Madame Bovary

  Perhaps she would have liked to confide in someone about all these things. But how does one express an uneasiness so intangible, one that changes shape like a cloud, that changes direction like the wind? She lacked the words, the occasion, the courage.

  If Charles had wished it, however, if he had suspected it, if his gaze, just once, had read her thoughts, it seemed to her that her heart would have been relieved of its fullness as quickly as the ripe fruit falls from an espaliered tree at the touch of a hand. But while the intimacy of their life grew ever closer, an inner detachment formed, which loosened her ties to him.

  Charles’s conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, and everyone’s ideas walked along it in their ordinary clothes, without inspiring emotion, or laughter, or reverie. He had never been interested, he said, when he lived in Rouen, in going to the theater to see the actors from Paris. He did not know how to swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and he was not able to explain to her, one day, a riding term she had encountered in a novel.

  But shouldn’t a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him.

  She would draw, sometimes; and Charles found it most entertaining to stand there and watch her bending over her pad, half closing her eyes to see her work better, or forming pellets of bread crumbs on her thumb. As for the piano, the faster her fingers raced, the more he marveled. She would strike the keys with assurance and run down the entire keyboard from top to bottom without stopping. When it was thus assaulted by her, the old instrument, with its buzzing strings, could be heard as far as the edge of the village if the window was open, and often the bailiff’s clerk, who was passing on the main road, bareheaded and in slippers, would stop to listen, holding his piece of paper in his hand.

  Moreover, Emma knew how to manage her household. She would send the patients the statements for their consultations in well-phrased letters that did not sound like invoices. When, on a Sunday, they had some neighbor to dinner, she would contrive to present a stylish dish, understood how to build a pyramid of greengages on some vine leaves, would serve little pots of preserves turned out on plates, and she even talked about buying mouth-rinsing bowls for the dessert course. All of this reflected a good deal of credit on Bovary.

  Charles came to respect himself more because he possessed such a wife. In the parlor, he would proudly show off two small sketches of hers, done in graphite, which he had had framed in very wide frames and hung against the wallpaper with long green cords. Coming out of Mass, one would see him standing on his doorstep wearing a fine pair of carpet slippers.

  He would return home late, at ten o’clock, sometimes midnight. Then he would ask for something to eat, and since the maid had gone to bed, it was Emma who would serve him. He would take off his frock coat in order to dine more comfortably. He would tell her one by one all the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, satisfied with himself, he would eat the remains of the beef hash with onions, cut the rind off his cheese, munch an apple, empty his carafe, then go off to bed, sleep on his back, and snore.

  Since he had long been used to wearing a nightcap, his scarf would not stay on his ears; thus his hair, in the morning, lay tousled over his face and whitened by the down from his pillow, whose strings would come undone during the night. He always wore stout boots, which had at the instep two thick creases slanting up toward the ankles, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line, stretched as though by a foot made out of wood. He would say they were plenty good enough for the country.

  His mother approved of this thriftiness—for she would come to see him as she had in the past, whenever there had been some particularly violent squall in her own household; and yet the elder Madame Bovary seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She felt that her style was too lofty for their station in life; wood, sugar, and candles vanished as fast as in a grand house, and the amount of charcoal consumed in the kitchen was enough to do the cooking for twenty-five! She tidied her linen in the cupboards and taught her to watch the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma accepted these lessons; Madame Bovary lavished them; and the words “my daughter” and “my mother” were exchanged all day long, accompanied by a little quiver of the lips, each woman uttering gentle speeches in a voice trembling with rage.

  In Madame Dubuc’s day, the old woman had felt that she was still the favorite; but now Charles’s love for Emma seemed to her a desertion of her own affection, an encroachment on what belonged to her; and she observed her son’s happiness in sad silence, like a ruined man gazing in through a window at people sitting around the dinner table in a house that had once been his own. In the guise of remembering times past, she would remind him of her struggles and sacrifices and, comparing them to Emma’s negligence, would conclude that it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively.

  Charles did not know what to answer; he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one to be infallible, and yet he found the other irreproachable. When Madame Bovary had gone, he would try to venture timidly, and in the same terms, one or two of the mildest observations he had heard his mama make; Emma, proving to him with one word that he was mistaken, would send him back to his patients.

  Meanwhile, acting upon theories that she believed to be sound, she kept trying to experience love. By moonlight, in the garden, she would recite all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart and would sing melancholy songs to him, with a sigh; but she would find that she was as calm afterward as she had been before, and Charles seemed neither more loving nor more deeply moved.

  When in this way she had made some attempt to strike the tinder against her heart without causing a single spark to fly from it, incapable, in any case, of understanding something she was not experiencing herself, just as she was incapable of believing in anything that did not manifest itself in a conventional form, she easily persuaded herself that Charles’s passion was no longer extraordinary. His effusions by now followed a pattern; he would embrace her at set times. This was a habit among his other habits, like a dessert course foreseen in advance, after the monotony of dinner.

  A gamekeeper, cured by Monsieur of a congestion of the lungs, had given Madame a little Italian greyhound; she would take it on her walks, for she did sometimes go out so as to be alone for a little while and not have to look at the eternal garden and the dusty road.

  She would go as far as the beech grove at Banneville, near the abandoned pavilion that forms one corner of the wall next to the fields. In the broad barrier ditch there, among the grasses, grow tall reeds with sharp-edged blades.

  She would begin by looking all around to see if anything had changed since the last time she had come. She would rediscover, in the same places, the foxgloves and the wallflowers, the clumps of nettles surrounding the large rocks, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were crumbing with rot on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, at first aimless, would wander at random, like her greyhound, who would circle through the fields yipping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrews, or nibbling the red poppies at the edge of a stand of wheat. Then her ideas would gradually settle, and, sitting on the grassy turf, digging into it with little thrusts of the tip of her parasol, Emma would ask herself again and again:

  “Oh, dear God! Why did I ever marry?”

  She would wonder whether there hadn’t been some way, through other chance combinations, of meeting a different man; and she would try to imagine those events that had not taken place, that different life, that husband whom she did not know. All of them, in fact, were unlike this one. He could have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractiv
e, as were those, no doubt, whom her old schoolmates from the convent had married. What were they doing now? In the city, amid the din of the streets, the buzz of the theaters, and the lights of the ballrooms, they were leading lives in which the heart expands, the senses blossom. But her own life was as cold as an attic with a north-facing window, and boredom, that silent spider, was spinning its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. She would remember the days when the prizes were given out, when she would step up onto the stage to go collect her little wreaths. With her hair in a braid, her white dress and her prunella-cloth shoes showing beneath, she looked charming, and as she returned to her seat, gentlemen would lean over to pay her compliments; the courtyard was filled with barouches, people were saying goodbye to her from the carriage doors, the music teacher bowed to her as he walked past with his violin case. How far away it all was! How far away!

  She would call Djali, take her between her knees, run her fingers over her long, delicate head, and say to her:

  “Come, give your mistress a kiss; you, at least, have no troubles.”

  Then, contemplating the melancholy expression of the slender animal as it yawned slowly, she would be moved and, comparing her to herself, would talk to her aloud as though comforting some afflicted soul.

  Sometimes, sudden squalls would blow up, winds that rolled in from the sea over the entire plateau of the Caux region, carrying a salty freshness far into the fields. The rushes would whistle close to the ground, and the leaves of the beeches would rustle, shivering rapidly, while the tops of the trees, still swaying, continued their loud murmur. Emma would pull her shawl tight around her shoulders and stand up.

  In the avenue, a green light dimmed by the leaves shone on the smooth moss that crackled softly under her feet. The sun was setting; the sky was red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, all the same, planted in a straight line, looked like a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold; a sudden fear would come over her, she would call Djali, hurry back to Tostes by the main road, sink down into an armchair, and all evening long she would remain silent.

  But toward the end of September, something extraordinary occurred in her life: she was invited to La Vaubyessard, the home of the Marquis d’Andervilliers.

  Secretary of State during the Restoration, the Marquis, seeking to reenter political life, had long been preparing for his candidacy for the Chamber of Deputies. In winter, he would make generous distributions of firewood, and, at departmental council meetings, he was always eloquent in demanding better roads for his district. He had had, during the very hot weather, an abscess in his mouth, of which Charles had relieved him as though miraculously, by giving it just the right nick of his lancet. The steward, sent to Tostes to pay for the operation, reported, that evening, that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor’s little garden. Now, the cherry trees at La Vaubyessard were not doing well, Monsieur the Marquis asked Bovary for some cuttings, took it upon himself to thank him for them in person, noticed Emma, thought that she had a pretty figure and that she did not greet him like a peasant; and so at the château they did not believe they were going beyond the bounds of condescension nor, on the other hand, making a blunder, by inviting the young couple.

  One Wednesday, at three o’clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in their boc, left for La Vaubyessard, with a large trunk fastened on behind and a hatbox positioned in front of the apron. Charles had, in addition, a cardboard box between his legs.

  They arrived at nightfall, as the lamps in the park were being lit to guide the carriages.

  [8]

  The château, modern in its construction, Italian in style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps in front, stretched across the far end of an immense lawn on which a few cows were grazing among widely spaced clumps of tall trees, while little rounded bouquets of shrubs, rhododendrons, mock oranges, and snowballs lifted their tufts of green at unequal heights along the curved line of the sandy drive. A stream ran under a bridge; through the mist one could make out buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the meadow, which was bordered by two gently sloping wooded hillsides, and, in the back, in two parallel lines among the groves of trees, stood the coach houses and stables, remains of the old château that had been pulled down.

  Charles’s boc stopped in front of the center flight of steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came forward and, offering his arm to the doctor’s wife, led her into the entrance hall.

  It was very lofty, paved with marble flagstones, and the sounds of footsteps and voices echoed through it as in a church. Opposite rose a straight staircase, and to the left a gallery that looked out on the garden led to the billiards room, from which one could hear, at the door, the caroming of the ivory balls. As she was passing through it on her way to the drawing room, Emma saw men with serious faces standing around the game, their chins resting on their high cravats, all of them decorated, smiling silently as they made their shots. Against the dark woodwork of the wainscoting, large gilded frames bore, along their lower edges, names written in black letters. She read: “Jean-Antoine d’Andervilliers d’Yverbonville, Comte de La Vaubyessard and Baron de La Fresnaye, killed at the Battle of Coutras, October 20, 1587.” And on another: “Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d’Andervilliers de La Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Knight of the Order of Saint Michael, wounded in combat at La Hougue-Saint-Vaast, May 29, 1692, died at La Vaubyessard, January 23, 1693.” Then one could barely make out those that came after, because the light from the lamps, directed down onto the green cloth of the billiards table, left the room floating in shadow. Burnishing the horizontal canvases, it broke over them in fine crests, following the cracks in the varnish; and from all those great black squares bordered in gold there would emerge, here and there, some lighter part of the paint, a pale forehead, a pair of eyes looking at you, wigs uncoiling over the powdery shoulders of red coats, or the buckle of a garter high up on a plump calf.

  The Marquis opened the door of the drawing room; one of the ladies stood up (the Marquise herself), came forward to meet Emma, and asked her to sit down next to her, on a love seat, where she began talking to her in a friendly way, as if she had known her for a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with lovely shoulders, an aquiline nose, a drawling voice, who was wearing, that evening, on her chestnut hair, a simple lace fichu that hung down behind in a triangle. A fair-haired young person was sitting beside her, in a tall-backed chair; and some gentlemen, each of whom had a little flower in his jacket buttonhole, were chatting with the ladies all around the fireplace.

  At seven o’clock, dinner was served. The men, who were more numerous, sat at the first table, in the entrance hall, and the ladies at the second, in the dining room, with the Marquis and the Marquise.

  As she went in, Emma felt enveloped in warm air, a mingling of the scents of the flowers and fine linen, the savor of the meats and the smell of the truffles. The candles in the candelabras cast long flames over the silver dish covers; the facets of the crystal glasses, covered in a dull mist, reflected a pale glimmer from one to the other; clusters of flowers stood in a line down the whole length of the table; and on the broad-rimmed plates, napkins folded in the shape of bishops’ mitres each held, in the opening between its two folds, a small oval roll. The red claws of the lobsters overhung the edges of the platters; large fruits were piled on moss in openwork baskets; the quails wore their feathers; coils of steam rose into the air; and, grave as a judge in his silk stockings, knee breeches, white tie, and jabot, the butler conveyed the platters, already carved, between the shoulders of the guests and with a flick of his spoon would cause the piece one had chosen to leap forth. On the tall porcelain stove with its copper bands, a statue of a woman draped to the chin stared motionless at the room full of people.

  Madame Bovary noticed that several of the ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses.

  Meanwhile, at the head of the table, alone among
all these women, bent over his full plate, his napkin knotted behind him like a child, an old man sat eating, drops of sauce falling from his mouth. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he wore his hair in a short pigtail wound in black ribbon. This was the Marquis’s father-in-law, the old Duc de Laverdière, once a favorite of the Comte d’Artois, in the days of the hunting parties at Le Vaudreuil, home of the Marquis de Conflans, and he had been, they said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun. He had led a riotous life of debauchery, filled with duels, wagers, abductions of women, he had devoured his fortune and alarmed all his family. A servant, behind his chair, named loudly in his ear the dishes he pointed at with his finger, stammering; and Emma’s eyes returned again and again of their own accord to this old man with his pendulous lips, as to something extraordinary and august. He had lived at Court and slept in the beds of queens!

  Iced Champagne was poured. Emma shivered over every inch of her skin as she felt that cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates or eaten pineapple. Even the powdered sugar seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere.

  Afterward the ladies went up to their rooms to get ready for the ball.

  Emma prepared herself with the meticulous care of an actress at her debut. She arranged her hair as the hairdresser had advised, and slipped into her barege gown, laid out on the bed. Charles’s pants were tight around his stomach.

  “My foot straps are going to bother me when I dance.”

  “Dance?” repeated Emma.

  “Yes!”

  “You’re out of your mind! They’d make fun of you. Stay in your seat. Besides, it’s more suitable for a doctor,” she added.