Madame Bovary

She was awakened at nine o’clock the next morning by the sound of voices in the square. A crowd had gathered in the market to read a large notice stuck to one of the poles, and she saw Justin climb up on a guard stone and tear the notice down. But at that moment, the rural policeman seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais came out of the pharmacy, and Mère Lefrançois, in the middle of the crowd, seemed to be holding forth.

  “Madame! Madame!” exclaimed Félicité as she came inside; “it’s scandalous!”

  And the poor girl, very upset, handed her a sheet of yellow paper she had just ripped from the door. With a quick glance, Emma read that all her goods were to be sold.

  Then they contemplated each other in silence. The two of them, servant and mistress, had no secrets from each other. At last Félicité sighed:

  “If I was you, Madame, I would go see Monsieur Guillaumin.”

  “Do you think … ?”

  And that question meant:

  “You know the household through the manservant—do you think the master might sometimes have talked about me?”

  “Yes, go there—you’d best go.”

  She dressed, putting on her black gown and her bonnet with the jet beads; and so that no one would see her (there were still many people in the square), she headed out of the village by the path along the water.

  She was out of breath when she reached the notary’s gate; the sky was dark, and a little snow was falling.

  At the sound of the bell, Théodore, in a red vest, appeared on the front steps; he came to open the gate for her almost familiarly, as though for someone he knew well, and showed her into the dining room.

  A large porcelain stove hummed under a cactus plant that filled the niche, and in frames of black wood, against the oak-grained wallpaper, hung Steuben’s Esmeralda and Schopin’s Potiphar. The laid table, the two silver chafing dishes, the crystal doorknobs, the parquet floor, and the furniture, all gleamed with a meticulous, English cleanliness; the windowpanes were decorated, at each corner, with colored glass.

  “This,” Emma was thinking, “is the kind of dining room I ought to have.”

  The notary came in wearing a dressing gown printed with palm trees, which he pressed against his body with his left arm, while with his right hand he doffed and then quickly replaced his maroon velvet toque, pretentiously positioned on the right side; from it emerged the ends of three strands of fair hair that, starting at the back of his head, encircled his bald skull.

  After he had offered her a seat, he sat down to breakfast, apologizing profusely for his impoliteness.

  “Monsieur,” she said, “I would like to ask you …”

  “What, madame? I’m listening.”

  She began to describe her situation.

  Maître Guillaumin was aware of it, having a secret association with the dry-goods merchant, from whom he regularly acquired the capital for the mortgage loans that he was asked to contract.

  So he knew (even better than she) the long history of those notes, very small at first, bearing various names as endorsers, with due dates spaced out at long intervals and renewed continually, until the day when, gathering up all the writs of nonpayment, the merchant had entrusted his friend Vinçart with taking the necessary legal actions in his own name, not wanting to be viewed as a monster by his fellow villagers.

  She punctuated her story with recriminations against Lheureux, recriminations to which the notary responded from time to time with a meaningless word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he lowered his chin into his sky-blue cravat, which was stuck with two diamond pins linked by a small gold chain; and he was smiling a singular smile, sickly-sweet and equivocal. But noticing that her feet were damp:

  “Do move closer to the stove … put them higher up … against the porcelain.”

  She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary continued gallantly:

  “Pretty things never do any harm.”

  Then she tried to move him to sympathy and, becoming emotional herself, told him about her household’s slender means, her troubles, her needs. He understood—such an elegant woman!—and, without interrupting his meal, he had turned right around toward her, so that his knee brushed against her boot, whose sole was curled, steaming, against the stove.

  But when she asked him for a thousand ecus, he tightened his lips, then declared that he was very sorry not to have had the management of her capital earlier, for there were a hundred convenient ways, even for a lady, of increasing her funds. In the peat bogs of Grumesnil or the lands around Le Havre, one could have ventured excellent speculations, with almost sure results; and he allowed her to consume herself with rage at the thought of the fantastic sums she could certainly have made.

  “How was it,” he went on, “that you never came to me?”

  “I don’t really know,” she said.

  “Why? Eh? … Were you perhaps afraid of me? I’m the one who should be complaining! We hardly know each other! Yet I’m deeply devoted to you; you don’t doubt that now, I hope?”

  He reached out his hand, took hers, pressed a greedy kiss upon it, then kept it on his knee; and he played with her fingers delicately, murmuring a thousand sweet things to her.

  His toneless voice whispered on like a running brook; a spark leaped from his eye through the glittering lens of his glasses; and his hands moved up inside Emma’s sleeve, to knead her arm. Against her cheek she felt the touch of his uneven breath. The man was bothering her horribly.

  She sprang to her feet and said:

  “Monsieur, I’m waiting!”

  “For what?” cried the notary, suddenly growing extremely pale.

  “The money!”

  “But …”

  Then, yielding to an overpowering surge of desire:

  “Well, yes, all right! …”

  He was dragging himself toward her on his knees, without concern for his dressing gown.

  “For mercy’s sake! Don’t go! I love you!”

  He seized her around the waist.

  A flood of crimson rushed into Madame Bovary’s face. She recoiled with a terrible look and cried:

  “It’s shameless of you to take advantage of my distress, monsieur! I’m to be pitied, but I’m not for sale!”

  And she went out.

  The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his handsome carpet slippers. They had been the gift of a lover. The sight of them finally consoled him. Besides, he was thinking, such an adventure would have taken him too far.

  “What a scoundrel! What a boor! … What a foul thing to do!” she was saying to herself, fleeing with a quick step under the aspens that lined the road. Disappointment at her lack of success added force to the indignation she felt at the insult to her modesty; it seemed to her that Providence was pursuing her relentlessly, and, filled with pride at this thought, never had she felt so much esteem for herself nor so much contempt for others. Some fighting spirit was transporting her. She longed to strike out at all men, spit in their faces, crush every one of them; and she walked rapidly straight on, pale, trembling, enraged, searching the empty horizon with tearful eyes, as though reveling in the hatred that was suffocating her.

  When she caught sight of her house, she felt suddenly numb. She could not go on; and yet she had to; besides, where could she run away to?

  Félicité was waiting for her on the doorstep.

  “Well?”

  “No!” said Emma.

  And for a quarter of an hour, the two of them conferred about the various people in Yonville who might be willing to help her. But each time Félicité named someone, Emma would reply:

  “Impossible! They wouldn’t!”

  “And Monsieur will be coming home!”

  “I know, I know … Leave me, I want to be alone.”

  She had tried everything. There was nothing left now; and so when Charles appeared, she was going to say to him:

 
“Go back outside. That carpet you’re walking on isn’t ours anymore. Not a thing in your house belongs to you anymore, not a stick of furniture, not a pin, not a piece of straw, and I’m the one who has ruined you, you poor man!”

  Then he would give a great sob, then he would weep and weep, and at last, after his surprise had passed, he would forgive her.

  “Yes,” she muttered, clenching her teeth, “he’ll forgive me. He! —whereas even if he gave me a million it wouldn’t be enough to induce me to forgive him for having known me … Never! Never!”

  The thought of Bovary’s superiority over her enraged her. And whether or not she confessed, he would at any moment now, soon, tomorrow, learn about the catastrophe; therefore, she would have to wait for the dreadful scene and suffer the burden of his magnanimity. She felt a desire to return to Lheureux’s shop: what was the use? To write to her father; it was too late. And perhaps she was regretting, now, that she had not yielded to the other man, when she heard a horse trotting down the alley. It was he, he was opening the gate, he was paler than the plaster wall. Rushing down the stairs, she fled through the square; and the mayor’s wife, who was chatting with Lestiboudois in front of the church, saw her go into the tax collector’s house.

  Madame Tuvache hurried off to tell Madame Caron. The two ladies went up into the attic; and, concealed by some linen laid over the drying racks, they positioned themselves comfortably where they could see the whole interior of Binet’s place.

  He was alone, in his mansard room, busily copying, in wood, one of those ivory ornaments impossible to describe, composed of crescents and of spheres carved one inside the other, the whole standing erect like an obelisk and useful for nothing; and he was just cutting into the last part, he was reaching the end! In the chiaroscuro of his workshop, the blond dust flew up from his tool like a plume of sparks under the iron shoes of a galloping horse; the two wheels were turning, droning; Binet was smiling, his chin lowered, his nostrils wide; and he seemed lost in that state of complete happiness induced, most probably, only by a mediocre occupation that entertains the mind with easy challenges and gratifies it with a success beyond which there is nothing further to aspire to.

  “Ah! There she is!” said Madame Tuvache.

  But it was hardly possible, because of the lathe, to hear what she was saying.

  At last, the ladies believed they could distinguish the word “francs,” and Mère Tuvache breathed very softly:

  “She’s asking him for an extension in paying her taxes.”

  “It would seem so!” said the other.

  They saw her pacing back and forth, examining the napkin rings, the candlesticks, the banister knobs displayed against the walls, while Binet stroked his beard with satisfaction.

  “Has she perhaps come to order something from him?” asked Madame Tuvache.

  “But he never sells anything!” objected her neighbor.

  The notary seemed to be listening, at the same time widening his eyes as if he did not understand. She went on, her manner affectionate and supplicating. She moved closer to him; her breast was heaving; they were no longer talking.

  “Is she making advances to him?” asked Madame Tuvache.

  Binet was flushed all the way to his ears. She took his hands.

  “Ah! This is too much!”

  And no doubt she was proposing something scandalous; for the tax collector—though he was a brave man, had fought at Bautzen and at Lützen, had taken part in the French campaign, and had even been proposed for the Legion of Honor—suddenly recoiled well back from her, as though he had seen a snake, and exclaimed:

  “Madame! What can you be thinking? …”

  “Such women ought to be whipped!” said Madame Tuvache.

  “Now where is she?” said Madame Caron.

  For she had disappeared while they were speaking; then they spotted her going down the Grande-Rue and turning right, as though heading toward the cemetery, and they lost themselves in conjectures.

  “Mère Rolet,” she said, when she reached the wet nurse’s house, “I can’t breathe! … Undo my laces.”

  She collapsed on the bed; she was sobbing. Mère Rolet covered her with a petticoat and remained standing by her. Then, when she did not answer, the good woman moved away, took up her spinning wheel, and began spinning some flax.

  “Oh! Stop it!” she murmured, thinking she heard Binet’s lathe.

  “What’s bothering her?” the nurse wondered. “Why has she come here?”

  She had rushed there, impelled by a kind of terror that drove her from her house.

  Lying on her back, motionless, her eyes fixed, she could discern things only indistinctly, though she applied her attention to them with an absurd persistence. She stared at the flakes of plaster on the walls, two sticks of firewood smoking end to end, and a large spider above her head walking in a cleft in the beam. At last she gathered her thoughts. She remembered … One day, with Léon … Oh, how distant it was! … The sun was shining on the river, and the clematis smelled lovely … Then, swept along by her memories as though by a boiling torrent, she soon recalled the previous day.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  Mère Rolet went outside, held up the fingers of her right hand toward the brightest part of the sky, and slowly came back in, saying:

  “Almost three o’clock.”

  “Oh! Thank you, thank you!”

  For he would come. She was sure of it! He would have got some money. But perhaps he would go down to her house, without suspecting that she was here; and she ordered the nurse to run to her house and get him.

  “Hurry!”

  “But my dear lady, I’m going! I’m going!”

  She was surprised, now, that she had not thought of him right away; yesterday, he had given his word, he would not break it; and already she saw herself at Lheureux’s, spreading out the three banknotes on his desk. Then she would have to invent a story to explain things to Bovary. What would it be?

  Meanwhile, the nurse was taking a long time returning. But as there was no clock in the cottage, Emma was afraid she might be exaggerating how much time had passed. She began to take little walks around the garden, step by step; she went down the path along the hedge and returned quickly, hoping the good woman might have come home another way. At last, tired of waiting, assailed by suspicions that she thrust away, no longer knowing if she had been there for a hundred years or a minute, she sat down in a corner and closed her eyes and blocked her ears. The gate creaked: she leaped up; before she could speak, Mère Rolet said:

  “There’s nobody at your house!”

  “What?”

  “No! No one! And Monsieur is weeping. He’s calling you. They’re looking for you.”

  Emma did not answer. She was breathing hard and staring wildly all around, while the countrywoman, frightened by her face, was instinctively backing away, thinking she was mad. Suddenly she struck her forehead and cried out, for the memory of Rodolphe, like a great bolt of lightning on a dark night, had entered her mind. He was so good, so sensitive, so generous! And besides, if he should hesitate to do her this service, she would know quite well how to force him by reminding him, with a single glance, of their lost love. She therefore set off toward La Huchette, quite unaware that she was hastening to yield to the very thing that had, only recently, so enraged her, nor in the least suspecting that she was prostituting herself.

  [8]

  She asked herself, as she walked: “What am I going to say? Where will I begin?” And as she came closer, she recognized the shrubs, the trees, the furze on the hill, the château beyond. She found herself experiencing once again the sensations of her first love, and her poor, contracted heart swelled with affection. A warm wind was blowing in her face; the snow, melting, fell drop by drop from the buds onto the grass.

  She entered, as she used to, by the little gate into the park, then came to the main courtyard, which
was bordered by a double row of thick-leaved lime trees. Their branches swayed, whistling. The dogs in the kennel all began to bark, and though the explosion of their voices echoed and reechoed, no one appeared.

  She went up the broad, straight staircase, with its wooden banisters, that led to the hallway paved with dusty flagstones onto which many bedrooms opened, one after another, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the end, at the very back, on the left. When she put her fingers on the latch, her strength suddenly abandoned her. She was afraid he would not be there, she almost wished he would not be, and yet this was her only hope, her last chance for salvation. She collected herself for a minute, and then, strengthening her resolve with a sense of the present necessity, she went in.

  He was in front of the fire, his feet against the mantel, smoking a pipe.

  “Why, it’s you!” he said, standing up abruptly.

  “Yes, it’s me! … Rodolphe, I need your advice.”

  And despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to unclench her teeth.

  “You haven’t changed, you’re as charming as ever!”

  “Oh—my charms!” she said bitterly. “They must be wretched enough, my dear friend, since you chose to reject them.”

  Then he started in upon an explanation of his behavior, excusing himself in vague terms, since he could not invent something better.

  She allowed herself to be persuaded by his words, even more by his voice and by the sight of his person, so much so that she pretended to believe, or perhaps did believe, the excuse he gave for their break: it was a secret on which the honor and even the life of a third person depended.

  “It doesn’t matter!” she said, looking at him sadly. “I suffered a good deal!”

  He answered philosophically:

  “Life is like that!”

  “Has it been good to you, at least,” Emma went on, “since we separated?”

  “Oh! Neither good … nor bad …”

  “Perhaps it would have been better if we’d never left each other.”

  “Yes … perhaps!”

  “Do you think so?” she said, moving closer to him.