Madame Bovary

  “How enchanting you are!” he said, taking her in his arms.

  “Am I really?” she said with a laugh of voluptuous pleasure. “Do you love me? Now, swear you do!”

  “Do I love you? Do I love you? I adore you, my love!”

  The moon, perfectly round and deep red, was rising straight from the earth, at the far end of the meadow. It climbed quickly among the branches of the poplars, which hid it in places like a black curtain full of holes. Then it appeared in the empty sky, dazzling white, filling it with light; and, slowing, it spread over the river a wide stain that formed an infinity of stars; and the gleam of silver seemed to twist all the way down to the bottom, like a headless snake covered with luminous scales. It resembled, too, some monstrous candelabra streaming all down its length with molten drops of diamond. The mild night opened out around them; layers of shadow filled the leaves. Emma, her eyes half closed, inhaled with deep sighs the cool breeze that was blowing. They did not speak to each other, so lost were they in their pervasive reveries. The affection of earlier days returned to their hearts, as abundant and silent as the flowing river, as soft as the perfume borne to them by the mock-orange flowers, and cast over their memories shadows more colossal and more melancholy than those of the motionless willows that lay across the grass. Often some nocturnal creature, a hedgehog or weasel, setting off on its hunt, would disturb the leaves, or now and then they would hear a single ripe peach dropping from the espalier.

  “What a lovely night!” said Rodolphe.

  “We’ll have many more!” said Emma.

  And, as though talking to herself:

  “Yes, it will be good to travel … Yet why is my heart so sad? Is it fear of the unknown … ? Or the effect of leaving my familiar ways … ? Or … ? No, it’s because I’m too happy! How weak I am, aren’t I? Forgive me!”

  “There’s still time!” he cried. “Think about it carefully, you might be sorry.”

  “Never!” she said impetuously.

  And, moving close to him:

  “What harm can come to me, after all? There’s not a desert, not a precipice, not an ocean that I wouldn’t cross with you. When we’re living together, our life will be like an embrace that becomes closer and more complete every day! There’ll be nothing to bother us, no worries, nothing in our way! We’ll be alone together, we’ll be everything to each other, forever … Say something, answer me.”

  He answered at regular intervals: “Yes … yes! …” She had slipped her fingers into his hair, and she kept repeating in a childlike voice, despite the large tears that were flowing from her eyes:

  “Rodolphe! Rodolphe! … Ah! Rodolphe, dear little Rodolphe!”

  Midnight struck.

  “Midnight!” she said. “Now it’s tomorrow! One more day!”

  He stood up to leave; and as if this motion of his were the signal for their departure, Emma, suddenly cheerful, said:

  “You have the passports?”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t forgotten anything?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “The Hôtel de Provence—that’s where you’ll be waiting for me? … At noon?”

  He nodded.

  “Till tomorrow, then!” said Emma with a last caress.

  And she watched him walk away.

  He did not turn around. She ran after him, and, leaning over by the water’s edge between the bushes:

  “Till tomorrow!” she cried.

  He was already on the other side of the stream, walking quickly across the meadow.

  After a few minutes, Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her in her white dress gradually vanish into the darkness like a phantom, his heart began to pound so hard that he leaned against a tree to keep from falling.

  “What an idiot I am!” he said with a dreadful oath. “Well, it doesn’t matter; she was a lovely mistress!”

  And immediately, Emma’s beauty, and all the pleasures of their love, reappeared before him. At first he softened, then he turned against her.

  “Because, really,” he exclaimed, gesticulating, “I can’t abandon my own country. I can’t assume responsibility for a child.”

  He was saying these things to strengthen himself in his resolve.

  “And besides—the difficulties, the expense … Oh, no! No, no, no! It would have been too stupid!”

  [13]

  As soon as Rodolphe arrived home, he sat down quickly at his desk under the stag’s head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But once the pen was in his hand, he could not think of anything, so, leaning on his elbows, he began to reflect. Emma seemed to him to have receded into a distant past, as if the decision he had just made had suddenly placed an immense gap between them.

  To recapture something of her, he went to the cupboard by the head of his bed and took out an old Reims cookie tin in which he was in the habit of putting the letters women sent to him, and there escaped from it a smell of damp dust and withered roses. First he saw a pocket handkerchief covered with pale droplets. It was one of hers, from when she had had a nosebleed, once when they were out together; he had forgotten. Near it, knocking against the corners of the box, was the miniature Emma had given him; he found her clothing pretentious and her sidelong gaze most pitiful in its effect; then, because he had been studying this picture and summoning up a recollection of its original, Emma’s features gradually became confused in his memory, as if the living face and the painted face, rubbing together, had obliterated each other. Finally he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations concerning their trip, as short, technical, and urgent as business letters. He wanted to look at the long ones again, the ones from earlier times; in order to find them at the bottom of the tin, Rodolphe disturbed all the others; and mechanically he began rummaging through the pile of papers and other things, rediscovering in disarray some bouquets, a garter, a black mask, pins, and hair—hair!—brown, blond, some of which, even, caught on the iron fittings of the box and broke when it was opened.

  Thus idling through his souvenirs, he examined the handwriting and the styles of the letters, as varied as their spelling. They were tender or jolly, facetious, melancholy; there were some that demanded love and others that demanded money. A single word would cause him to recall certain faces, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he recalled nothing.

  Indeed, these women, flocking into his thoughts all at the same time, impeded and diminished one another, as though leveled by the sameness of his love. And picking up fistfuls of the disordered letters, he amused himself for a few minutes letting them fall in cascades from his right hand into his left. At last, bored, sleepy, Rodolphe carried the tin back to the cupboard, saying to himself:

  “What a load of nonsense! …”

  Which summed up his opinion; for his pleasures, like schoolchildren in a schoolyard, had so trampled his heart that nothing green grew there, and whatever passed through it, more heedless than the children, did not even leave behind its name, as they did, carved on the wall.

  “Come, now,” he said to himself, “let’s get started!”

  He wrote:

  Be brave, Emma! Be brave! I don’t want to ruin your life …

  “That’s true, after all,” thought Rodolphe; “I’m acting in her interest; I’m being honest.”

  Did you weigh your decision carefully? Were you aware of the abyss into which I was drawing you, my poor angel? You weren’t, were you? You were going ahead, foolishly trusting, believing in happiness, in the future … Oh, poor wretches that we are! Lunatics!

  Rodolphe stopped at this point, looking for some good excuse.

  “What if I told her I’d lost my entire fortune? … Oh, no! Anyway, that wouldn’t put a stop to anything. I’d just have to go through the whole thing again later. Can one ever make women of that sort listen to reason?”
br />   He reflected, then added:

  I will never forget you, believe me, and I will continue to be deeply devoted to you; but one day, sooner or later, this ardor would no doubt have diminished (such being the destiny of all things human)! We would have had moments of weariness, and who knows, even, if I would not have suffered the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse and partaking of it myself, since I would have been the cause of it. The very idea of the sorrows that burden you is torture to me, Emma! Forget me! Why did I ever have to meet you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? Oh, Lord, no! Fate is to blame, only fate!

  “There’s a word that always has a nice effect,” he said to himself.

  Oh, if you had been one of those women with a frivolous heart—who certainly exist—I could have selfishly experimented without putting you at risk. But the delicious exaltation of feeling that is at once your charm and your torment has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. I, too, did not think about it at first, and I lay down to rest in the shade of that ideal happiness, as in the poisonous shade of the fatal manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences.

  “Perhaps she’ll think I’m giving this up out of greed … Oh, well, too bad! It doesn’t matter, I must be done with it!”

  The world is cruel, Emma. Wherever we had gone, it would have pursued us. You would have had to submit to indiscreet questions, calumny, scorn, perhaps insult. You, insulted! Oh! … When my wish is that I might seat you on a throne! When I will carry the thought of you away with me like a talisman! For I am punishing myself by exile for all the harm I have done you. I am going away. Where? I have no idea—I have lost my reason! Adieu! Be good always! Preserve the memory of the wretch who lost you. Teach my name to your child, so that she may repeat it in her prayers.

  The wicks of the two candles were flickering. Rodolphe stood up to go close the window and, when he had sat down again, said:

  “I think that’s all. Oh! One more thing, for fear that she’ll come pester me.”

  I will be far away when you read these sad lines; for I am determined to flee as quickly as possible in order to avoid the temptation of seeing you again. This is no time for weakness! I will come back; and perhaps, in time to come, we will talk together quite calmly of our old love. Adieu!

  And there was one last adieu, separated into two words: A Dieu! which he judged to be in excellent taste.

  “Now, how shall I sign it?” he asked himself. “Your devoted? … No. Your friend? … Yes, that’s it.”

  Your friend.

  He reread his letter. It seemed good to him.

  “Poor little woman!” he thought with emotion. “She’ll think I have no more feeling than a stone; there should have been a few tears on it; but I can’t cry; it’s not my fault.” Then, having poured some water into a glass, Rodolphe dipped his finger in it and let fall from above a fat drop, which made a pale blot on the ink; finally, looking to seal the letter, he came upon the Amor nel cor signet ring.

  “This is scarcely appropriate under the circumstances … Oh, well! It doesn’t matter!”

  After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.

  The next day, when he got up (at about two o’clock—he had slept late), Rodolphe sent for a servant to gather a basket of apricots for him. He placed the letter in the bottom, under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his plowboy, to take it carefully to Madame Bovary. This was the means he used to correspond with her, sending her either fruit or game, according to the season.

  “If she asks about me,” he said, “you will answer that I’ve gone on a trip. You must give the basket only to her, put it into her own hands … Go on now, and take care!”

  Girard put on his new smock, tied his handkerchief around the apricots, and, walking with long, heavy strides in his thick hobnailed clogs, tranquilly set off down the path to Yonville.

  When he reached her house, Madame Bovary was arranging a bundle of linens on the kitchen table with Félicité.

  “Here,” said the servant. “Our master sends you this.”

  She was seized by a feeling of dread, and while searching for some coins in her pocket, she gazed at the boy with wild eyes, as he in turn looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a gift could upset someone so much. At last he went out. Félicité was still there. She could not endure it any longer, she hurried into the parlor as though to put the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore the leaves apart, found the letter, opened it, and, as if an inferno were blazing behind her, fled up to her room, overcome with terror.

  Charles was there, she saw him; he spoke to her, she heard nothing, and she continued hastily climbing the stairs, breathless, frenzied, beside herself, and still holding that horrible piece of paper, which rattled in her fingers like a sheet of metal. On the third floor, she stopped in front of the door to the attic, which was closed.

  Then she tried to calm herself; she remembered the letter; she had to finish it; she did not dare. Anyway, where? How? Someone would see her.

  “Oh, no—here!” she thought; “I’ll be all right in here.”

  Emma pushed open the door and went in.

  The slate tiles of the roof admitted a sultry heat that dropped straight down, pressing against her temples and stifling her; she dragged herself to the shuttered dormer window; she pulled back the bolt, and the dazzling light sprang in.

  Before her, above the rooftops, the open countryside spread out as far as the eye could see. Down below, beneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the sidewalk sparkled, the weather vanes on the houses stood motionless; at the street corner, from a lower story, came a kind of whirring noise with strident changes of tone. It was Binet at his lathe.

  She had leaned against the frame of the window, and she was rereading the letter, now and then giving an angry, derisive laugh. But the more steadily she fixed her attention on it, the more confused her thoughts became. She saw him again, she heard him, she put her arms around him; and her heartbeats, striking her chest like the great blows of a battering ram, came faster and faster one after another, at unequal intervals. She cast her eyes about her, wishing the earth would cave in. Why not put an end to it all? What was holding her back? She was free. And she moved forward, she looked down at the paving stones, saying to herself:

  “Go on! Go on!”

  The ray of light that rose directly up to her from below was pulling the weight of her body down toward the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground in the village square was swaying back and forth and rising along the walls, and that the floor was tipping down at the end, like a vessel pitching. She was standing right at the edge, almost suspended, surrounded by a great empty space. The blue of the sky was coming into her, the air circulating inside her hollow skull, she had only to give in, to let herself be taken; and the whirring of the lathe never stopped, like a furious voice calling her.

  “Emma! Emma!” Charles shouted.

  She stopped.

  “Where are you? Come here!”

  The idea that she had just escaped death almost made her faint from terror; she closed her eyes; then she started at the touch of a hand on her sleeve: it was Félicité.

  “Monsieur is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table.”

  And she had to go down! She had to sit down to dinner!

  She tried to eat. The pieces of food made her choke. Then she unfolded her napkin as though to examine the places where it had been darned, and really tried to apply herself to this work, counting the threads of the weave. Suddenly she remembered the letter again. Had she lost it? How would she ever find it? But her mind was so exhausted that she would never have been able to invent a pretext for leaving the table. And she had become a coward; she was afraid of Charles; he knew everything, she was sure! Indeed, oddly enough, he spoke these words:

  “It will be some time, so i
t seems, before we see Monsieur Rodolphe again.”

  “Who told you that?” she asked, starting.

  “Who told me that?” he replied, a little surprised at her abrupt tone; “it was Girard; I met him just now at the door of the Café Français. He’s gone off on a trip, or he’s about to go off.”

  She gave a sob.

  “Why should you be so surprised? He does go away like that now and then for his own enjoyment, and my faith! I approve. If you have a little money and you’re not married! … Besides, he knows how to have a good time, our friend does! He’s quite the wag. Monsieur Langlois told me once how …”

  He fell silent for the sake of decency, because the servant was coming in.

  She put back in the basket the apricots that lay scattered over the étagère; Charles, without noticing how flushed his wife was, asked for them, took one, and bit into it.

  “Oh, it’s perfect!” he said. “Here, taste one.”

  And he held out the basket, which she pushed gently away.

  “Smell them, then: what a fragrance!” he said, passing them under her nose several times.

  “I can’t breathe!” she cried, leaping to her feet.

  But through an effort of will, she conquered the spasm; then:

  “It’s nothing!” she said, “it’s nothing! It’s just nerves! Sit down, eat!”

  For she dreaded being questioned, fussed over, never left alone.

  Charles, obeying her, had sat down again, and he was spitting the apricot stones into his hand and then depositing them on his plate.

  Suddenly a blue tilbury crossed the square at a fast trot. Emma cried out and fell straight over backward onto the floor.

  Indeed, Rodolphe, after a good deal of reflection, had decided to leave for Rouen. However, since there is no other route from La Huchette to Buchy but the Yonville road, he had had to drive through the village, and Emma had recognized him by the gleam of the lanterns that sliced like a flash of lightning through the dusk.