
+"Bring her to me," said her mother, rushing to embrace her. "How I love
+you, my poor child! How I love you!"
+
+Then, noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at
+once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings,
+her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the
+return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a
+little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite
+thunder-stricken at this excess of tenderness.
+
+That evening Rodolphe found her more serious than usual.
+
+"That will pass over," he concluded; "it's a whim."
+
+And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed
+herself cold and almost contemptuous.
+
+"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!"
+
+And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the
+handkerchief she took out.
+
+Then Emma repented. She even asked herself why she detested Charles; if
+it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no
+opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much
+embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the chemist came just in
+time to provide her with an opportunity.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+AN EXPERIMENT AND A FAILURE.
+
+
+He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and
+as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that
+Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations
+for strephopody or club-foot.
+
+"For," said he to Emma, "what risk is there? See" (and he enumerated on
+his fingers the advantages of the attempt), "success, almost certain
+relief and beautifying the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator.
+Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the
+'Lion d'Or'? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all
+the travellers, and then" (Homais lowered his voice and looked round
+him), "who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the
+subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is
+talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?"
+
+In fact, Bovary might succeed. Nothing proved to Emma that he was not
+clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by
+which his reputation and fortune would be increased! She only wished to
+lean on something more solid than love.
+
+Charles, urged by the chemist and by her, allowed himself to be
+persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every evening,
+holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it.
+
+While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say,
+_katastrephopody_, _endostrephopody_, and _exostrephopody_ (or better,
+the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with
+the _hypostrephopody_ and _anastrephopody_), otherwise torsion downwards
+and upwards, Monsieur Homais, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting
+the lad at the inn to submit to the operation.
+
+"You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick,
+like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns."
+
+Hippolyte, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.
+
+"However," continued the chemist, "it doesn't concern me. It's for your
+sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of
+your hideous deformity, together with that waddling of the lumbar
+regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in
+the exercise of your calling."
+
+Then Homais represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would
+feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more
+likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily.
+Then he attacked him through his vanity:--
+
+"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to
+go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Hippolyte!"
+
+And Homais retired, declaring that he could not understand this
+obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science.
+
+The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Binet, who never
+interfered with other people's business, Madame Lefrancois, Artemise,
+the neighbors, even the mayor, Monsieur Tuvache--every one persuaded
+him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it
+would cost him nothing. Bovary even undertook to provide the machine for
+the operation. This generosity was an idea of Emma's, and Charles
+consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an
+angel.
+
+So, by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a
+kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that
+weighed about eight pounds, in which iron, wood, sheet-iron, leather,
+screws, and nuts had not been spared.
+
+But to know which of Hippolyte's tendons to cut, it was necessary first
+of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.
+
+He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which,
+however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an
+equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with
+a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus, wide in foot like a
+horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which
+the black nails looked as if made of iron, the club-foot ran about like
+a deer from morn till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place,
+jumping around the carts, thrusting his limping foot forward. He seemed
+even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had
+acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and of energy; and
+when he was doing some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its
+fellow.
+
+Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendo Achillis,
+and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to
+afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to
+risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of
+injuring some important region that he did not know.
+
+Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an
+interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren,
+about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took
+away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook,
+minds so strained as had the doctor when he approached Hippolyte, his
+tenotome between his fingers. And, as at hospitals, near by on a table
+lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of
+bandages--every bandage to be found at the chemist's. It was Monsieur
+Homais who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as
+much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Charles
+pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the
+operation over. Hippolyte could not get over his surprise, but bent over
+Bovary's hands to cover them with kisses.
+
+"Come, be calm," said the chemist; "later you will show your gratitude
+to your benefactor."
+
+And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were
+waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Hippolyte would reappear
+walking properly. Then Charles, having buckled his patient into the
+machine, went home, where Emma, all anxiety, awaited him at the door.
+She threw herself on his neck: they sat down to table; he ate much, and
+at dessert he even wished to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he permitted
+himself only on Sundays when there was company.
+
+The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They
+talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in
+their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts
+increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh
+herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some
+tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Rodolphe
+for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to
+Charles; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth.
+
+They were in bed when Monsieur Homais, in spite of the servant, suddenly
+entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It
+was the paragraph he intended for the "Fanal de Rouen." He brought it
+them to read.
+
+"Read it yourself," said Bovary.
+
+He read:
+
+"'Despite the prejudices that still cover a part of the face of Europe
+like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country
+places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the
+scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of
+loftiest philanthropy. Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished
+practitioners----"
+
+"Oh, that is too much! too much!" said Charles, choking with emotion.
+
+"No, no! not at all! What next!"
+
+"'----Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not used the
+scientific term, because you know in a newspaper every one would not
+perhaps understand. The masses must----"
+
+"No doubt," said Bovary; "go on!"
+
+"I proceed," said the chemist. "'Monsieur Bovary, one of our most
+distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man
+called Hippolyte Tautain, stable-man for the last twenty-five years at
+the hotel of the "Lion d'Or," kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place
+d'Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the
+subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a
+veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The
+operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few
+drops of blood appeared on the skin, as if to show that the rebellious
+tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient,
+strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain.
+His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired.
+Everything tends to show that his convalescence will be brief; and who
+knows whether, at our next village festivity, we shall not see our good
+Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of
+joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and
+his capers his complete cure? Honor, then, to the generous savants!
+Honor to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the
+amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honor, thrice honor!
+Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame
+walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science
+now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to
+the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'"
+
+                *     *     *
+
+This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois from coming five days after,
+scared, and crying out--
+
+"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!"
+
+Charles rushed to the "Lion d'Or," and the chemist, who caught sight of
+him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared
+himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking every one who was going up
+the stairs--
+
+"Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?"
+
+The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine
+in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to
+break it.
+
+With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb,
+the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines
+of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed
+about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous
+machine. Hippolyte had already complained of suffering from it. No
+attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not
+been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But hardly had
+the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit
+to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten
+matters. At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it
+any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised
+at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with
+blisters here and there, whence oozed a black liquid. Matters were
+taking a serious turn. Hippolyte began to worry himself, and Mere
+Lefrancois had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so
+that he might at least have some distraction.
+
+But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of
+such companionship. Then Hippolyte was removed to the billiard-room. He
+lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale, with long beard,
+sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the
+dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Bovary went to see him.
+She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted and encouraged
+him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days,
+when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him,
+fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled.
+
+"How are you?" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Ah! you're not
+up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You should do this! do
+that!" And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured
+by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added:--
+
+"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the
+same, old chap, you don't smell nice!"
+
+Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned
+sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him
+with eyes full of terror, sobbing--
+
+"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! how
+unfortunate I am!"
+
+And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself.
+
+"Don't listen to him, my lad," said Mere Lefrancois. "Haven't they
+tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker. Here! swallow
+this."
+
+And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of
+bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the
+strength to put to his lips.
+
+Abbe Bournisien, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him. He
+began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he
+ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take
+advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven.
+
+"For," said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, "you rather neglected
+your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is
+it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work,
+that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your
+salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have
+known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet at
+this point, I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in
+the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a
+good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying
+morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which
+art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won't cost
+you anything. Will you promise me?"
+
+The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted
+with the landlady, and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and
+puns that Hippolyte did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he
+fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression
+of face.
+
+His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire
+to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Monsieur
+Bournisien replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better
+than one; it was no risk.
+
+The chemist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the
+priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Hippolyte's convalescence,
+and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, "Leave him alone! leave him
+alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism."
+
+But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it
+all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the
+patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box.
+
+Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and
+the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the
+stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the
+poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last
+Charles replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois
+asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Monsieur Canivet
+of Neufchatel, who was a celebrity.
+
+A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and
+self-possessed, Charles's colleague did not refrain from laughing
+disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then
+having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the
+chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such
+a state. Shaking Monsieur Homais by the button of his coat, he shouted
+out in the shop:
+
+"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry
+of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of
+monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do
+the clever, and they cram you with remedies without troubling about the
+consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants,
+coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not
+dream of operating on any one who is in perfect health. Straighten
+club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished,
+for example, to make a hunchback straight!"
+
+Homais suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his
+discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour Monsieur
+Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he
+did not take up the defense of Bovary; he did not even make a single
+remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the
+more serious interests of his business.
+
+This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the
+village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande
+Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as if
+an execution had been expected. At the grocer's they discussed
+Hippolyte's illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the
+mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to
+see the operator arrive.
+
+He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right
+side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it
+happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and
+on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red
+sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly.
+
+After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the "Lion d'Or," the
+doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he
+went into the stable to see that he was eating his oats all right; for
+on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his
+gig. People even said about this:
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Camvet's a character!"
+
+And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The
+universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed
+the smallest of his habits.
+
+Homais presented himself.
+
+"I count on you," said the doctor. "Are we ready? Come along!"
+
+But the chemist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to
+assist at such an operation.
+
+"When one is a simple spectator," he said, "the imagination, you know,
+is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!"
+
+"Pshaw!" interrupted Canivet; "on the contrary, you seem to me inclined
+to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows
+are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your
+constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o'clock;
+I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don't wear flannels, and
+I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way,
+now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am
+not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a
+Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say,
+habit! habit!"
+
+Then, without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with
+agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation,
+in which the chemist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a
+general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out
+on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon it as a sacred office,
+although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back
+to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Homais, the same
+that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for some one to hold the
+limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Monsieur Canivet having
+turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the chemist
+stayed with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons,
+and with ears strained towards the door.
+
+Bovary during this time did not dare to stir from his house. He kept
+downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless chimney, his
+chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. "What a
+mishap!" he thought, "what a mishap!" Perhaps, after all, he had made
+some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the most
+famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever
+believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as
+far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say if his
+colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would
+have to answer in the papers. Hippolyte might even prosecute him. He saw
+himself dishonored, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a
+world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the
+sea and floating upon the waves.
+
+Emma, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt
+another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if
+twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity.
+
+Charles was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the
+floor.
+
+"Sit down," she said; "you fidget me."
+
+He sat down again.
+
+How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed
+herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had
+she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her
+instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of
+marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded
+swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself,
+all that she might have had! And for what? for what?
+
+In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending
+cry rose on the air. Bovary turned white to fainting. She knit her brows
+with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this
+creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he
+was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name
+would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love
+him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another!
+
+"But it was perhaps a valgus!" suddenly exclaimed Bovary, who was
+meditating.
+
+At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a
+leaden bullet on a silver plate, Emma, shuddering, raised her head in
+order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked one at the other
+in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they
+by their inner thoughts. Charles gazed at her with the dull look of a
+drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the
+sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by
+sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered.
+Emma bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral
+that she had broken, fixed on Charles the burning glance of her eyes
+like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated
+her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his
+existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and
+what still remained of it crumbled away beneath the furious blows of her
+pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery. The
+memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she
+threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh
+enthusiasm; and Charles seemed to her as much removed from her life, as
+absent for ever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about
+to die and were passing under her eyes.
+
+There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Charles looked up, and
+through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in the
+broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his
+handkerchief. Homais, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his
+hand, and both were going towards the chemist's.
+
+Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Charles
+turned to his wife saying to her:
+
+"Oh, kiss me, my own!"
+
+"Leave me!" she said, red with anger.
+
+"What is the matter?" he asked, stupefied. "Be calm; compose yourself.
+You know well enough that I love you. Come!"
+
+"Enough!" she cried with a terrible look.
+
+And escaping from the room, Emma closed the door so violently that the
+barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.
+
+Charles sank back into his armchair overwhelmed, trying to discover
+what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping,
+and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round
+him.
+
+When Rodolphe came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress
+waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw
+their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow
+beneath the warmth of that kiss.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT.
+
+
+They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the
+day, Emma suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to
+Justin, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Rodolphe
+would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored; that
+her husband was odious, her life frightful.
+
+"But what can I do?" he cried one day impatiently.
+
+"Ah! if you would--"
+
+She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look
+lost.
+
+"Why, what?" said Rodolphe.
+
+She sighed.
+
+"We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!"
+
+"You are really mad!" he said laughing. "How could that be possible?"
+
+She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned
+the conversation.
+
+What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair
+as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her
+affection.
+
+Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her
+husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed
+the other. Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such
+stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found
+themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe. Then, while playing
+the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose
+black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once
+so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience
+in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she
+filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never
+enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs.
+She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he was
+coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and
+prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince.
+The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite did
+not stir from the kitchen, where little Justin, who often kept her
+company, watched her at work.
+
+With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily
+watched all these women's clothes spread out about him, the dimity
+petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running
+strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.
+
+"What is that for?" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the
+crinoline or the hooks and eyes.
+
+"Why, haven't you ever seen anything?" Felicite answered laughing. "As
+if your mistress, Madame Homais, didn't wear the same."
+
+"Oh, I daresay! Madame Homais!" And he added with a meditative air, "As
+if she were a lady like madame!"
+
+But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six
+years older than he, and Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin's servant, was
+beginning to pay court to her.
+
+"Let me alone," she said, moving her pot of starch. "You'd better be off
+and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you
+meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your
+chin."
+
+"Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots."
+
+And he at once took down from the shelf Emma's boots, all coated with
+mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his
+fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight.
+
+"How afraid you are of spoiling them!" said the servant, who wasn't so
+particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff
+of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.
+
+Emma had many shoes in her closet that she wore out one after the other,
+without Charles allowing himself the slightest observation. So also he
+disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper
+to make a present of to Hippolyte. Its top was covered with cork, and it
+had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black
+trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Hippolyte, not daring to
+use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Bovary to get him
+another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray
+the expense of this purchase.
+
+So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him
+running about the village as before, and when Charles heard from afar
+the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction.
+
+It was Monsieur Lheureux, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order;
+this provided him with an excuse for visiting Emma. He chatted with her
+about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made
+himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Emma yielded to
+this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have a
+very handsome riding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen, to
+give to Rodolphe. The week after Monsieur Lheureux placed it on her
+table.
+
+But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and
+seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Emma was much embarrassed;
+all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a
+fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any
+quantity of other things, and Bovary was impatiently expecting Monsieur
+Derozerays' account, which he was in the habit of paying him every year
+about midsummer.
+
+She succeeded at first in putting off Lheureux. At last he lost
+patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some
+in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received.
+
+"Oh, very well, take them!" said Emma.
+
+"I was only joking," he replied; "the only thing I regret is the whip.
+My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me."
+
+"No, no!" she said.
+
+"Ah! I've got you!" thought Lheureux.
+
+And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an
+undertone, and with his usual low whistle:
+
+"Good! we shall see! we shall see!"
+
+She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in put
+on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper "from Monsieur
+Derozerays." Emma pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen
+napoleons; it was the account. She heard Charles on the stairs; threw
+the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key.
+
+Three days after Lheureux reappeared.
+
+"I have an arrangement to suggest to you," he said. "If, instead of the
+sum agreed on, you would take----"
+
+"Here it is," she said, placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.
+
+The tradesman was astounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he was
+profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Emma
+declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her
+apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. She
+promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on.
+"Pshaw!" she thought, "he won't think about it again."
+
+                *     *     *
+
+Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Rodolphe had
+received a seal with the motto _Amor nel cor_; furthermore, a scarf for
+a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount's, that
+Charles had formerly picked up in the road, and that Emma had kept.
+These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she
+insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and
+over-exacting.
+
+Then she had strange ideas.
+
+"When midnight strikes," she said, "you must think of me."
+
+And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of
+reproaches that always ended with the eternal question:
+
+"Do you love me?"
+
+"Why, of course I love you," he answered.
+
+"A great deal?"
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+"You haven't loved any others?"
+
+"Did you think you'd got a virgin?" he exclaimed laughing.
+
+Emma wept, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with
+puns.
+
+"Oh," she went on, "I love you! I love you so that I could not live
+without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again,
+when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, where is he?
+Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he
+approaches. Oh no! no one else pleases you. There are some more
+beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your
+servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are
+beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!"
+
+He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as
+original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty,
+gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of
+passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did
+not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of
+sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine
+and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the
+candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be
+discounted; as if the fulness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in
+the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of
+his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human
+speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to
+make bears dance when we long to move the stars.
+
+But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him, who, in no
+matter what circumstance, holds back, Rodolphe saw other delights to be
+got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her
+quite _sans facon_. He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers was
+an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of
+voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank
+into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in
+his butt of Malmsey.
+
+By the mere effect of her love Madame Bovary's manners changed. Her
+looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the
+impropriety of walking out with Monsieur Rodolphe, a cigarette in her
+mouth, "as if to defy the people." At last those who still doubted
+doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the
+"Hirondelle" her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame
+Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken
+refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk.
+Many other things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to
+her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the "ways of the house"
+annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were
+quarrels, especially one on account of Felicite.
+
+Madame Bovary senior, the evening before, passing along the passage, had
+surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about
+forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped
+through the kitchen. Then Emma began to laugh, but the good lady grew
+angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to
+look after those of one's servants.
+
+"Where were you brought up?" asked the daughter-in-law, with so
+impertinent a look that Madame Bovary asked her if she were not perhaps
+defending her own case.
+
+"Leave the room!" said the young woman, springing up with a bound.
+
+"Emma! Mamma!" cried Charles, trying to reconcile them.
+
+But both had fled in their exasperation. Emma was stamping her feet as
+she repeated--
+
+"Oh! what manners! What a peasant!"
+
+He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered:
+
+"She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!"
+
+And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologize.
+
+So Charles went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he
+knelt to her; she ended by saying--
+
+"Very well! I'll go to her."
+
+And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity
+of a marchioness as she said:
+
+"Excuse me, madame."
+
+Then having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her bed
+and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow.
+
+She and Rodolphe had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary
+occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind,
+so that if by chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry to
+the lane behind the house. Emma made the signal; she had been waiting
+three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Rodolphe at
+the corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and call
+him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in despair.
+
+Soon, however, it seemed to her that some one was walking on the
+pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He
+was there outside. She threw herself into his arms.
+
+"Do take care!" he said.
+
+"Ah! if you knew!" she replied.
+
+And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly,
+exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses
+that he understood nothing of it.
+
+"Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!"
+
+"But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love like
+ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They torture me! I can
+bear it no longer! Save me!"
+
+She clung to Rodolphe. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames
+beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so
+that he lost his head and said:
+
+"What is it? What do you wish?"
+
+"Take me away," she cried, "carry me off! Oh, I entreat you!"
+
+And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the
+unexpected consent it breathed forth in a kiss.
+
+"But----" Rodolphe resumed.
+
+"What?"
+
+"Your little girl!"
+
+She reflected a few moments, then replied--
+
+"We will take her! It can't be helped!"
+
+"What a woman!" he said to himself, watching her as she went. For she
+had run into the garden. Some one was calling her.
+
+On the following days Madame Bovary senior was much surprised at the
+change in her daughter-in-law. Emma, in fact, was showing herself more
+docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for
+pickling gherkins.
+
+Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort of
+voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the
+things she was about to leave?
+
+But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as if lost in
+the anticipated delight of her coming happiness. It was an eternal
+subject for conversation with Rodolphe. She leant on his shoulder
+murmuring--
+
+"Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it be? It
+seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if
+we were rising in a balloon as if we were setting out for the clouds.
+Do you know that I count the hours? And you?"
+
+Never had Madame Bovary been so beautiful as at this period; she had
+that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from
+success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances.
+Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young
+illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers
+grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all
+the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for
+her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong
+inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner
+of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have
+thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair
+upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the
+changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her
+voice now took more mellow inflections, her figure also; something
+subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from
+the line of her foot. Charles, as when they were first married, thought
+her delicious and quite irresistible.
+
+When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake
+her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the
+ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed, as it were, a
+white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside Charles looked
+at them. He seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. She would
+grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw
+her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on
+her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to
+be sent to a boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be
+done? Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the
+neighborhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his
+patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the
+savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where;
+besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he
+wanted Berthe to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play
+the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen,
+when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats
+in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters.
+He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath
+the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look
+after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her
+gaiety. At last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her
+some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy;
+this would last for ever.
+
+Emma was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her
+side she awakened to other dreams.
+
+To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a
+new land, whence they would return no more. They went on and on, their
+arms entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a mountain there
+suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships,
+forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose
+pointed steeples were storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace because
+of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of
+flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the
+chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of
+guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps
+of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled
+beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing
+village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and
+in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live
+in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a
+gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and
+their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and
+star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the
+immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood
+forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and
+it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonized, azure, and bathed in
+sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Bovary snored more
+loudly, and Emma did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn
+whitened the window, and when little Justin was already in the square
+taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop.
+
+She had sent for Monsieur Lheureux, and had said to him--
+
+"I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar."
+
+"You are going on a journey?" he asked.
+
+"No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?"
+
+He bowed.
+
+"Besides, I shall want," she went on, "a trunk--not too heavy--handy."
+
+"Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they
+are being made just now."
+
+"And a travelling bag."
+
+"Decidedly," thought Lheureux, "there's a row on here."
+
+"And," said Madame Bovary, taking her watch from her belt, "take this;
+you can pay yourself out of it."
+
+But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another;
+did he doubt her? What childishness!
+
+She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and Lheureux
+had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him
+back.
+
+"You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak"--she seemed
+to be reflecting--"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's
+address, and tell him to have it ready for me."
+
+It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave
+Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen. Rodolphe would
+have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to
+Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as
+Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without
+stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Lheureux',
+whence it would be taken direct to the "Hirondelle," so that no one
+would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion
+to the child. Rodolphe avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer
+thought about it.
+
+He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs;
+then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill;
+next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all
+these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the
+4th September--a Monday.
+
+At length the Saturday before arrived.
+
+Rodolphe came in the evening earlier than usual.
+
+"Everything is ready?" she asked him.
+
+"Yes."
+
+Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the
+terrace on the curb-stone of the wall.
+
+"You are sad," said Emma.
+
+"No; why?"
+
+And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.
+
+"Is it because you are going away?" she went on; "because you are
+leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing
+in the world! You are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your
+people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!"
+
+"How sweet you are!" he said, seizing her in his arms.
+
+"Really!" she said with a voluptuous laugh. "Do you love me? Swear it
+then!"
+
+"Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love!"
+
+The moon, full and purple-colored, was rising right out of the earth at
+the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the branches of the
+poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with
+holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens
+that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the
+river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the
+silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a headless
+serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster
+candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together.
+The soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches.
+Emma, her eyes half-closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind
+that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of
+their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts,
+full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume
+of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense
+and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over
+the grass. Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on
+the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach
+falling all alone from the espalier.
+
+"Ah! what a lovely night!" said Rodolphe.
+
+"We shall have others," replied Emma; and, as if speaking to herself,
+"Yes, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my heart be so
+heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or
+rather----? No; it is the excess of happiness. How weak I am, am I not?
+Forgive me!"
+
+"There is still time!" he cried. "Reflect! perhaps you may repent!"
+
+"Never!" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: "What ill
+could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not
+traverse with you. The longer we live together the more it will be like
+an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. There will be nothing
+to trouble us, no care, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves
+eternally. Oh, speak! Answer me!"
+
+At regular intervals he answered, "Yes--Yes--" She had passed her hands
+through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big
+tears which were falling, "Rodolphe! Rodolphe! Ah! Rodolphe! dear little
+Rodolphe!"
+
+Midnight struck.
+
+"Midnight!" said she. "Come! it is to-morrow! One day more!"
+
+He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for
+their flight, Emma said, suddenly, assuming a gay air--
+
+"You have the passports?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"You are forgetting nothing?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at
+mid-day?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Till to-morrow then!" said Emma, in a last caress; and she watched him
+go.
+
+He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's
+edge between the bulrushes--
+
+"To-morrow!" she cried.
+
+He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across
+the meadow.
+
+After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white
+gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with
+such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should
+fall.
+
+"What an imbecile I am!" he said with a fearful oath. "No matter! she
+was a pretty mistress!"
+
+And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love,
+came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against
+her.
+
+"For, after all," he exclaimed gesticulating, "I can't exile
+myself--have a child on my hands."
+
+He was saying these things to give himself firmness.
+
+"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand
+times no! It would have been too stupid."
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+DESERTED.
+
+
+No sooner was Rodolphe at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau
+under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had
+the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting
+on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded
+into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly
+placed a distance between them.
+
+To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the
+bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters
+from women, and from it came an odor of dry dust and withered roses.
+First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a
+handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he
+had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature
+given him by Emma: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her
+languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this
+image and recalling the memory of its original, Emma's features little
+by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the
+painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other.
+Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations
+relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business
+notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In
+order to find them at the bottom of the box, Rodolphe disturbed all the
+others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and
+things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and
+hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box,
+broke when it was opened.
+
+Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style
+of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or
+jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love,
+others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain
+gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered
+nothing at all.
+
+In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each
+other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalized
+them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself
+for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into
+his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Rodolphe took back the box to
+the cupboard, saying to himself, "What a lot of rubbish!" Which summed
+up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard,
+had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that
+which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like
+them, leave a name carved upon the wall.
+
+"Come," said he, "let's begin."
+
+He wrote--
+
+     "Courage, Emma! courage! I would not bring misery into your life."
+
+"After all, that's true," thought Rodolphe. "I am acting in her
+interest; I am honest."
+
+     "Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an
+     abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You
+     were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the
+     future. Ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!"
+
+Rodolphe stopped here to think of some good excuse.
+
+"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides that would stop
+nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one
+could make women like that listen to reason!" He reflected, then went
+on--
+
+     "I shall not forget you, oh! believe it; and I shall ever have a
+     profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this
+     ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no
+     doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I should
+     not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of
+     sharing it myself, since I should have been its cause? The mere
+     idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, Emma. Forget
+     me! Why did I ever know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my
+     fault? O my God! No, no! accuse only fate."
+
+"That's a word that always tells," he said to himself.
+
+     "Ah! if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees,
+     certainly I might, through egotism, have made an experiment, in
+     that case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at
+     once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from
+     understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our
+     future position. Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I
+     rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the
+     manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences."
+
+"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much
+the worse; it must be stopped!"
+
+     "The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we might have gone, it would
+     have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet
+     questions, calumny, contempt, insult, perhaps. Insult to you! Oh!
+     And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear with me your
+     memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish myself by exile for
+     all the ill I have done you. I am going away. Whither I know not. I
+     am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of the
+     unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name to your child; let her
+     repeat it in her prayers."
+
+The wicks of the candles flickered. Rodolphe got up to shut the window,
+and when he had sat down again--
+
+"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt
+me up."
+
+    "I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have
+    wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of
+    seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later we
+    shall talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!"
+
+And there was a last 'adieu' divided into two words: "A Dieu!" which he
+thought in very excellent taste.
+
+"Now how am I to sign?" he said to himself. "Yours devotedly?' No! 'Your
+friend?' Yes, that's it."
+
+     "YOUR FRIEND."
+
+He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.
+
+"Poor little woman!" he thought with emotion. "She'll think me harder
+than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't
+cry; it isn't my fault." Then, having emptied some water into a glass,
+Rodolphe dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the
+paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he
+came upon the one "_Amor nel cor_."
+
+"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!"
+
+After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.
+
+The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late),
+Rodolphe had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at the
+bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his
+ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Bovary. He made use of this
+means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season
+fruits or game.
+
+"If she asks after me," he said, "you will tell her that I have gone on
+a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands.
+Get along and take care!"
+
+Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the
+apricots, and, walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound
+galoshes, made his way to Yonville.
+
+Madame Bovary, when he got to her house was arranging a bundle of linen
+on the kitchen-table with Felicite.
+
+"Here," said the ploughboy, "is something for you from master."
+
+She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for
+some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he
+himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a
+present could so move any one. At last he went out. Felicite remained.
+Emma could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting-room as if to
+take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves,
+found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind
+her, she flew to her room terrified.
+
+Charles was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and
+she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and
+ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her
+fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped
+before the attic-door, that was closed.
+
+Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish
+it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! "Ah, no!
+here," she thought, "I shall be all right."
+
+Emma pushed open the door and went in.
+
+The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples,
+stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew
+back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.
+
+Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country until it was lost
+to the sight. Underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones
+of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were
+motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower story, rose a kind
+of humming with strident modulations. It was Binet turning.
+
+She leant against the embrasure of the window, and re-read the letter
+with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the
+more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled
+him with her arms, and the throbs of her heart, that beat against her
+breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with
+uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth
+might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She
+was free. She advanced, looked at the paving-stones, saying to herself,
+"Come! come!"
+
+The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her
+body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the
+oscillating square went up the walls, and that the floor dipped on end
+like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging,
+surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air
+was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself
+be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice
+calling her.
+
+"Emma! Emma!" cried Charles.
+
+She stopped.
+
+"Wherever are you? Come!"
+
+The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint
+with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a
+hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite.
+
+"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table."
+
+And she had to go down to sit at table.
+
+She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as
+if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to
+this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance
+of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find
+it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent
+a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was
+afraid of Charles; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced
+these words in a strange manner:
+
+"We are not likely to see Monsieur Rodolphe soon again, it seems."
+
+"Who told you?" she said, shuddering.
+
+"Who told me!" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. "Why,
+Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe-Francais. He has
+gone on a journey, or is to go."
+
+She gave a sob.
+
+"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time to
+time for a change, and, _ma foi_, I think he's right, when one has a
+fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend.
+He's a bit of a rake. Monsieur Langlois told me--"
+
+He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put
+back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Charles,
+without noticing his wife's color, had them brought to him, took one,
+and bit into it.
+
+"Ah! perfect!" said he; "just taste!"
+
+And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.
+
+"Do just smell! What an odor!" he remarked, passing it under her nose
+several times.
+
+"I am choking," she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the
+spasm passed; then--
+
+"It is nothing," she said, "it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down
+and go on eating." For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her,
+attending to her, that she should not be left alone.
+
+Charles, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the
+apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate.
+
+Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Emma
+uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.
+
+In fact, Rodolphe, after many reflections, had decided to set out for
+Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by
+Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Emma had recognized him
+by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the
+twilight.
+
+The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house, ran thither.
+The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt,
+and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Charles was calling for
+help; Berthe, scared, was crying; and Felicite, whose hands trembled,
+was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively.
+
+"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar," said the chemist.
+
+Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle:
+
+"I was sure of it," he remarked; "that would wake any dead person for
+you!"
+
+"Speak to us," said Charles; "collect yourself; it is I--your Charles,
+who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss
+her!"
+
+The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But
+turning away her head, Emma said in a broken voice--
+
+"No, no! no one!"
+
+She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched
+at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open,
+motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from
+her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.
+
+Charles, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist,
+near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the
+serious occasions of life.
+
+"Do not be uneasy," he said, touching his elbow; "I think the paroxysm
+is past."
+
+"Yes, she is resting a little now," answered Charles, watching her
+sleep. "Poor girl! poor girl! She has gone off now!"
+
+Then Homais asked how the accident had come about. Charles answered that
+she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots.
+
+"Extraordinary!" continued the chemist. "But it might be that the
+apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to
+certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both
+in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the
+importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their
+ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a
+thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more
+delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt
+hartshorn, of new bread--"
+
+"Take care; you'll wake her!" said Bovary in a low voice.
+
+"And not only," the chemist went on, "are human beings subject to such
+anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly
+aphrodisiac effect produced by the _Nepeta cataria_, vulgarly called
+cat-mint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an
+example whose authenticity I can answer for, Bridaux (one of my old
+comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog
+that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him.
+He often even makes the experiment before his friends at his
+summer-house at Guillaume Wood. Would any one believe that a simple
+sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is
+extremely curious, is it not?"
+
+"Yes," said Charles, who was not listening to him.
+
+"This shows us," went on the other, smiling with benign
+self-sufficiency, "the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system.
+With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very
+susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear
+friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of
+attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless
+physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification.
+Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked
+upon?"
+
+"In what way? How?" said Bovary.
+
+"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as
+I lately read in a newspaper."
+
+But Emma, awaking, cried out--
+
+"The letter! the letter!"
+
+They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had
+set in.
+
+For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave up all his
+patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse,
+putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as
+Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again.
+He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Lariviere,
+his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was
+Emma's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even
+seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after
+all their troubles.
+
+About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by
+pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her
+strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon,
+and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his
+arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was
+disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along
+her slippers, and leaning against Charles's shoulder. She smiled all the
+time.
+
+They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew
+herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked
+far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great
+bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.
+
+"You will tire yourself, my darling!" said Bovary. And pushing her
+gently to make her go into the arbour, "Sit down on this seat; you'll be
+comfortable."
+
+"Oh! no; not there!" she said in a faltering voice.
+
+She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness
+recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more
+complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the
+head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the
+first signs of cancer.
+
+And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+RELIGIOUS FERVOR.
+
+
+To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais for all
+the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not
+obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an
+obligation. Then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was
+mistress, became terrible. Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen
+grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux especially harassed him. In fact, at the
+height of Emma's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the
+circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak,
+the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other
+things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them. The
+tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and
+that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her
+convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was
+resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his
+goods. Charles subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop.
+Felicite forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more
+about them. Monsieur Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns
+threatening and whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a bill
+at six months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea
+occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Lheureux. So,
+with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them,
+adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. Lheureux
+ran off to his shop, brought back the money and dictated another bill,
+by which Bovary undertook to pay to his order on the 1st of September
+next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred
+and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus
+lending at six per cent, in addition to one-fourth for commission; and
+the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in
+twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. He
+hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not
+be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money,
+having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him
+one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.
+
+Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for a
+supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Monsieur Guillaumin
+promised him some shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of
+establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil and Rouen, which no
+doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion
+d'Or," and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more
+luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.
+
+Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next year be
+able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such
+as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be
+deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that
+he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his
+mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his
+thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to
+be constantly thinking of her.
+
+The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When it was
+fine they wheeled her armchair to the window that overlooked the
+square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on
+that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she
+formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to
+the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the
+servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on the
+market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain
+began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for
+the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no
+relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the "Hirondelle"
+in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices
+answered, while Hippolyte's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the
+boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then
+he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five
+o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school,
+dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of
+the shutters with their rulers one after the other.
+
+It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He
+inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion in a
+coaxing little gossip that was not without its charm. The mere thought
+of his cassock comforted her.
+
+One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself
+dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the
+preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the
+night-table covered with sirups into an altar, and while Felicite was
+strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Emma felt some power passing over
+her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all
+feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was
+beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would
+be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into
+vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew
+from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial
+joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour
+presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her
+like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table
+seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back,
+fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived
+in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green
+palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to
+earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms.
+
+This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing
+that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her
+sensation, that still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion
+and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length
+found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she
+saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a
+wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in
+the place of happiness, still greater joys,--another love beyond all
+loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She
+saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the
+earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become a
+saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her
+room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might
+kiss it every evening.
+
+The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he thought,
+might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But
+not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a
+certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor, to
+send him "something good for a lady who was very clever." The
+bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off
+hardware to niggers, packed up, pell-mell, everything that was then the
+fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions
+and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur
+de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a
+honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent
+blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World at
+Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de * * *, _decore_ with many Orders;" "The
+Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," &c.
+
+Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself
+seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much
+hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of
+the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking
+people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with
+religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that
+they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was
+looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from
+her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic
+melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive.
+
+As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the bottom of
+her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than a
+king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed
+love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the
+immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her
+Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that
+she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery.
+It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens,
+and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic
+dupery.
+
+This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more,
+and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to those grand
+ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La
+Valliere, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed
+trains of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet
+of Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded.
+
+Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes for the
+poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one day, on coming
+home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table
+eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her illness her
+husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach
+her to read; even when Berthe cried, she was not vexed. She had made up
+her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about
+everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, "Is
+your stomach-ache better, my angel?"
+
+Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania
+of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen;
+but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in
+this quiet house, and she even staid there till after Easter, to escape
+the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never failed on Good Friday to order
+chitterlings.
+
+Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a
+little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, Emma almost
+every day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron,
+Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock
+the excellent Madame Homais, who, for her part, had never believed any
+of the tittle-tattle about her neighbor. The little Homais also came to
+see her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom,
+and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even
+Madame Bovary, taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by
+taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he
+for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees
+unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden
+entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him.
+
+Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity.
+She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there,
+palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that
+youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she now
+enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so
+affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one
+could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from
+virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who
+had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.
+Then suddenly--
+
+"So you love him?" she said.
+
+And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was blushing, she
+added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!"
+
+In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end,
+despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last
+manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more
+wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse,
+who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too
+often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off
+for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family,
+successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented
+church less assiduously, to the great approval of the chemist, who said
+to her in a friendly way--
+
+"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"
+
+As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he came out
+after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the
+air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This was the time when
+Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and
+they drank together to madame's complete restoration.
+
+Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace
+wall, fishing for cray-fish. Bovary invited him to have a drink, and he
+thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.
+
+"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to
+the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle perpendicularly on
+the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little
+thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at
+restaurants."
+
+But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their
+faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this
+joke--
+
+"It's goodness strikes the eye!"
+
+He was, in fact, a good fellow, and one day he was not even scandalised
+at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame some distraction by
+taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor,
+Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion,
+and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for
+morals than literature.
+
+But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he
+contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of
+pleasure, taught virtue.
+
+"_Castigat ridendo mores_, Monsieur Bournisien! Thus, consider the
+greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with
+philosophical reflections, that make them a very school of morals and
+diplomacy for the people."
+
+"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which
+there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T.
+He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the
+end----"
+
+"Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there is bad
+pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts
+seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times
+that imprisoned Galileo."
+
+"I know very well," objected the cure, "that there are good works, good
+authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes
+together in a bewitching apartment, decorated with worldly pomp, and
+then, those pagan disguises, that rouge, those lights, those effeminate
+voices, all this must, in the long run, engender a certain mental
+libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts, and impure temptations.
+Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he
+added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice, while he rolled a pinch
+of snuff between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned the theatre,
+she must be right; we must submit to her decrees."
+
+"Why," asked the chemist, "should she excommunicate actors? For formerly
+they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of
+the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called
+'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency."
+
+The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the
+chemist went on--
+
+"It's just as it is in the Bible; for there, you know, are more than one
+piquant detail, matters really libidinous!"
+
+And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien--
+
+"Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young
+girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie----"
+
+"But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the other impatiently,
+"who recommend the Bible."
+
+"No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that in our days, in this
+century of enlightenment, any one should still persist in proscribing an
+intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes
+even hygienic; is it not, doctor?"
+
+"No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the
+same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any
+ideas.
+
+The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot
+a Parthian arrow.
+
+"I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers
+kicking about."
+
+"Come, come!" said the cure.
+
+"Ah! I've known some!" And separating the words of his sentence, Homais
+repeated, "I--have--known--some!"
+
+"Well, they did wrong," said Bournisien, resigned to anything.
+
+"By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the chemist.
+
+"Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that Homais was
+intimidated by them.
+
+"I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that toleration
+is the surest way to draw people to religion."
+
+"That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again
+on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.
+
+Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor--
+
+"That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a
+way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only
+for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If any
+one could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about
+it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to
+England at a high salary. From what I hear, he's a regular dog; he's
+rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with
+him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require
+a dissolute life, that stirs the imagination to some extent. But they
+die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay
+by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Good-bye till to-morrow."
+
+The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's head, for he at
+once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the
+fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Charles did not give
+in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw
+nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs
+which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large,
+and the falling in of Lheureux's bills was still so far off that there
+was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was
+refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of
+worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight
+o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle."
+
+The chemist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought
+himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go.
+
+"Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that you
+are!"
+
+Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown with
+four flounces--
+
+"You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen."
+
+The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in the Place Beauvoisine. It
+was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and
+small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens
+pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers;--a
+good old house with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on
+winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black
+tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow
+by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always
+smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sunday-clothes, has a
+cafe on the street, and towards the country-side a kitchen-garden.
+Charles at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery,
+the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them;
+was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the
+inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole
+length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.
+
+Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was
+much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to
+swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the
+theatre, which were still closed.
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+A NEW DELIGHT.
+
+
+The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between
+the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills
+repeated in quaint letters "Lucia de Lammermoor--Lagardy--Opera--&c."
+The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid
+the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red
+foreheads; and now and again a warm wind that blew from the river gently
+stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the
+public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a
+current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an
+exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black ware-houses
+where they make casks.
+
+For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to have a
+little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept his tickets in
+his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his
+stomach.
+
+Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She
+involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the
+right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the
+reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger
+the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the dusty
+smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent
+forward with the air of a duchess.
+
+The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their
+cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing.
+They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of
+business; but "business" was not forgotten; they still talked cotton,
+spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen,
+inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like
+silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting
+about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink
+or apple-green cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them
+leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their
+yellow gloves.
+
+Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the
+ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over
+the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first
+there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins
+squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three
+knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass
+instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a
+country-scene.
+
+It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to
+the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing
+a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked
+the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared;
+they went away, and the hunters started afresh.
+
+She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst
+of Walter Scott. She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the
+Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the
+novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story
+phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed
+at once again with the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the
+lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin
+bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the
+costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when any
+one walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary
+things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another
+world. But a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire
+in green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of
+a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucia attacked her cavatina in G
+major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for wings. Emma too,
+fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly
+Edgar-Lagardy appeared.
+
+He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of
+marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly
+clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against
+his left thigh, and he cast around laughing looks showing his white
+teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night
+on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love
+with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for other
+women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his
+artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
+his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person
+and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable
+coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis
+than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable, charlatan
+nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the
+toreador.
+
+From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucia in his arms,
+he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of
+rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes
+escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Emma leant forward
+to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was
+filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out
+to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the
+drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognized all the intoxication
+and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of the prima donna
+seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that
+charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had
+loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit
+night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!" The theatre rang with
+cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the
+flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they
+uttered the final adieu, Emma gave a sharp cry that mingled with the
+vibrations of the last chords.
+
+"But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?"
+
+"No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!"
+
+"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on
+before said, 'I love Lucia and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with
+her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the
+ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?"
+
+Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in
+which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master
+Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucia,
+thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that
+he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered
+very much with the words.
+
+"What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!"
+
+"Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I like
+to understand things."
+
+"Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently.
+
+Lucia advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms
+in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Emma dreamed of
+her marriage-day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the
+little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this
+woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous,
+without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in
+the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the
+disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some
+great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty
+blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that
+happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire.
+She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So,
+striving to divert her thoughts, Emma determined now to see in this
+reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to
+please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when
+at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a
+black cloak.
+
+His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the
+instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury,
+dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal
+provocations at him in deep notes; Lucia, uttered her shrill plaint,
+Arthur, at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the
+bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the
+women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were
+all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and
+stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The
+outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with
+jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left
+with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of
+his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought, must have
+an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion.
+All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that
+absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the
+character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant,
+extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had
+willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With
+him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from
+capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the
+flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each
+evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work, she would
+have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung
+for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted he would have looked at
+her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was
+certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength,
+as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out,
+"Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour
+and all my dreams!"
+
+The curtain fell.
+
+The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the
+fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go out; the crowd
+filled the corridors, and she fell back in her armchair with
+palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing that she would faint, ran
+to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water.
+
+He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were
+jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he
+even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short
+sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered
+cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband,
+who was a mill-owner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was
+with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome
+cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity,
+costs, reimbursement. At last Charles reached his wife, saying to her,
+quite out of breath:
+
+"_Ma foi!_ I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a
+crowd--_such_ a crowd!"
+
+He added--
+
+"Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!"
+
+"Leon?"
+
+"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he finished
+these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.
+
+He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Bovary
+extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will.
+She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon
+the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. But
+soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an
+effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a
+few hurried words.
+
+"Ah, good-day! What! you here?"
+
+"Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning.
+
+"So you are at Rouen?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And since when?"
+
+"Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They were
+silent.
+
+But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests,
+the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all
+were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous
+and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at
+the chemist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour,
+_tete-a-tete_ by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so
+protracted, so discreet, so tender and that she had nevertheless
+forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances
+had brought him back into her life. He was standing behind her, leaning
+with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt
+herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon
+her hair.
+
+"Does this amuse you?" he said, bending over her so closely that the end
+of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly:
+
+"Oh, dear me, no, not much."
+
+Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an
+ice somewhere.
+
+"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this is
+going to be tragic."
+
+But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of the
+singer seemed to her exaggerated.
+
+"She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was listening.
+
+"Yes--perhaps--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of
+his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.
+
+Then with a sigh Leon said:
+
+"The heat is--"
+
+"Unbearable! Yes!"
+
+"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.
+
+"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."
+
+Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and
+all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside
+the windows of a cafe.
+
+First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted Charles from
+time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur Leon; and the
+latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large
+office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different
+in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere
+Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to
+say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end.
+
+People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or
+shouting at the top of their voices, "_O bel ange, ma Lucie!_" Then Leon
+playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tamburini,
+Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and compared with them, Lagardy, despite his
+grand outbursts, was nowhere.
+
+"Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet,
+"they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving
+before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me."
+
+"Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance."
+
+But Charles replied that they were going back next day.
+
+"Unless," he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone,
+pussy?"
+
+And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented
+itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the
+last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Charles insisted--
+
+"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong
+not to stay if you feel that this is doing you the least good."
+
+The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood
+discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his purse; the
+clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of
+silver that he made chink on the marble.
+
+"I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you are----"
+
+The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat
+said--
+
+"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow, at six o'clock?"
+
+Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but
+that nothing prevented Emma----
+
+"But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure----"
+
+"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel." Then to
+Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are in our part of
+the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then."
+
+The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover,
+to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted
+before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the cathedral struck half-past
+eleven.
+
+
+
+
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page ix: "the elder Dumas or Eugene Sue." has been changed   |
+    | to "the elder Dumas or Eugene Sue."                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xiv: Emaux in "in his well-known Emaux et Camees"       |
+    | remains unchanged--without an accent                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Education in "Education Sentimentale" remains unchanged--    |
+    | without an accent on pages xvi, xvii, xviii, xxiv, xxx       |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xvi: "his son Napoleon" has been changed to "his son    |
+    | Napoleon" with an accent                                     |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xvii: Departement in "La Muse du Departement" remains   |
+    | unchanged--without an accent                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page xxx: Legende in "La Legende de Saint Julien             |
+    | l'Hospitalier" remains unchanged--without an accent          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 2: "ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots." has been changed to |
+    | "ill-cleaned, hobnailed boots."                              |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 15: "Under the cartshed" has been changed to "Under     |
+    | the cart-shed"                                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 19: "than regularly twice a week," has been changed to  |
+    | "then regularly twice a week,"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 20: "on the roofs of the out-buildings" has been        |
+    | changed to "on the roofs of the outbuildings"                |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 28: "opposite the fire. on a little table" has been     |
+    | changed to "opposite the fire, on a little table"            |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 36: In the original, the word tutoyed is unclear in     |
+    | 'He called her "my wife," _tutoyed_ her'                     |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 40: "a second-hand dogcart," has been changed to        |
+    | "a second-hand dog-cart,"                                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 86: "a siesta by the water-side." has been changed to   |
+    | "a siesta by the waterside."                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 94: "Madame Lafrancois" has been changed to "Madame     |
+    | Lefrancois"                                                  |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 111: "Thus Napoleon represented glory" has been changed |
+    | to "Thus Napoleon represented glory"                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 117: "Yonville by the water-side." has been changed to  |
+    | "Yonville by the waterside."                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 121: "Seated in her arm-chair" has been changed to      |
+    | "Seated in her armchair"                                     |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 122: "falling asleep in the arm-chairs" has been        |
+    | changed to "falling asleep in the armchairs"                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 126: "The druggist had taken Napoleon" has been         |
+    | changed to "The druggist had taken Napoleon"                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 127: "Napoleon began to roar," has been changed to      |
+    | "Napoleon began to roar,"                                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 133: "the night-caps arranged in piles" has been        |
+    | changed to "the nightcaps arranged in piles"                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 133: "who came behind his arm-chair" has been           |
+    | changed to "who came behind his armchair"                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 144: "threw herself into an arm-chair." has been        |
+    | changed to "threw herself into an armchair."                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 148: "his three arm-chairs restuffed," has been         |
+    | changed to "his three armchairs restuffed,"                  |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 157: "an arm-chair at his bureau" has been changed to   |
+    | "an armchair at his bureau"                                  |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 166: "columns of the town-hall" has been changed to     |
+    | "columns of the townhall"                                    |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 169: "she had heard from Theodore," has been changed to |
+    | "she had heard from Theodore,"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 183: "and said to her it a low voice" has been changed  |
+    | to "and said to her in a low voice"                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 184: "decending" has been changed to "descending"       |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 186: "Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame." has been changed   |
+    | to "Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame."                           |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 208: "the arm-chairs are not to be taken" has been      |
+    | changed to "the armchairs are not to be taken"               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 208: "to put his arm-chair back" has been changed to    |
+    | "to put his armchair back"                                   |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 230: "He sat down again" has been changed to            |
+    | "He sat down again."                                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 232: "into his arm-chair overwhelmed" has been changed  |
+    | to "into his armchair overwhelmed"                           |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 233: Closing quotation marks have been added to         |
+    | "Ah! if you would--"                                         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 240: Closing quotation marks have been added to         |
+    | "Very well! I'll go to her."                                 |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 252: "rumaging" has been changed to "rummaging"         |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 266: "they wheeled her arm-chair" has been changed      |
+    | to "they wheeled her armchair"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 270: "with them to her bed-room," has been changed      |
+    | to "with them to her bedroom,"                               |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 284: "her arm-chair with palpitations" has been changed |
+    | to "her armchair with palpitations"                          |
+    |                                                              |
+    | Page 288: "the tables round them, however, were emptying:"   |
+    | has been changed to "the tables round them, however, were    |
+    | emptying;"                                                   |
+    +--------------------------------------------------------------+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Madame Bovary, Volume 1 (of 2)
+by Gustave Flaubert
+
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