Madame Bovary

  And he looked at her fixedly, all the while holding two long pieces of paper in his hand and sliding them back and forth between his fingertips. At last, he opened his billfold and spread out on the table four promissory notes, each for a thousand francs.

  “Sign these for me,” he said, “and keep all of it.”

  She cried out, shocked.

  “But if I give you the surplus,” answered Monsieur Lheureux shamelessly, “aren’t I actually doing you a service?”

  And, taking a pen, he wrote at the bottom of the bill: “Received from Madame Bovary, four thousand francs.”

  “What are you worried about, since in six months you’ll be receiving the balance on your shack, and I’m making the last note fall due after that payment?”

  Emma was becoming a little confused by his calculations, and she felt a ringing in her ears as if gold coins were bursting out of their sacks and clinking on the floor all around her. At last Lheureux explained that he had a friend named Vinçart, a banker at Rouen, who would discount these four notes, and then he himself would return the surplus of the real debt to Madame.

  But instead of two thousand francs, he brought only eighteen hundred, because this friend Vinçart (as was only right) had taken a deduction of two hundred, to cover commission and discount.

  Then he casually requested a receipt.

  “You understand … in business … sometimes … And with the date, please, the date.”

  A vista of attainable fantasies then opened before Emma. She had enough prudence to put aside a thousand ecus, with which the first three notes, when they fell due, were paid; but the fourth, by chance, arrived at the house on a Thursday, and Charles, stunned, waited patiently for his wife’s return to hear her explanations.

  If she had not told him about this note, it was to spare him domestic worries; she sat down on his knee, caressed him, talked lovingly to him, made a long enumeration of all the indispensable things she had taken on credit.

  “So you’ll have to agree that, considering how many things there were, that wasn’t so expensive.”

  Charles, at his wits’ end, soon had recourse to the eternal Lheureux, who promised to calm things down, if Monsieur would sign two notes to him, one of which would be for seven hundred francs, payable in three months. To put himself in a position to do this, he wrote his mother a touching letter. Instead of sending an answer, she came herself; and when Emma wanted to know if he had gotten anything from her:

  “Yes,” he answered. “But she’s asking to see the bill.”

  The next day, at dawn, Emma hurried to Monsieur Lheureux to beg him to draw up another note, which would not be for more than a thousand francs; for if she were to show the one for four thousand, she would have had to say that she had paid off two-thirds of it and confess, consequently, to the sale of the building, the negotiation of which was skillfully handled by the merchant and actually not made known until later.

  Despite the very low price of each article, the elder Madame Bovary did not fail to find the expenditure unduly high.

  “Couldn’t you do without a carpet? Why replace the fabric on the armchairs? In my day, they had just one armchair in a house, for the old people—at least, it was like that in my mother’s house, and she was a respectable woman, I can assure you. Not everyone can be rich! No fortune can hold out against constant wastefulness! I would blush to pamper myself the way you do! and yet I’m an old woman, I need care and attention … What a lot! what a lot of frills and frippery! What! silk for lining, at two francs! … whereas you can find muslin at ten sous, even at eight sous, that does the job perfectly.”

  Emma, lying back in the love seat, replied with the greatest calm:

  “Oh, madame, that’s enough! that’s enough! …”

  The other continued to lecture her, predicting that they would end up in the poorhouse. Anyway, it was Bovary’s fault. Fortunately, he had promised to cancel that power of attorney …

  “What?”

  “Ah! He swore to me he would,” the good woman went on.

  Emma opened the window, called out to Charles, and the poor fellow was forced to confess the promise extracted from him by his mother.

  Emma vanished, then quickly returned, majestically handing her a large piece of paper.

  “I thank you,” said the old woman.

  And she threw the power of attorney into the fire.

  Emma burst into a strident, harsh laughter that went on and on: she was having an attack of hysterics.

  “Oh, my God!” cried Charles. “You’re at fault, too! You come and make trouble for her! …”

  His mother, shrugging, claimed it was all just playacting.

  But Charles, rebelling for the first time, took up his wife’s defense, so that the elder Madame Bovary made up her mind to leave. She went off the very next day, and on the doorsill, when he tried to hold her back, she replied:

  “No, no! You love her more than me, and you’re right, that’s as it should be. As for the rest, it’s just too bad! You’ll see! … Take care of yourself! … because I’m not about to come back soon, making trouble for her, as you say.”

  Charles remained nonetheless very shamefaced with Emma, who did not hide the resentment she still felt against him for his lack of trust; many entreaties were necessary before she consented to take back her power of attorney, and he even went with her to Monsieur Guillaumin to have him draw up a second one, exactly the same.

  “I understand,” said the notary; “a man of science can’t be expected to trouble himself with the practical details of life.”

  And Charles felt soothed by this unctuous reflection, which gave his weakness the appearance of a preoccupation with higher things.

  What an eruption, the following Thursday, at the hotel, in their room, with Léon! She laughed, wept, sang, danced, sent for sorbets, insisted on smoking cigarettes, seemed to him extravagant, but adorable, splendid.

  He did not know what reaction was driving her to plunge deeper and deeper, with her whole being, into the pursuit of pleasure. She was becoming irritable, greedy, and voluptuous; and she would walk with him in the streets, her head high—unafraid, she would say, of compromising herself. Sometimes, however, Emma would shudder at the sudden thought of meeting Rodolphe; for it seemed to her, even though they had separated forever, that she was not completely free of his domination.

  One evening, she did not return to Yonville at all. Charles grew frantic, and little Berthe, not wanting to go to bed without her mama, was sobbing as though her heart would break. Justin had set off on a haphazard search down the road. Monsieur Homais had left his pharmacy.

  Finally, at eleven o’clock, unable to bear it any longer, Charles harnessed his boc, leaped into it, whipped up his horse, and arrived toward two o’clock in the morning at the Croix Rouge. No one there. He thought the clerk might have seen her; but where did he live? Charles, fortunately, recalled the address of his employer. He rushed there.

  Day was beginning to break. He made out some metal nameplates above a door; he knocked. Someone, without opening, shouted out the information he had asked for, adding a number of insults against people who disturbed others at night.

  The house where the clerk lived had no doorbell, no knocker, no porter. Charles pounded with his fist on the shutters. A policeman happened to be passing; then he became afraid and went away.

  “I’m crazy,” he was saying to himself; “they probably kept her for dinner at Monsieur Lormeaux’s.”

  The Lormeaux family no longer lived in Rouen.

  “She must have stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Oh! Madame Dubreuil has been dead ten months! … Well, where is she?”

  An idea came to him. He asked, in a café, for the Directory and searched quickly for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived in the rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers, at number 74.

  As he was entering that street, Emma herse
lf appeared at the other end; he did not so much embrace her as fling himself on her, exclaiming:

  “What kept you yesterday?”

  “I was taken ill.”

  “From what? … Where? … How? …”

  She ran her hand over her forehead and answered:

  “At Mademoiselle Lempereur’s.”

  “I was sure of it! I was on my way there.”

  “Oh, it’s not worth the trouble!” said Emma. “She’s just gone out; but in the future, don’t be uneasy. I’m not free, don’t you see, if I know that the slightest delay upsets you like this.”

  She was giving herself a kind of permission not to be hampered in her escapades. And, quite freely, she took full advantage of it. Whenever she was seized by a desire to see Léon, she would leave under any pretext at all, and, as he was not expecting her that day, she would go looking for him at his office.

  It was a great delight the first few times; but soon he no longer hid the truth, namely, that his employer was complaining loudly about these disruptions.

  “Oh, nonsense! Come on,” she would say.

  And he would slip out.

  She wanted him to dress all in black and grow a little pointed beard on his chin so that he would resemble the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his rooms, found them mediocre; he blushed at that; she took no notice, then advised him to buy curtains like her own; and when he objected to the expense:

  “Oh, you do hold tight to your little ecus, don’t you!” she said, laughing.

  Léon would have to tell her, each time, everything he had done since they last met. She asked for verses, verses composed for her, a love poem in her honor; he could never manage to find the rhyme for the second line, and in the end he copied a sonnet from a keepsake album.

  He did this less out of vanity than with the sole aim of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was becoming her mistress more than she was his. She said tender things to him and gave him kisses that transported his soul. Where could she have learned this depravity, so deep and so dissembled that it was almost incorporeal?

  [6]

  On his trips to see her, Léon had often dined at the home of the pharmacist, and he had felt obliged, out of politeness, to invite him in return.

  “With pleasure!” Monsieur Homais had responded. “I need to revitalize myself a bit, in any case, for I’m getting into a rut here. We’ll go to the theater, eat in a restaurant, treat ourselves to a real fling!”

  “Ah! My dearest!” murmured Madame Homais tenderly, dismayed by the unknown perils he was preparing to risk.

  “Well, what is it? Don’t you think I’m already ruining my health as it is by living amid the continual emanations from the pharmacy! Such, however, is the nature of women: they’re jealous of Science, then oppose one’s enjoying the most legitimate amusement. Never mind, you can count on me; one of these days, I’ll turn up in Rouen and together we’ll make the monacos fly.”

  In earlier times, the apothecary would have carefully avoided such an expression; but he was now inclined toward a playful Parisian style, which he found in better taste; and, like his neighbor Madame Bovary, he would examine the clerk inquisitively about the customs of the capital; he even used slang to dazzle … the bourgeoisie, saying “turne” (digs), “bazar” (stuff), “chicard” (classy), “chicandard” (most classy), “Breda-street” (red-light district), and “Je me la casse” (I’m hoofing it) for “I’m going now.”

  And so, one Thursday, Emma was surprised to encounter Monsieur Homais in the kitchen of the Lion d’Or wearing traveling clothes, that is, draped in an old cloak that no one knew he owned, and carrying in one hand a suitcase, and in the other the footmuff from his shop. He had not confided his plan to anyone, for fear of worrying the public by his absence.

  The idea of revisiting the places where he had spent his youth no doubt excited him, for he did not stop discoursing all the way there; then, scarcely arrived, he leaped smartly from the carriage and set off in search of Léon; and though the clerk struggled, Monsieur Homais dragged him out to the large Café de Normandie, which he entered majestically without doffing his hat, deeming it very provincial to bare his head in a public place.

  Emma waited for Léon three-quarters of an hour. Finally she hurried to his office, and, lost in conjectures of every kind, accusing him of indifference and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the afternoon with her forehead pressed to the windowpane.

  At two o’clock they were still at the table, face-to-face. The large room was emptying; the stovepipe, in the form of a palm tree, spread out over the white ceiling in a gold fan; and near them, behind the window, in the full sun, a small jet of water gurgled into a marble basin where, among watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters extended their claws toward a heap of quail lying on their sides.

  Homais was thoroughly enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated by luxury than by a sumptuous meal, still, the Pommard was exciting his faculties a little, and, when the rum omelet appeared, he began to advance certain immoral theories concerning women. What captivated him above all was chic. He adored an elegant toilette in a well-furnished room, and, as for the bodily attributes, he was not averse to a dainty morsel.

  Léon was gazing at the clock in despair. The apothecary was drinking, eating, talking.

  “You must be feeling quite bereft,” he said suddenly, “here in Rouen. But then your love doesn’t live too far away.”

  And when the other blushed:

  “Come now, be frank! You won’t deny that in Yonville …”

  The young man began to stammer.

  “At Madame Bovary’s, weren’t you courting …”

  “Well, who?”

  “The servant girl!”

  He was not joking; but, vanity prevailing over discretion, Léon protested in spite of himself. Besides, he liked only dark-haired women.

  “I agree with you,” said the pharmacist; “they’re more hot-blooded.”

  And leaning over to his friend’s ear, he indicated the signs by which one could recognize a hot-blooded woman. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: German women were moody, French women licentious, Italian women passionate.

  “And what about Negro women?” asked the clerk.

  “That’s a taste cultivated by artists,” said Homais. “—Waiter! Two demitasses.”

  “Shall we go?” said Léon at last, becoming impatient.

  “Yes,” said Homais in English.

  But before going, he asked to see the head of the establishment and offered him his congratulations.

  Then the young man, in the hope of being left alone, alleged that he had some business to take care of.

  “Ah! I’ll escort you!” said Homais.

  And as he walked along the streets with him, Homais talked about his wife, his children, their future, and his pharmacy, describing the state of decline it had once been in and the degree of perfection to which he had raised it.

  Having arrived in front of the Hôtel de Boulogne, Léon left him abruptly, climbed the stairs, and found his mistress highly emotional.

  When she heard the pharmacist’s name, she flew into a rage. Yet he was piling one good excuse upon the next: It was not his fault. Didn’t she know Monsieur Homais? Could she believe that he preferred his company? But she turned away; he held her back; and, sinking to his knees, he put his arms around her waist in a languorous posture full of desire and supplication.

  She stood there; her great fiery eyes were gazing at him soberly in a way that was almost terrifying. Then they darkened with tears, her rosy eyelids lowered, she yielded her hands, and Léon was just bringing them to his lips when a servant appeared and informed Monsieur that someone was asking for him.

  “Are you going to come back?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

/>   “Right away.”

  “It was a dodge,” said the pharmacist when he saw Léon. “I wanted to interrupt this appointment of yours, which I thought you didn’t seem too pleased about. Let’s go to Bridoux’s and have a glass of garus.”

  Léon swore he had to return to his office. Then the apothecary made some jokes about paperwork and legal proceedings.

  “Forget about Cujas and Bartole for a little while—what the devil! What’s to stop you? Be a bold fellow! Come to Bridoux’s; you’ll have a look at his dog. It’s very odd!”

  And when the clerk persisted:

  “Then I’ll come, too. I’ll read a newspaper while I wait, or dip into one of the Codes.”

  Léon, stunned by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’s chatter, and perhaps the heaviness of his lunch, remained undecided, as though bewitched by the pharmacist, who kept repeating:

  “Come to Bridoux’s! It’s only a couple of steps away, in the rue Malpalu.”

  And so, out of cowardice, out of stupidity, out of that shameful feeling that entices us into the most antipathetic actions, he let himself be taken off to Bridoux’s; and they found him in his little courtyard, overseeing three waiters who were panting as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making Seltzer water. Homais gave them some advice; he embraced Bridoux; they had their garus. Twenty times over, Léon tried to go; but the pharmacist held him back by the arm, saying:

  “In a minute! I’m leaving. We’ll stop by Le Fanal de Rouen and see those gentlemen. I’ll introduce you to Thomassin.”

  He got rid of him, however, and raced back to the hotel. Emma was no longer there.

  She had just left, enraged. She hated him now. That broken promise at their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she sought yet more reasons to separate from him: he was incapable of heroism, he was weak, ordinary, softer than a woman, and also greedy and timid.

  Then, growing calmer, she came to see that she had probably disparaged him unjustly. But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands.