Madame Bovary

  “And he would do even better to hand it over to someone else, to you, for example; with a power of attorney, it would be easy, and then you and I could take care of these matters together …”

  She did not understand. He fell silent. Then, going on to speak of his trade, Lheureux declared that Madame should not fail to order something from him. He would send her a length of black barege, twelve meters, to make up a dress.

  “The one you have there is good enough for the house. You need another for visiting. I saw that right away when I came in. I have the eye of an American.”

  He did not send the material, he brought it. Then he came again to take the measurements; he came again on other pretexts, each time trying to make himself amiable, helpful, pledging his loyalty like a vassal, as Homais would have put it, and always slipping to Emma some words of advice about the power of attorney. He never mentioned the note. She did not think about it; Charles, at the beginning of her convalescence, had indeed told her something about it; but her mind had been so agitated that she no longer remembered. What was more, she refrained from broaching any discussion of money; Mère Bovary was surprised by this and attributed her change of disposition to the religious sentiments she had developed when she was ill.

  But as soon as she had left, Emma lost no time amazing Bovary with her practical good sense. They were going to have to make inquiries, check the mortgages, see if there ought to be a sale by auction or a liquidation. She used technical terms at random; she uttered important words such as “order,” “the future,” “foresight,” and continually exaggerated the complications of the inheritance; and then one day she showed him the draft of a general authorization to “manage and administer his affairs, negotiate all loans, sign and endorse all notes, pay all sums, etc.” She had profited from Lheureux’s lessons.

  Charles, naïvely, asked her where this paper had come from.

  “From Monsieur Guillaumin.”

  And with the greatest composure in the world, she added:

  “I don’t trust him very much. Notaries have such a bad reputation! We ought perhaps to consult … We know only … Oh, there’s no one!”

  “Unless Léon …,” replied Charles, who was thinking.

  But it was hard to explain matters by letter. So she offered to make the trip. He thanked her but would not let her. She insisted. Each tried to outdo the other with considerate attentions. At last, she cried out in a tone of affected rebellion:

  “No, you must let me—I must go.”

  “How good you are!” he said, kissing her on the forehead.

  The very next day, she set off in the Hirondelle for Rouen to consult Monsieur Léon; and she stayed there three days.

  [3]

  They were three full, exquisite, splendid days, a real honeymoon.

  They stayed at the Hôtel de Boulogne, on the harbor. And there they lived with shutters closed and doors locked, flowers on the floor and fruit drinks on ice, which were brought up to them from morning on.

  Toward evening, they would hire a covered boat and go have dinner on an island.

  It was the hour when, from along the dockside, one can hear the echo of the caulkers’ mallets striking the hulls of the ships. Smoke from the tar would rise from between the trees, and on the river one saw broad patches of oil undulating unevenly beneath the crimson glow of the sun, like floating sheets of Florentine bronze.

  They would go down among the moored boats, whose long oblique cables would gently graze the top of their own.

  The noises of the city would imperceptibly recede: the rumbling of carts, the tumult of voices, the yapping of dogs on the decks of ships. She would untie her hat, and they would land on their island.

  They would sit in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern with black nets hanging at its door. They would eat fried smelts, cream, and cherries. They would lie down in the grass; they would go off and kiss under the poplars; and they would wish that, like two Robinson Crusoes, they could live forever in that little spot, which seemed to them, in their bliss, the most magnificent on earth. It was not the first time they had seen trees, blue sky, or lawn, or that they had heard water trickling and the breeze blowing through the leaves; but they had never before admired all of this, it was as if nature had not existed before, or as if it had begun to be beautiful only once they had slaked their desires.

  At night, they would leave again. The boat would follow the shoreline of the islands. They would remain deep inside, the two of them hidden by the darkness, without talking. The square oars would creak between the iron thole pins; and this would mark the silence like the beat of a metronome, while at the stern the mooring rope that trailed behind them never ceased its soft little lapping in the water.

  One time, the moon appeared; then inevitably they spoke of it in flowery phrases, finding the star melancholy and full of poetry; she even began to sing:

  “One evening—dost thou recall?—we were sailing …” etc.

  Her weak, melodious voice died away over the water; and the breeze carried off the vocal flourishes that Léon heard passing, like the fluttering of wings, around him.

  She was sitting opposite him, leaning against the bulkhead, where the moon entered through one of the open flaps. Her black dress, whose folds spread wide in a fan, made her look slimmer, taller. Her head was raised, her hands joined, and her eyes looked up toward the sky. At times the shadows of the willows would hide her altogether; then she would reappear suddenly, like a vision, in the light from the moon.

  Léon, in the bottom of the boat beside her, found under his hand a ribbon of flame-red silk.

  The boatman examined it and finally said:

  “Ah! Maybe it belongs to a party I took out the other day. They was a crowd of wags, all right, gentlemen and ladies both, with their cakes, champagne, trumpets, the works! One of ’em especially, he was a tall, good-looking fella with a little mustache, very droll! And they all kept after him: ‘Come on, tell us a story … Adolphe’—or Dodolphe, I think it was.”

  She shivered.

  “Are you uncomfortable?” asked Léon, moving closer to her.

  “Oh, it’s nothing! Just the chill of the night air, probably.”

  “And he would’ve had no shortage of female company, either,” added the old sailor softly, believing he was saying something polite to the stranger.

  Then, spitting into his hands, he took up his oars again.

  But they had to part! Their farewells were sad. He was to send his letters to Mère Rolet’s; and she gave him such precise instructions concerning the double envelope that he greatly admired her cunning in love.

  “So you swear to me that everything’s in order?” she said as they kissed for the last time.

  “Yes, of course!”—But why in the world, he mused afterward, returning alone through the streets, is she so dead set on this power of attorney?

  [4]

  Léon soon began to give himself airs in front of his fellow clerks, avoided their company, and neglected the briefs completely.

  He would wait for her letters; he would read them over and over. He would write to her. He would conjure up her image with all the strength of his desire and his memories. Instead of diminishing in her absence, this longing to see her again grew, so much so that one Saturday morning he fled from the office.

  When, from the top of the hill, he saw the church steeple in the valley below with its tin flag turning in the wind, he felt the same pleasure, compounded of triumphant vanity and egotistical affection, that a millionaire must experience when returning to his native village.

  He went and prowled around her house. A light was shining in the kitchen. He watched for her shadow behind the curtains. Nothing appeared.

  Mère Lefrançois, when she saw him, exclaimed loudly, finding him “taller and thinner,” while Artémise, on the contrary, found him “fatter and darker.”

  He dined in the little par
lor, as in the old days, but alone, without the tax collector; for Binet, tired of waiting for the Hirondelle, had permanently advanced his mealtime by one hour, and he now dined at five o’clock sharp, though he quite often claimed that the old timepiece was slow.

  Léon, however, plucked up his resolve; he went and knocked at the door of the doctor’s house. Madame was in her room, from which she did not come down until a quarter of an hour later. Monsieur seemed delighted to see him again; but he did not stir from the house that whole evening, or the whole of the following day.

  He saw her alone, that night, very late, behind the garden, in the lane; —in the lane, where she had seen the other! There was a thunderstorm, and they talked under an umbrella, in the glare of the lightning.

  To be apart was becoming intolerable.

  “I’d rather die!” Emma was saying.

  She was moving restlessly about in his arms and weeping.

  “Goodbye! … Goodbye! … When will I see you again?”

  They turned back to kiss each other again, and it was then that she promised him she would soon find an opportunity, by whatever means, for them to see each other freely and regularly, at least once a week. Emma was certain of this. She was, what was more, full of hope. Some money would be coming her way.

  And so she bought, for her bedroom, a pair of yellow curtains with broad stripes whose low price Monsieur Lheureux had recommended to her; she dreamed of a carpet, and Lheureux, assuring her that “she wouldn’t have to swallow the whole sea to get it,” politely undertook to provide her with one. She could no longer do without his services. Twenty times in the course of the day, she would send for him, and he would immediately drop whatever he was doing, without permitting himself a murmur of protest. Nor was it clear to anyone why Mère Rolet came to have lunch at her house every day and even saw her in private.

  It was at about this time, that is, toward the beginning of winter, that she seemed to be seized by a great passion for music.

  One evening when Charles was listening, she started the same piece over again four times in succession, each time becoming annoyed, while, without noticing any difference, he would cry out:

  “Bravo! … Very good! … You’re mistaken! Go on!”

  “No! It’s dreadful! My fingers are so rusty.”

  The next day, he begged her to play something for him again.

  “All right, just to please you!”

  And Charles admitted that she had fallen off somewhat. She mixed up the staves, stumbled; then, stopping abruptly:

  “Oh, it’s no use! I ought to take lessons; but …”

  She bit her lip and added:

  “Twenty francs an hour is too expensive!”

  “Yes, it is … a little …,” said Charles, giving a foolish, skeptical laugh. “But it seems to me you could perhaps get someone for less; because there must be musicians with no reputation who are better than the famous ones.”

  “Well, go find them,” said Emma.

  The next day, when he came home, he gazed at her with a sly look, and at last could not help remarking:

  “How obstinate you are sometimes! I was in Barfeuchères today. Well, Madame Liégeard assured me that her three girls, who are at the Miséricorde, are taking lessons for a charge of fifty sous per session, and from a marvelous teacher!”

  She shrugged and did not open her instrument again.

  But whenever she walked by it (if Bovary happened to be there), she would sigh:

  “Ah, my poor piano!”

  And if someone came to see her, she would always remark that she had given up her music and could not go back to it now, for compelling reasons. Then one would pity her. It was too bad! She had such a lovely talent! People even talked about it to Bovary. They made him feel ashamed, especially the pharmacist:

  “You’re making a mistake! One should never allow the natural faculties to lie fallow. Besides, keep in mind, my good friend, that by encouraging Madame to take lessons, you will be economizing later on your child’s musical training! I myself believe that mothers ought to teach their children themselves. This is an idea of Rousseau’s; it’s perhaps a little new still, but it’ll end by prevailing, I’m sure, like mothers breast-feeding, and vaccination.”

  And so Charles returned once more to the question of the piano. Emma answered sourly that it would be better to sell it. That poor piano, which had so often given him a proud gratification—to see it go would somehow be, for Bovary, like seeing her kill a part of herself!

  “If you wanted … one lesson,” he would say, from time to time, “it wouldn’t really ruin us, after all.”

  “But lessons don’t do any good,” she would reply, “unless they’re kept up.”

  And that is how she managed to obtain from her husband permission to go to the city, once a week, to see her lover. It was even thought, after a month, that she had made considerable progress.

  [5]

  It was Thursday. She would rise and dress silently so as not to wake Charles, who would have commented on the fact that she was getting ready too early. Then she would pace back and forth; she would stand in front of the windows, she would look out at the Square. The first light of the day would creep in among the posts of the marketplace, and on the pharmacist’s house, whose shutters were closed, could be seen, in the pale tints of dawn, the capital letters of its sign.

  When the clock showed quarter past seven, she would go off to the Lion d’Or, whose door Artémise, yawning, would come to open for her. The servant would uncover for Madame the coals buried under the ashes. Emma would remain alone in the kitchen. From time to time, she would go outside. Hivert would be harnessing the horses at a leisurely pace, while listening to Mère Lefrançois, who, putting her head, in its nightcap, out a little window above, was charging him with commissions and giving him explanations that would have bewildered a different sort of man. Emma would tap the soles of her little boots on the paving stones of the courtyard.

  At last, when he had eaten his soup, put on his heavy cloak, lit his pipe, and seized his whip, he would settle himself calmly on his seat.

  The Hirondelle would set off at a gentle trot and for three-quarters of a league would stop here and there to take on passengers who were watching for it, standing by the side of the road, in front of the gates of their farmyards. Those who had left word the day before would make it wait for them; a few, even, were still in bed inside their houses; Hivert would call, shout, curse, then get down from his seat and go pound on the door. The wind would blow in through the cracked windows of the carriage.

  The four outside seats, however, would fill up, the carriage would roll on, lines of apple trees would pass one after another; and the road, between its two long ditches full of yellow water, would keep narrowing toward the horizon.

  Emma knew it from one end to the other; she knew that after a pasture came a signpost, then an elm tree, a barn, or a road mender’s hut; sometimes, even, in order to create surprises for herself, she would close her eyes. But she never lost her clear sense of how much distance there was still to be covered.

  At last, the brick houses would come closer together, the ground would reverberate under the wheels, the Hirondelle would glide between gardens in which one could see, through a fence, statues, a knoll surmounted by an arbor, clipped yews, and a child’s swing. Then, in a single glance, the city would appear.

  Descending in an amphitheater, and drowned in mist, it broadened out untidily beyond the bridges. Then the open country rose again in a monotonous sweep, until in the distance it touched the uncertain lower edge of the pale sky. Seen thus from above, the entire landscape had the stillness of a painting; the ships at anchor were piled together in one corner; the river curved round the foot of the green hills; and the islands, oblong in shape, resembled great black fish that had come to a stop on the water. The factory chimneys expelled immense brown plumes that flew off at the tips. One could
hear the rumbling of the foundries along with the clear chimes of the churches that rose through the fog. The leafless trees along the boulevards were like thickets of violet among the houses, and the roofs, all gleaming with rain, sparkled unequally, according to the heights of the neighborhoods. Now and then a gust of wind would carry the clouds off toward the Sainte-Catherine hill, like aerial waves breaking in silence against a cliff.

  For her, something dizzying emanated from those closely crowded lives, and her heart would swell hugely with it, as if all of the hundred twenty thousand souls throbbing down there had transmitted to her, at the same moment, the vapor of the passions she supposed they harbored. Her love would grow larger in the presence of this vastness and fill with tumult at the indistinct hum that ascended from below. She would pour this love back out, onto the squares, the promenades, the streets, and in her eyes, the old Norman city would spread before her like some immense capital, some Babylon she was entering. She would lean on both hands out through the carriage window, inhaling the air; the three horses would gallop on, the stones would grind in the mud, the coach would sway, and Hivert would shout ahead to the carts along the road, while the townsmen who had slept in Bois-Guillaume would descend the hillside peacefully in their little family carriages.

  They would stop at the city gate; Emma would unbuckle her clogs, put on different gloves, straighten her shawl; and twenty paces farther on, she would leave the Hirondelle.

  The city, at that hour, was just waking up. Clerks in tasseled caps were polishing the shop windows, and women holding baskets on their hips uttered a resounding cry from time to time at the street corners. She walked with her eyes on the ground, keeping close to the walls and smiling with pleasure under her lowered black veil.

  For fear of being seen, she would usually not take the shortest route. She would plunge into dark alleys, and she would emerge all in a sweat at the bottom of the rue Nationale, close to the fountain that stands there. This is the neighborhood of the theater, full of bars and prostitutes. Often a cart would pass by near her, carrying a wobbling stage set. Waiters in aprons were scattering sand over the paving stones, between green shrubs. There was a smell of absinthe, cigars, and oysters.