Madame Bovary

  And she sighed:

  “Oh, Rodolphe! If you only knew! … I really loved you!”

  It was then that she took his hand, and they remained for some time with their fingers intertwined—as on the first day, at the Agricultural Fair! Pride was making him struggle against his feelings of tenderness. But, leaning against his chest, she said to him:

  “How did you expect me to live without you? One can’t break the habit of being happy, you know! I was desperate! I thought I was going to die! I’ll tell you about it; you’ll see how it was. And you … you stayed away from me! …”

  Because he had indeed carefully avoided her, for the past three years, out of that natural cowardice characteristic of the stronger sex; and Emma went on, with enchanting little motions of her head, more winning than an amorous cat:

  “You’ve loved other women, admit it. Oh, I understand them, you know! I forgive them; you probably seduced them, the way you seduced me. You’re a man! Everything about you would make a woman cherish you. But you and I will start all over again, won’t we? We’ll love each other! See, I’m laughing, I’m happy! … Say something, won’t you?”

  And she was ravishing to look at, a tear trembling in her eye like water from a rainstorm in the blue chalice of a flower.

  He drew her down on his knees, and with the back of his hand he caressed her smooth bands of hair, where, in the light of dusk, a last ray of sunlight gleamed like an arrow of gold. She bowed her head; at last he kissed her on the eyelids, very gently, with the tips of his lips.

  “But you’ve been crying!” he said. “Why?”

  She burst into sobs. Rodolphe thought it was from the violence of her love; when she said nothing, he took that silence for a last feeling of modesty, and he exclaimed:

  “Ah, forgive me! You’re the only one I care about. I’ve been idiotic and wicked! I love you, I’ll always love you! … What’s the matter? Please tell me!”

  He was on his knees.

  “Well, then … I’m ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand francs!”

  “But … but …,” he said, slowly getting to his feet, a grave expression coming over his features.

  “You know,” she went on quickly, “my husband had placed the whole of his fortune with a notary; he ran off. We borrowed; the patients weren’t paying. In fact, the settlement of the estate isn’t done yet; we’ll have something later. But today, because we don’t have three thousand francs, they’re taking possession of our things; it’s happening now, at this very instant; and so, counting on your friendship, I’ve come to you.”

  “Ah!” thought Rodolphe, suddenly turning very pale. “That’s why she came!”

  At last he said calmly:

  “I don’t have it, dear lady.”

  He was not lying. If he had had it, he would probably have given it, unpleasant though it usually is to make such handsome gestures: a request for money, of all the tempests that may descend upon love, being the coldest and most profoundly destructive.

  At first she went on staring at him for a long moment.

  “You don’t have it!”

  She said it again several times:

  “You don’t have it! … I ought to have spared myself this final humiliation. You never loved me! You’re no better than the rest!”

  She was giving herself away, she was destroying herself.

  Rodolphe broke in, declaring that he was “hard up” himself.

  “Oh, I’m sorry for you!” said Emma. “I’m so sorry for you! …”

  And, her eyes falling on a damascened rifle shining in a display of arms:

  “But when you’re as poor as that, you don’t put silver on the stock of your rifle! You don’t buy a clock with tortoiseshell inlays!” she went on, pointing to the Boulle clock. “Or silver-gilt whistles for your whips”—she touched them—“or watch charms for your watch chain! Oh! he lacks for nothing! There’s even a liqueur stand in his bedroom; for you pamper yourself, you live well, you have a château, farms, woods; you hunt, you travel to Paris … Oh! even these—” she exclaimed, taking his cuff links from the mantelpiece, “the least of your foolish things!—can be turned into money! … Oh! But I don’t want them!—keep them!”

  And she hurled the cuff links from her, their gold chain snapping as they struck the wall.

  “But I—I would have given you everything, I would have sold everything, I would have worked with my hands, I would have begged by the roadside, for a smile, for a glance, just to hear you say ‘Thank you!’ And you sit there quietly in your chair, as if you hadn’t already made me suffer enough? Without you, you know very well, I could have been happy! What made you do it? Was it a wager? Yet you loved me, you used to say so … And just now you said it again … Ah! you’d have done better to throw me out! My hands are still warm from your kisses, and here’s the very place, on the carpet, where you crouched at my knees and swore you’d love me forever. You made me believe it: for two years, you enticed me along in the most magnificent, the sweetest of dreams! … Oh, yes! and our plans for going away, do you remember? Oh, your letter! Your letter tore my heart to pieces! … And then, when I come back to him—and he’s rich, and happy, and free!—to implore him for help, help that anyone in the world would give, when I come begging, bringing back all my love, he rejects me, because it would cost him three thousand francs!”

  “I don’t have it!” answered Rodolphe with that perfect calm with which resigned anger covers itself like a shield.

  She went out. The walls were trembling, the ceiling was crushing her; and she walked back down the long avenue, stumbling over the piles of dead leaves that were scattering in the wind. At last she reached the ditch in front of the gate; she broke her nails on the latch, so frantic was she to open it. Then, a hundred paces farther on, breathless, nearly falling, she stopped. And, turning, she once again saw the impassive château, with its park, its gardens, its three courtyards, the many windows of its façade.

  She stood there lost in a daze, no longer aware of herself except through the beating of her arteries, which she thought she could hear outside herself like some deafening music filling the countryside. The earth beneath her feet was softer than a wave, and the furrows seemed to her like immense brown billows unfurling. All that her mind contained of memories and thoughts was pouring out at once, in a single burst, like the thousand parts of a firework. She saw her father, Lheureux’s office, their room back there, another landscape. Madness was stealing over her; she grew frightened and managed to take hold of herself again, though confusedly; for she did not remember the cause of her horrible state of mind, namely, the question of the money. She was suffering only because of her love, and she felt her soul slipping away through the memory of it, just as the wounded, in their last agony, feel the life going out of them through their bleeding wounds.

  Night was falling, rooks were flying overhead.

  It seemed to her suddenly that little flame-colored globes were exploding in the air like bullets bursting and flattening, and spinning over and over, then melting on the snow, among the branches of the trees. In the center of each, Rodolphe’s face appeared. They were multiplying, coming together, penetrating her; everything vanished. She recognized the lights of the houses, shining from a distance through the mist.

  At once her situation, like an abyss, appeared before her. She was panting as if her ribs might break. Then, in an ecstasy of heroism that filled her almost with joy, she ran down the hillside, across the plank bridge, on down the path and the alley, and across the marketplace, and came to the front of the pharmacist’s shop.

  No one was there. She was about to go in; but, at the sound of the shop’s bell, someone might come; and so, slipping through the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door to the kitchen, where a candle set on the stove was burning. Justin, in shirtsleeves, was carrying out a dish.

  ?
??Ah! They’re having dinner. Wait.”

  He returned. She tapped on the window. He came outside.

  “The key! The one for upstairs, where the …”

  “What?”

  And he looked at her, astonished by the pallor of her face, which stood out white against the black background of the night. She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful, and as majestic as a phantom; without understanding what she wanted, he had a foreboding of something terrible.

  But she went on quickly, in a low voice, a voice that was soft, melting:

  “I want it! Give it to me.”

  The wall was thin, and one could hear the clattering of the forks on the plates in the dining room.

  She claimed she needed to kill some rats that were stopping her from sleeping.

  “I ought to let Monsieur know.”

  “No! Stay here!”

  Then, with a casual air:

  “Oh, it’s not worth bothering, I’ll tell him myself later. Come on, light the way for me!”

  She went into the hallway onto which the laboratory door opened. Hanging against the wall was a key labeled capharnaum.

  “Justin!” shouted the apothecary, who was growing impatient.

  “Let’s go up!”

  And he followed her.

  The key turned in the lock, and she went straight to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue jar, wrenched out the cork, thrust in her hand, and, withdrawing it full of white powder, began to eat it.

  “Stop!” he cried, throwing himself on her.

  “Be quiet! Someone might come …”

  He was in despair and wanted to call out.

  “Don’t say anything about it. All the blame would fall on your master!”

  Then she turned away, suddenly at peace, almost serene, as though she had done her duty.

  When Charles, overwhelmed by the news of the seizure, returned to the house, Emma had just left. He shouted, he wept, he fainted, but she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Félicité to Homais’s, to Monsieur Tuvache’s, to Lheureux’s, to the Lion d’Or, everywhere; and in the intervals when his anguish subsided, he saw his reputation destroyed, their fortune lost, Berthe’s future blighted! What was the cause? … Not a word! He waited until six o’clock that evening. At last, unable to bear it any longer, and imagining she had gone to Rouen, he went out onto the big road, walked for half a league, met no one, waited a little longer, and came back.

  She had returned.

  “What happened? … Why? … Explain it to me! …”

  She sat down at her desk and wrote a letter, which she sealed slowly, adding the day’s date and the hour. Then she said in a solemn tone:

  “You’ll read this tomorrow; until then, I beg you, don’t ask me a single question! … No, not one!”

  “But …”

  “Oh, leave me alone!”

  And she lay down at full length on her bed.

  An acrid taste in her mouth woke her. She caught sight of Charles and closed her eyes again.

  She was observing herself curiously, to see if she was in pain. But no! Nothing yet. She could hear the ticking of the clock, the sound of the fire, and Charles breathing as he stood by her bed.

  “Ah! It’s a small thing, really—death!” she thought; “I’ll fall asleep, and everything will be over!”

  She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall.

  That hideous taste of ink persisted.

  “I’m thirsty! … Oh, I’m so thirsty!” she said with a sigh.

  “What’s the matter with you?” said Charles, who was holding out a glass to her.

  “It’s nothing! … Open the window … I’m suffocating!”

  And she was overcome by a wave of nausea so sudden that she scarcely had time to snatch her handkerchief from under the pillow.

  “Take it away!” she said quickly. “Throw it out!”

  He questioned her; she did not answer. She was keeping still, for fear that the least disturbance would make her vomit. Meanwhile, she felt an icy cold rising within her from her feet to her heart.

  “Ah! Now it’s beginning!” she murmured.

  “What did you say?”

  She rolled her head from side to side with a gentle motion full of anguish, at the same time opening her jaws again and again, as though she were holding something very heavy on her tongue. At eight o’clock, the vomiting began again.

  Charles observed that in the bottom of the basin there was a sort of white gravel clinging to the porcelain sides.

  “How extraordinary! How curious!” he kept saying.

  But she said loudly:

  “No. You’re wrong!”

  Then, delicately, almost caressingly, he passed his hand over her stomach. She gave a sharp cry. He drew back, alarmed.

  Then she began to moan, weakly at first. Her shoulders were shaken by a violent shudder, and she turned paler than the sheet in which her clenched fingers were buried. Her uneven pulse was almost imperceptible now.

  Beads of sweat stood out on her face, which was tinged with blue and almost rigid, as though frozen by the exhalation of some metallic vapor. Her teeth were chattering, her dilated eyes gazed vaguely around her, and to each question her only answer was to move her head back and forth; she even smiled two or three times. Gradually, her moans grew louder. A muffled howl escaped her; she claimed she was feeling better and would soon get up. But she was seized with convulsions; she cried out:

  “Oh! It’s awful. My God!”

  He flung himself to his knees by her bed.

  “Speak to me! What did you eat? Answer, in heaven’s name!”

  And he looked at her with a love in his eyes that she had never seen before.

  “Well … There … over there! …” she said in a faltering voice.

  He leaped to the desk, broke the seal, and read aloud: “ ‘No one should be blamed …’ ” He stopped, passed his hand over his eyes, and read it again.

  “What! … Help! Oh, help!”

  And he could do nothing but say that word over and over again: “Poisoned! Poisoned!” Félicité ran to Homais, who uttered it loudly in the square; Madame Lefrançois heard it at the Lion d’Or; several people got out of bed to let their neighbors know; and all night the village was awake.

  Perplexed, stammering, close to collapse, Charles walked around the room. He stumbled against the furniture, tore at his hair; and the pharmacist had never imagined there could be so dreadful a spectacle.

  He returned to his house to write to Monsieur Canivet and Doctor Larivière. He was flustered; he composed more than fifteen drafts. Hippolyte went off to Neufchâtel, and Justin spurred Bovary’s horse so hard that he had to leave it on the hill at Bois-Guillaume, foundered and three-quarters dead.

  Charles tried to leaf through his medical dictionary; he could not see, the lines were dancing.

  “Calm down!” said the apothecary. “It’s just a question of administering some powerful antidote. Which poison was it?”

  Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic.

  “Well, then,” Homais went on, “an analysis must be done.”

  For he knew that in cases of poisoning an analysis always had to be done; and Charles, not understanding, answered:

  “Ah! Do it! Do it! Save her …”

  Then, returning to her side, he sank down on the carpet, and he stayed there resting his head against the edge of her bed, sobbing.

  “Don’t cry!” she said to him. “I won’t be tormenting you much longer!”

  “Why? What made you do it?”

  She replied:

  “I had to, my dear.”

  “Weren’t you happy? Is it my fault? And yet I did everything I could!”

  “Yes … that’s true … You’re good. You are!”

  And she ran her hand through his hair slowly. T
he gentleness of that sensation was more than his sadness could bear; he felt his entire being give way to despair at the thought of having to lose her, just when she was admitting more love for him than ever before; and he could think of nothing; he knew nothing, dared nothing; the urgent need for an immediate decision was enough to overwhelm him.

  She was done, she was thinking, with all the betrayals, the atrocities, and the endless cravings that had tormented her. She hated no one now; a twilight confusion was descending on her thoughts, and of all earthly sounds Emma now heard only the intermittent lamentation of that poor heart, soft and indistinct, like the last echo of a symphony moving away into the distance.

  “Bring me little Berthe,” she said, raising herself on her elbow.

  “You’re not worse, are you?” asked Charles.

  “No! No!”

  The child came in, in the arms of her nanny, wearing a long nightgown from which her bare feet emerged, her expression serious, still half dreaming. She gazed in surprise at the disordered room and blinked her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning here and there on the furniture. They probably reminded her of the morning of New Year’s Day or Mid-Lent, when, wakened early in this same way by candlelight, she would be brought into her mother’s bed to be given her presents, for she began to say:

  “Where is it, Mama?”

  And when no one spoke:

  “But I don’t see my little shoe!”

  Félicité held her over the bed, while she was still looking toward the fireplace.

  “Was it nurse that took it?” she asked.

  And at that word, which carried her back in memory to her adulteries and her misfortunes, Madame Bovary turned her head away, as though in revulsion at another, stronger poison that was rising into her mouth. Berthe, meanwhile, was still on the bed.

  “Oh, how big your eyes are, Mama! How pale you are! You’re sweating! …”

  Her mother looked at her.

  “I’m frightened!” said the little girl, drawing back.

  Emma took her hand to kiss it; she struggled.

  “That’s enough! Take her away!” cried Charles, who was sobbing in the alcove.

  Then the symptoms stopped for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and with each meaningless word she spoke, with each slightly calmer breath that came from her chest, he gained new hope. At last, when Canivet entered, he threw himself into his arms, weeping.