Madame Bovary
by
Gustave Flaubert
Part 7 out of 8
And he called through the peep-hole that looked down into the
shop--
"Annette, don't forget the three coupons of No. 14."
The servant appeared. Emma understood, and asked how much money
would be wanted to put a stop to the proceedings.
"It is too late."
"But if I brought you several thousand francs--a quarter of the
sum--a third--perhaps the whole?"
"No; it's no use!"
And he pushed her gently towards the staircase.
"I implore you, Monsieur Lheureux, just a few days more!" She was
sobbing.
"There! tears now!"
"You are driving me to despair!"
"What do I care?" said he, shutting the door.
Chapter Seven
She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff,
with two assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up
the inventory for the distraint.
They began with Bovary's consulting-room, and did not write down
the phrenological head, which was considered an "instrument of
his profession"; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the
saucepans, the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all
the nick-nacks on the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the
linen, the dressing-room; and her whole existence to its most
intimate details, was, like a corpse on whom a post-mortem is
made, outspread before the eyes of these three men.
Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a
white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to
time--"Allow me, madame. You allow me?" Often he uttered
exclamations. "Charming! very pretty." Then he began writing
again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand.
When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She
kept a desk there in which Rodolphe's letters were locked. It had
to be opened.
"Ah! a correspondence," said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet
smile. "But allow me, for I must make sure the box contains
nothing else." And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to
shake out napoleons. Then she grew angered to see this coarse
hand, with fingers red and pulpy like slugs, touching these pages
against which her heart had beaten.
They went at last. Felicite came back. Emma had sent her out to
watch for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly
installed the man in possession under the roof, where he swore he
would remain.
During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched
him with a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in
every line of his face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the
chimney-piece ornamented with Chinese screens, over the large
curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had,
softened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather
an immense regret, that, far from crushing, irritated her
passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the
fire-dogs.
Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight
noise.
"Is anyone walking upstairs?" said Charles.
"No," she replied; "it is a window that has been left open, and
is rattling in the wind."
The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the
brokers whose names she knew. They were at their country-places
or on journeys. She was not discouraged; and those whom she did
manage to see she asked for money, declaring she must have some,
and that she would pay it back. Some laughed in her face; all
refused.
At two o'clock she hurried to Leon, and knocked at the door. No
one answered. At length he appeared.
"What brings you here?"
"Do I disturb you?"
"No; but--" And he admitted that his landlord didn't like his
having "women" there.
"I must speak to you," she went on.
Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.
"No, no! Down there, in our home!"
And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.
On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very
pale. She said to him--
"Leon, you will do me a service?"
And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she
added--
"Listen, I want eight thousand francs."
"But you are mad!"
"Not yet."
And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she
explained her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it;
her mother-in-law detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but
he, Leon, he would set about finding this indispensable sum.
"How on earth can I?"
"What a coward you are!" she cried.
Then he said stupidly, "You are exaggerating the difficulty.
Perhaps, with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be
stopped."
All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible
that they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Leon,
could be security instead of her.
"Go, try, try! I will love you so!"
He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with
solemn face--
"I have been to three people with no success."
Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney
corners, motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as
she stamped her feet. He heard her murmuring--
"If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some."
"But where?"
"At your office." And she looked at him.
An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their
lids drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look,
so that the young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute
will of this woman who was urging him to a crime. Then he was
afraid, and to avoid any explanation he smote his forehead,
crying--
"Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope"
(this was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant);
"and I will bring it you to-morrow," he added.
Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had
expected. Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--
"However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for
me, my darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!"
He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no
strength left for any sentiment.
Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville,
mechanically obeying the force of old habits.
The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and
sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen
folk, in Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She
reached the Place du Parvis. People were coming out after
vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three doors like a
stream through the three arches of a bridge, and in the middle
one, more motionless than a rock, stood the beadle.
Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope,
she had entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out
before her, less profound than her love; and she walked on
weeping beneath her veil, giddy, staggering, almost fainting.
"Take care!" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard
that was thrown open.
She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between
the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who
was it? She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.
Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was
empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean
against a wall to keep herself from falling.
Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know.
All within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost,
sinking at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost
with joy that, on reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good
Homais, who was watching a large box full of pharmaceutical
stores being hoisted on to the "Hirondelle." In his hand he held
tied in a silk handkerchief six cheminots for his wife.
Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped
loaves, that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige
of Gothic food that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the
Crusades, and with which the robust Normans gorged themselves of
yore, fancying they saw on the table, in the light of the yellow
torches, between tankards of hippocras and huge boars' heads, the
heads of Saracens to be devoured. The druggist's wife crunched
them up as they had done--heroically, despite her wretched teeth.
And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never failed to
bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the
Rue Massacre.
"Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her
into the "Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords
of the netting, and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive
and Napoleonic.
But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill
he exclaimed--
"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable
industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to
work. Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are
floundering about in mere barbarism."
The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door,
as if it were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.
"This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection."
And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for
the first time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque
cornea," "sclerotic," "facies," then asked him in a paternal
tone--
"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself."
He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The
blind man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost
idiotic. At last Monsieur Homais opened his purse--
"Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my
advice: you'll be the better for it."
Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the
druggist said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic
pomade of his own composition, and he gave his address--"Monsieur
Homais, near the market, pretty well known."
"Now," said Hivert, "for all this trouble you'll give us your
performance."
The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown
back, whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue,
and rubbed his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of
hollow yell like a famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw
him over her shoulder a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune.
It seemed to her very fine thus to throw it away.
The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant
out through the window, crying--
"No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose
the diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries."
The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes
gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable
fatigue overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied,
discouraged, almost asleep.
"Come what may come!" she said to herself. "And then, who knows?
Why, at any moment could not some extraordinary event occur?
Lheureux even might die!"
At nine o'clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of
voices in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a
large bill fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was
climbing on to a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this
moment the rural guard seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais
came out of his shop, and Mere Lefrangois, in the midst of the
crowd, seemed to be perorating.
"Madame! madame!" cried Felicite, running in, "it's abominable!"
And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that
she had just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all
her furniture was for sale.
Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and
mistress had no secret one from the other. At last Felicite
sighed--
"If I were you, madame, I should go to Monsieur Guillaumin."
"Do you think--"
And this question meant to say--
"You who know the house through the servant, has the master
spoken sometimes of me?"
"Yes, you'd do well to go there."
She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads,
and that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the
Place), she took the path by the river, outside the village.
She reached the notary's gate quite breathless. The sky was
sombre, and a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell,
Theodore in a red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to
open the door almost familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and
showed her into the dining-room.
A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up
the niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the
oak-stained paper hung Steuben's "Esmeralda" and Schopin's
"Potiphar." The ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes,
the crystal door-knobs, the parquet and the furniture, all shone
with a scrupulous, English cleanliness; the windows were
ornamented at each corner with stained glass.
"Now this," thought Emma, "is the dining-room I ought to have."
The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his
breast with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and
quickly put on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked
on the right side, whence looked out the ends of three fair curls
drawn from the back of the head, following the line of his bald
skull.
After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast,
apologising profusely for his rudeness.
"I have come," she said, "to beg you, sir--"
"What, madame? I am listening."
And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin
knew it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from
whom he always got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was
asked to make.
So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the
bills, small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made
out at long dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when,
gathering together all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had
bidden his friend Vincart take in his own name all the necessary
proceedings, not wishing to pass for a tiger with his
fellow-citizens.
She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheureux, to
which the notary replied from time to time with some
insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he
buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which were thrust
two diamond pins, held together by a small gold chain; and he
smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous fashion. But
noticing that her feet were damp, he said--
"Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the
porcelain."
She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a gallant
tone--
"Beautiful things spoil nothing."
Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began
telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her
wants. He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without
leaving off eating, he had turned completely round towards her,
so that his knee brushed against her boot, whose sole curled
round as it smoked against the stove.
But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and
declared he was very sorry he had not had the management of her
fortune before, for there were hundreds of ways very convenient,
even for a lady, of turning her money to account. They might,
either in the turf-peats of Grumesnil or building-ground at
Havre, almost without risk, have ventured on some excellent
speculations; and he let her consume herself with rage at the
thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly have made.
"How was it," he went on, "that you didn't come to me?"
"I hardly know," she said.
"Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary,
who ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very
devoted to you. You do not doubt that, I hope?"
He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss,
then held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her
fingers whilst he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid
voice murmured like a running brook; a light shone in his eyes
through the glimmering of his spectacles, and his hand was
advancing up Emma's sleeve to press her arm. She felt against her
cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed her horribly.
She sprang up and said to him--
"Sir, I am waiting."
"For what?" said the notary, who suddenly became very pale.
"This money."
"But--" Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire,
"Well, yes!"
He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his
dressing-gown.
"For pity's sake, stay. I love you!"
He seized her by her waist. Madame Bovary's face flushed purple.
She recoiled with a terrible look, crying--
"You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am
to be pitied--not to be sold."
And she went out.
The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine
embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of
them at last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an
adventure might have carried him too far.
"What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!" she said to
herself, as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the
path. The disappointment of her failure increased the indignation
of her outraged modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued
her implacably, and, strengthening herself in her pride, she had
never felt so much esteem for herself nor so much contempt for
others. A spirit of warfare transformed her. She would have liked
to strike all men, to spit in their faces, to crush them, and she
walked rapidly straight on, pale, quivering, maddened, searching
the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes, and as it were rejoicing
in the hate that was choking her.
When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go
on; and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?
Felicite was waiting for her at the door. "Well?"
"No!" said Emma.
And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the
various persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help
her. But each time that Felicite named someone Emma replied--
"Impossible! they will not!"
"And the master'll soon be in."
"I know that well enough. Leave me alone."
She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now;
and when Charles came in she would have to say to him--
"Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours.
In your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and
it is I, poor man, who have ruined you."
Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly,
and at last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.
"Yes," she murmured, grinding her teeth, "he will forgive me, he
who would give a million if I would forgive him for having known
me! Never! never!"
This thought of Bovary's superiority to her exasperated her.
Then, whether she confessed or did not confess, presently,
immediately, to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the
same; so she must wait for this horrible scene, and bear the
weight of his magnanimity. The desire to return to Lheureux's
seized her--what would be the use? To write to her father--it was
too late; and perhaps, she began to repent now that she had not
yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of a horse in the
alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter than the
plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the
square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to
Lestiboudois in front of the church, saw her go in to the
tax-collector's.
She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up
to the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props,
stationed themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of
Binet's room.
He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those
indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres
hollowed out one within the other, the whole as straight as an
obelisk, and of no use whatever; and he was beginning on the last
piece--he was nearing his goal. In the twilight of the workshop
the white dust was flying from his tools like a shower of sparks
under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the two wheels were
turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his nostrils
distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete
happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace
occupations, which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and
satisfy by a realisation of that beyond which such minds have not
a dream.
"Ah! there she is!" exclaimed Madame Tuvache.
But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was
saying.
At last these ladies thought they made out the word "francs," and
Madame Tuvache whispered in a low voice--
"She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes."
"Apparently!" replied the other.
They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the
candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet
stroked his beard with satisfaction.
"Do you think she wants to order something of him?" said Madame
Tuvache.
"Why, he doesn't sell anything," objected her neighbour.
The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as
if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant
manner. She came nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no
longer spoke.
"Is she making him advances?" said Madame Tuvache. Binet was
scarlet to his very ears. She took hold of his hands.
"Oh, it's too much!"
And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for
the tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at
Lutzen, had been through the French campaign, and had even been
recommended for the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a
serpent, recoiled as far as he could from her, crying--
"Madame! what do you mean?"
"Women like that ought to be whipped," said Madame Tuvache.
"But where is she?" continued Madame Caron, for she had
disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going
up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if making for the
cemetery, they were lost in conjectures.
"Nurse Rollet," she said on reaching the nurse's, "I am choking;
unlace me!" She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her
with a petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she
did not answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began
spinning flax.
"Oh, leave off!" she murmured, fancying she heard Binet's lathe.
"What's bothering her?" said the nurse to herself. "Why has she
come here?"
She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove
her from her home.
Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw
things but vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic
persistence. She looked at the scales on the walls, two brands
smoking end to end, and a long spider crawling over her head in a
rent in the beam. At last she began to collect her thoughts. She
remembered--one day--Leon--Oh! how long ago that was--the sun was
shining on the river, and the clematis were perfuming the air.
Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon began to
recall the day before.
"What time is it?" she asked.
Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to
that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly,
saying--
"Nearly three."
"Ahl thanks, thanks!"
For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,
perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told
the nurse to run to her house to fetch him.
"Be quick!"
"But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!"
She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.
Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she
already saw herself at Lheureux's spreading out her three
bank-notes on his bureau. Then she would have to invent some
story to explain matters to Bovary. What should it be?
The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no
clock in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the
length of time. She began walking round the garden, step by step;
she went into the path by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping
that the woman would have come back by another road. At last,
weary of waiting, assailed by fears that she thrust from her, no
longer conscious whether she had been here a century or a moment,
she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and stopped her ears.
The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken Mere Rollet
said to her--
"There is no one at your house!"
"What?"
"Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you;
they're looking for you."
Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about
her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back
instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and
uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of
lightning in a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so
good, so delicate, so generous! And besides, should he hesitate
to do her this service, she would know well enough how to
constrain him to it by re-waking, in a single moment, their lost
love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not seeing that she was
hastening to offer herself to that which but a while ago had so
angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.
Chapter Eight
She asked herself as she walked along, "What am I going to say?
How shall I begin?" And as she went on she recognised the
thickets, the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the chateau
yonder. All the sensations of her first tenderness came back to
her, and her poor aching heart opened out amorously. A warm wind
blew in her face; the melting snow fell drop by drop from the
buds to the grass.
She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She
reached the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees.
They were swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The
dogs in their kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices
resounded, but brought out no one.
She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters
that led to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which
several doors in a row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His
was at the top, right at the end, on the left. When she placed
her fingers on the lock her strength suddenly deserted her. She
was afraid, almost wished he would not be there, though this was
her only hope, her last chance of salvation. She collected her
thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening herself by the
feeling of present necessity, went in.
He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the mantelpiece,
smoking a pipe.
"What! it is you!" he said, getting up hurriedly.
"Yes, it is I, Rodolphe. I should like to ask your advice."
And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to
open her lips.
"You have not changed; you are charming as ever!"
"Oh," she replied bitterly, "they are poor charms since you
disdained them."
Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself
in vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.
She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight
of him, so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed;
in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on
which depended the honour, the very life of a third person.
"No matter!" she said, looking at him sadly. "I have suffered
much."
He replied philosophically--
"Such is life!"
"Has life," Emma went on, "been good to you at least, since our
separation?"
"Oh, neither good nor bad."
"Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted."
"Yes, perhaps."
"You think so?" she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. "Oh,
Rodolphe! if you but knew! I loved you so!"
It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time,
their fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With
a gesture of pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking
upon his breast she said to him--
"How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the
habit of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I
will tell you about all that and you will see. And you--you fled
from me!"
For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in
consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises the
stronger sex. Emma went on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing
than an amorous kitten--
"You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I
excuse them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are
indeed a man; you have everything to make one love you. But we'll
begin again, won't we? We will love one another. See! I am
laughing; I am happy! Oh, speak!"
And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a
tear, like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.
He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand
was caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored
like a golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her
brow; at last he kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the
tips of his lips.
"Why, you have been crying! What for?"
She burst into tears. Rodolphe thought this was an outburst of
her love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last
remnant of resistance, and then he cried out--
"Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was
imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is
it. Tell me!" He was kneeling by her.
"Well, I am ruined, Rodolphe! You must lend me three thousand
francs."
"But--but--" said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a
grave expression.
"You know," she went on quickly, "that my husband had placed his
whole fortune at a notary's. He ran away. So we borrowed; the
patients don't pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is
not yet done; we shall have the money later on. But to-day, for
want of three thousand francs, we are to be sold up. It is to be
at once, this very moment, and, counting upon your friendship, I
have come to you."
"Ah!" thought Rodolphe, turning very pale, "that was what she
came for." At last he said with a calm air--
"Dear madame, I have not got them."
He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have
given them, although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine
things: a demand for money being, of all the winds that blow upon
love, the coldest and most destructive.
First she looked at him for some moments.
"You have not got them!" she repeated several times. "You have
not got them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You
never loved me. You are no better than the others."
She was betraying, ruining herself.
Rodolphe interrupted her, declaring he was "hard up" himself.
"Ah! I pity you," said Emma. "Yes--very much."
And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against
its panoply, "But when one is so poor one doesn't have silver on
the butt of one's gun. One doesn't buy a clock inlaid with
tortoise shell," she went on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, "nor
silver-gilt whistles for one's whips," and she touched them, "nor
charms for one's watch. Oh, he wants for nothing! even to a
liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself; you live well.
You have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you travel to
Paris. Why, if it were but that," she cried, taking up two studs
from the mantelpiece, "but the least of these trifles, one can
get money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!"
And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain
breaking as it struck against the wall.
"But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all,
worked for you with my hands, I would have begged on the
highroads for a smile, for a look, to hear you say 'Thanks!' And
you sit there quietly in your arm-chair, as if you had not made
me suffer enough already! But for you, and you know it, I might
have lived happily. What made you do it? Was it a bet? Yet you
loved me--you said so. And but a moment since--Ah! it would have
been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with your
kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you
swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years
you held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our
plans for the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your
letter! it tore my heart! And then when I come back to him--to
him, rich, happy, free--to implore the help the first stranger
would give, a suppliant, and bringing back to him all my
tenderness, he repulses me because it would cost him three
thousand francs!"
"I haven't got them," replied Rodolphe, with that perfect calm
with which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield.
She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her,
and she passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the
heaps of dead leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached
the ha-ha hedge in front of the gate; she broke her nails against
the lock in her haste to open it. Then a hundred steps farther
on, breathless, almost falling, she stopped. And now turning
round, she once more saw the impassive chateau, with the park,
the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the facade.
She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of
herself than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed
to hear bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the
fields. The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the
sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking
into foam. Everything in her head, of memories, ideas, went off
at once like a thousand pieces of fireworks. She saw her father,
Lheureux's closet, their room at home, another landscape. Madness
was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and managed to recover
herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did not in the
least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was in,
that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her
love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as
wounded men, dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding
wounds.
Night was falling, crows were flying about.
Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in
the air like fulminating balls when they strike, and were
whirling, whirling, to melt at last upon the snow between the
branches of the trees. In the midst of each of them appeared the
face of Rodolphe. They multiplied and drew near her, penetrating,
her. It all disappeared; she recognised the lights of the houses
that shone through the fog.
Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was
panting as if her heart would burst. Then in an ecstasy of
heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran down the hill,
crossed the cow-plank, the foot-path, the alley, the market, and
reached the chemist's shop. She was about to enter, but at the
sound of the bell someone might come, and slipping in by the
gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she
went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on
the stove was burning. Justin in his shirt-sleeves was carrying
out a dish.
"Ah! they are dining; I will wait."
He returned; she tapped at the window. He went out.
"The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the--"
"What?"
And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her face, that
stood out white against the black background of the night. She
seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a
phantom. Without understanding what she wanted, he had the
presentiment of something terrible.
But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet, melting
voice, "I want it; give it to me."
As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of
the forks on the plates in the dining-room.
She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from
sleeping.
"I must tell master."
"No, stay!" Then with an indifferent air, "Oh, it's not worth
while; I'll tell him presently. Come, light me upstairs."
She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened.
Against the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum.
"Justin!" called the druggist impatiently.
"Let us 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, tore out the cork, plunged in her hand, and
withdrawing it full of a white powder, she began eating it.
"Stop!" he cried, rushing at her.
"Hush! someone will come."
He was in despair, was calling out.
"Say nothing, or all the blame will fall on your master."
Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with something of the
serenity of one that had performed a duty.
When Charles, distracted by the news of the distraint, returned
home, Emma had just gone out. He cried aloud, wept, fainted, but
she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Felicite to
Homais, to Monsieur Tuvache, to Lheureux, to the "Lion d'Or,"
everywhere, and in the intervals of his agony he saw his
reputation destroyed, their fortune lost, Berthe's future ruined.
By what?--Not a word! He waited till six in the evening. At last,
unable to bear it any longer, and fancying she had gone to Rouen,
he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no one, again
waited, and returned home. She had come back.
"What was the matter? Why? Explain to me."
She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter, which she
sealed slowly, adding the date and the hour. Then she said in a
solemn tone:
"You are to read it to-morrow; till then, I pray you, do not ask
me a single question. No, not one!"
"But--"
"Oh, leave me!"
She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she felt
in her mouth awakened her. She saw Charles, and again closed her
eyes.
She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were not
suffering. But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the
clock, the crackling of the fire, and Charles breathing as he
stood upright by her bed.
"Ah! it is but a little thing, death!" she thought. "I shall fall
asleep and all will be over."
She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall. The
frightful taste of ink continued.
"I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty," she sighed.
"What is it?" said Charles, who was handing her a glass.
"It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking."
She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly time
to draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow.
"Take it away," she said quickly; "throw it away."
He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, afraid
that the slightest movement might make her vomit. But she felt an
icy cold creeping from her feet to her heart.
"Ah! it is beginning," she murmured.
"What did you say?"
She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full
of agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very
heavy were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o'clock the
vomiting began again.
Charles noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was a sort
of white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain.
"This is extraordinary--very singular," he repeated.
But she said in a firm voice, "No, you are mistaken."
Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his hand over
her stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back
terror-stricken.
Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were
shaken by a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the
sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her
unequal pulse was now almost imperceptible.
Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed as if
rigid in the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth
chattered, her dilated eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all
questions she replied only with a shake of the head; she even
smiled once or twice. Gradually, her moaning grew louder; a
hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she was better and
that she would get up presently. But she was seized with
convulsions and cried out--
"Ah! my God! It is horrible!"
He threw himself on his knees by her bed.
"Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven's sake!"
And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such as she
had never seen.
"Well, there--there!" she said in a faint voice. He flew to the
writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: "Accuse no
one." He stopped, passed his hands across his eyes, and read it
over again.
"What! help--help!"
He could only keep repeating the word: "Poisoned! poisoned!"
Felicite ran to Homais, who proclaimed it in the market-place;
Madame Lefrancois heard it at the "Lion d'Or"; some got up to go
and tell their neighbours, and all night the village was on the
alert.
Distraught, faltering, reeling, Charles wandered about the room.
He knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist
had never believed that there could be so terrible a sight.
He went home to write to Monsieur Canivet and to Doctor
Lariviere. He lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough
copies. Hippolyte went to Neufchatel, and Justin so spurred
Bovary's horse that he left it foundered and three parts dead by
the hill at Bois-Guillaume.
Charles tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not
read it; the lines were dancing.
"Be calm," said the druggist; "we have only to administer a
powerful antidote. What is the poison?"
Charles showed him the letter. It was arsenic.
"Very well," said Homais, "we must make an analysis."
For he knew that in cases of poisoning an analysis must be made;
and the other, who did not understand, answered--
"Oh, do anything! save her!"
Then going back to her, he sank upon the carpet, and lay there
with his head leaning against the edge of her bed, sobbing.
"Don't cry," she said to him. "Soon I shall not trouble you any
more."
"Why was it? Who drove you to it?"
She replied. "It had to be, my dear!"
"Weren't you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!"
"Yes, that is true--you are good--you."
And she passed her hand slowly over his hair. The sweetness of
this sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being
dissolving in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just
when she was confessing more love for him than ever. And he could
think of nothing; he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent
need for some immediate resolution gave the finishing stroke to
the turmoil of his mind.
So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and
meanness, and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated
no one now; a twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts,
and, of all earthly noises, Emma heard none but the intermittent
lamentations of this poor heart, sweet and indistinct like the
echo of a symphony dying away.
"Bring me the child," she said, raising herself on her elbow.
"You are not worse, are you?" asked Charles.
"No, no!"
The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on the
servant's arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare
feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the disordered room,
and half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the
table. They reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year's
day and Mid-Lent, when thus awakened early by candle-light she
came to her mother's bed to fetch her presents, for she began
saying--
"But where is it, mamma?" And as everybody was silent, "But I
can't see my little stocking."
Felicite held her over the bed while she still kept looking
towards the mantelpiece.
"Has nurse taken it?" she asked.
And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her
adulteries and her calamities, Madame Bovary turned away her
head, as at the loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to
her mouth. But Berthe remained perched on the bed.
"Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma! How pale you are! how hot you
are!"
Her mother looked at her. "I am frightened!" cried the child,
recoiling.
Emma took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled.
"That will do. Take her away," cried Charles, who was sobbing in
the alcove.
Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated;
and at every insignificant word, at every respiration a little
more easy, he regained hope. At last, when Canivet came in, he
threw himself into his arms.
"Ah! it is you. Thanks! You are good! But she is better. See!
look at her."
His colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, as he said of
himself, "never beating about the bush," he prescribed, an emetic
in order to empty the stomach completely.
She soon began vomiting blood. Her lips became drawn. Her limbs
were convulsed, her whole body covered with brown spots, and her
pulse slipped beneath the fingers like a stretched thread, like a
harp-string nearly breaking.
After this she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison,
railed at it, and implored it to be quick, and thrust away with
her stiffened arms everything that Charles, in more agony than
herself, tried to make her drink. He stood up, his handkerchief
to his lips, with a rattling sound in his throat, weeping, and
choked by sobs that shook his whole body. Felicite was running
hither and thither in the room. Homais, motionless, uttered great
sighs; and Monsieur Canivet, always retaining his self-command,
nevertheless began to feel uneasy.
"The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the
cause ceases--"
"The effect must cease," said Homais, "that is evident."
"Oh, save her!" cried Bovary.
And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing
the hypothesis, "It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm," Canivet was
about to administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of
a whip; all the windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three
horses abreast, up to their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round
the corner of the market. It was Doctor Lariviere.
The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion.
Bovary raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled
off his skull-cap long before the doctor had come in.
He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat,
to that generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners,
who, loving their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with
enthusiasm and wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he
was angry; and his students so revered him that they tried, as
soon as they were themselves in practice, to imitate him as much
as possible. So that in all the towns about they were found
wearing his long wadded merino overcoat and black frock-coat,
whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny hands--very
beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be more
ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles,
and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers,
generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without
believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the
keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a
demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked
straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all
assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along, full of
that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness of great
talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and
irreproachable life.
He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the
cadaverous face of Emma stretched out on her back with her mouth
open. Then, while apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his
fingers up and down beneath his nostrils, and repeated--
"Good! good!"
But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Bovary watched
him; they looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he
was to the sight of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on
his shirt-frill.
He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Charles followed
him.
"She is very ill, isn't she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything!
Oh, think of something, you who have saved so many!"
Charles caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly,
imploringly, half-fainting against his breast.
"Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be
done."
And Doctor Lariviere turned away.
"You are going?"
"I will come back."
He went out only to give an order to the coachman, with Monsieur
Canivet, who did not care either to have Emma die under his
hands.
The chemist rejoined them on the Place. He could not by
temperament keep away from celebrities, so he begged Monsieur
Lariviere to do him the signal honour of accepting some
breakfast.
He sent quickly to the "Lion d'Or" for some pigeons; to the
butcher's for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for
cream; and to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself
aided in the preparations, while Madame Homais was saying as she
pulled together the strings of her jacket--
"You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn't
been told the night before--"
"Wine glasses!" whispered Homais.
"If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed
trotters."
"Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!"
He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some
details as to the catastrophe.
"We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then
intolerable pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma."
"But how did she poison herself?"
"I don't know, doctor, and I don't even know where she can have
procured the arsenious acid."
Justin, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to
tremble.
"What's the matter?" said the chemist.
At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the
ground with a crash.
"Imbecile!" cried Homais. "awkward lout! block-head! confounded
ass!"
But suddenly controlling himself--
"I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately
introduced a tube--"
"You would have done better," said the physician, "to introduce
your fingers into her throat."
His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a
severe lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so
arrogant and so verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day
very modest. He smiled without ceasing in an approving manner.
Homais dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought
of Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of
egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor
transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell
cantharides, upas, the manchineel, vipers.
"I have even read that various persons have found themselves
under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by
black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement
fumigation. At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn
up by one of our pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the
illustrious Cadet de Gassicourt!"
Madame Homais reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines
that are heated with spirits of wine; for Homais liked to make
his coffee at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised
it, and mixed it himself.
"Saccharum, doctor?" said he, offering the sugar.
Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the
physician's opinion on their constitutions.
At last Monsieur Lariviere was about to leave, when Madame Homais
asked for a consultation about her husband. He was making his
blood too thick by going to sleep every evening after dinner.
"Oh, it isn't his blood that's too thick," said the physician.
And, smiling a little at his unnoticed joke, the doctor opened
the door. But the chemist's shop was full of people; he had the
greatest difficulty in getting rid of Monsieur Tuvache, who
feared his spouse would get inflammation of the lungs, because
she was in the habit of spitting on the ashes; then of Monsieur
Binet, who sometimes experienced sudden attacks of great hunger;
and of Madame Caron, who suffered from tinglings; of Lheureux,
who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had rheumatism; and of
Madame Lefrancois, who had heartburn. At last the three horses
started; and it was the general opinion that he had not shown
himself at all obliging.
Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Monsieur
Bournisien, who was going across the market with the holy oil.
Homais, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens
attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was
personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of
the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.
Nevertheless, not shrinking from what he called his mission, he
returned to Bovary's in company with Canivet whom Monsieur
Lariviere, before leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit;
and he would, but for his wife's objections, have taken his two
sons with him, in order to accustom them to great occasions; that
this might be a lesson, an example, a solemn picture, that should
remain in their heads later on.
The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the
work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or
six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix
between two lighted candles.
Emma, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately
wide open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that
hideous and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they
wanted already to cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a
statue and with eyes red as fire, Charles, not weeping, stood
opposite her at the foot of the bed, while the priest, bending
one knee, was muttering words in a low voice.
She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing
suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst
of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her
first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude
that were beginning.
The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward
her neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body
of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring
strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then
he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right
thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First upon
the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the
nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous
odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had
curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands
that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles
of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy
her desires, and that would now walk no more.
The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil
into the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell
her that she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus
Christ and abandon herself to the divine mercy.
Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a
blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was
soon to be surrounded. Emma, too weak, could not close her
fingers, and the taper, but for Monsieur Bournisien would have
fallen to the ground.
However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an
expression of serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.
The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to
Bovary that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when
he thought it meet for their salvation; and Charles remembered
the day when, so near death, she had received the communion.
Perhaps there was no need to despair, he thought.
In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a
dream; then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass,
and remained some time bending over it, until the big tears fell
from her eyes. Then she turned away her head with a sigh and fell
back upon the pillows.
Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue
protruded from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler,
like the two globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one
might have thought her already dead but for the fearful labouring
of her ribs, shaken by violent breathing, as if the soul were
struggling to free itself. Felicite knelt down before the
crucifix, and the druggist himself slightly bent his knees, while
Monsieur Canivet looked out vaguely at the Place. Bournisien had
again begun to pray, his face bowed against the edge of the bed,
his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Charles
was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched
towards Emma. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering
at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin.
As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his
prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Bovary, and sometimes
all seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that
tolled like a passing bell.
Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the
clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that
sang--
"Maids in the warmth of a summer day
Dream of love and of love always"
Emma raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone,
her eyes fixed, staring.
"Where the sickle blades have been,
Nannette, gathering ears of corn,
Passes bending down, my queen,
To the earth where they were born."
"The blind man!" she cried. And Emma began to laugh, an
atrocious, frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the
hideous face of the poor wretch that stood out against the
eternal night like a menace.
"The wind is strong this summer day,
Her petticoat has flown away."
She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew
near. She was dead.
Chapter Nine
There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction;
so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to
resign ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that
she did not move, Charles threw himself upon her, crying--
"Farewell! farewell!"
Homais and Canivet dragged him from the room.
"Restrain yourself!"
"Yes." said he, struggling, "I'll be quiet. I'll not do anything.
But leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!"
And he wept.
"Cry," said the chemist; "let nature take her course; that will
solace you."
Weaker than a child, Charles let himself be led downstairs into
the sitting-room, and Monsieur Homais soon went home. On the
Place he was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged
himself as far as Yonville, in the hope of getting the
antiphlogistic pomade, was asking every passer-by where the
druggist lived.
"There now! as if I hadn't got other fish to fry. Well, so much
the worse; you must come later on."
And he entered the shop hurriedly.
He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing potion for
Bovary, to invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and
work it up into an article for the "Fanal," without counting the
people who were waiting to get the news from him; and when the
Yonvillers had all heard his story of the arsenic that she had
mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla cream. Homais once more
returned to Bovary's.
He found him alone (Monsieur Canivet had left), sitting in an
arm-chair near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the
flags of the floor.
"Now," said the chemist, "you ought yourself to fix the hour for
the ceremony."
"Why? What ceremony?" Then, in a stammering, frightened voice,
"Oh, no! not that. No! I want to see her here."
Homais, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on
the whatnot to water the geraniums.
"Ah! thanks," said Charles; "you are good."
But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that
this action of the druggist recalled to him.
Then to distract him, Homais thought fit to talk a little
horticulture: plants wanted humidity. Charles bowed his head in
sign of approbation.
"Besides, the fine days will soon be here again."
"Ah!" said Bovary.
The druggist, at his wit's end, began softly to draw aside the
small window-curtain.
"Hallo! there's Monsieur Tuvache passing."
Charles repeated like a machine---
"Monsieur Tuvache passing!"
Homais did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral
arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him
to them.
He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after
sobbing for some time, wrote--
"I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes,
and a wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders.
Three coffins, one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no
one say anything to me. I shall have strength. Over all there is
to be placed a large piece of green velvet. This is my wish; see
that it is done."
The two men were much surprised at Bovary's romantic ideas. The
chemist at once went to him and said--
"This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--"
"What's that to you?" cried Charles. "Leave me! You did not love
her. Go!"
The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He
discoursed on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great,
was very good: one must submit to his decrees without a murmur;
nay, must even thank him.
Charles burst out into blasphemies: "I hate your God!"
"The spirit of rebellion is still upon you," sighed the
ecclesiastic.
Bovary was far away. He was walking with great strides along by
the wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised
to heaven looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf
stirred.
A fine rain was falling: Charles, whose chest was bare, at last
began to shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen.
At six o'clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on
the Place; it was the "Hirondelle" coming in, and he remained
with his forehead against the windowpane, watching all the
passengers get out, one after the other. Felicite put down a
mattress for him in the drawing-room. He threw himself upon it
and fell asleep.
Although a philosopher, Monsieur Homais respected the dead. So
bearing no grudge to poor Charles, he came back again in the
evening to sit up with the body; bringing with him three volumes
and a pocket-book for taking notes.
Monsieur Bournisien was there, and two large candles were burning
at the head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove.
The druggist, on whom the silence weighed, was not long before he
began formulating some regrets about this "unfortunate young
woman." and the priest replied that there was nothing to do now
but pray for her.
"Yet," Homais went on, "one of two things; either she died in a
state of grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need
of our prayers; or else she departed impertinent (that is, I
believe, the ecclesiastical expression), and then--"
Bournisien interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the
less necessary to pray.
"But," objected the chemist, "since God knows all our needs, what
can be the good of prayer?"
"What!" cried the ecclesiastic, "prayer! Why, aren't you a
Christian?"
"Excuse me," said Homais; "I admire Christianity. To begin with,
it enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a
morality--"
"That isn't the question. All the texts-"
"Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the
texts have been falsified by the Jesuits."
Charles came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the
curtains.
Emma's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of
her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower
part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her
hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes
were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks
like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk
in from her breast to her knees, and then rose at the tips of her
toes, and it seemed to Charles that infinite masses, an enormous
load, were weighing upon her.
The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of
the river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace.
Monsieur Bournisien from time to time blew his nose noisily, and
Homais' pen was scratching over the paper.
"Come, my good friend," he said, "withdraw; this spectacle is
tearing you to pieces."
Charles once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their
discussions.
"Read Voltaire," said the one, "read D'Holbach, read the
'Encyclopaedia'!"
"Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews,'" said the other;
"read 'The Meaning of Christianity,' by Nicolas, formerly a
magistrate."
They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without
listening to each other. Bournisien was scandalized at such
audacity; Homais marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on
the point of insulting one another when Charles suddenly
reappeared. A fascination drew him. He was continually coming
upstairs.
He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself
in a contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful.
He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and
he said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might
perhaps succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he,
and cried in a low voice, "Emma! Emma!" His strong breathing made
the flames of the candles tremble against the wall.
At daybreak Madame Bovary senior arrived. Charles as he embraced
her burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist
had done, to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the
funeral. He became so angry that she was silent, and he even
commissioned her to go to town at once and buy what was
necessary.
Charles remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Berthe
to Madame Homais'; Felicite was in the room upstairs with Madame
Lefrancois.
In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their
hands, unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and
formed a large semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered
faces, and swinging one leg crossed over the other knee, they
uttered deep sighs at intervals; each one was inordinately bored,
and yet none would be the first to go.
Homais, when he returned at nine o'clock (for the last two days
only Homais seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a
stock of camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried
a large jar full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata.
Just then the servant, Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Bovary
senior were busy about Emma, finishing dressing her, and they
were drawing down the long stiff veil that covered her to her
satin shoes.
Felicite was sobbing--"Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!"
"Look at her," said the landlady, sighing; "how pretty she still
is! Now, couldn't you swear she was going to get up in a minute?"
Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise
the head a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she
were vomiting, from her mouth.
"Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!" cried Madame Lefrancois.
"Now, just come and help," she said to the chemist. "Perhaps
you're afraid?"
"I afraid?" replied he, shrugging his shoulders. "I dare say!
I've seen all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying
pharmacy. We used to make punch in the dissecting room!
Nothingness does not terrify a philosopher; and, as I often say,
I even intend to leave my body to the hospitals, in order, later
on, to serve science."
The cure on his arrival inquired how Monsieur Bovary was, and, on
the reply of the druggist, went on--"The blow, you see, is still
too recent."
Then Homais congratulated him on not being exposed, like other
people, to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed
a discussion on the celibacy of priests.
"For," said the chemist, "it is unnatural that a man should do
without women! There have been crimes--"
"But, good heaven!" cried the ecclesiastic, "how do you expect an
individual who is married to keep the secrets of the
confessional, for example?"
Homais fell foul of the confessional. Bournisien defended it; he
enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He
cited various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become
honest. Military men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had
felt the scales fall from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a
minister--
His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the
over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this
awoke the chemist.
"Come, take a pinch of snuff," he said to him. "Take it; it'll
relieve you."
A continual barking was heard in the distance. "Do you hear that
dog howling?" said the chemist.
"They smell the dead," replied the priest. "It's like bees; they
leave their hives on the decease of any person."
Homais made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again
dropped asleep. Monsieur Bournisien, stronger than he, went on
moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin
sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore.
They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs,
puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement
uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no
more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping.
Charles coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he
came to bid her farewell.
The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish
vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming
in. There were few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the
candles fell in great drops upon the sheets of the bed. Charles
watched them burn, tiring his eyes against the glare of their
yellow flame.
The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Emma
was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond
her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--
the silence, the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising
from the ground.
Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench
against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the
threshold of their house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard
the laughter of the happy boys beneath the apple-trees: the room
was filled with the perfume of her hair; and her dress rustled in
his arms with a noise like electricity. The dress was still the
same.
For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her
attitudes, her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of
despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible as the
waves of an overflowing sea.
A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his
fingers, palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of
horror that awoke the other two.
They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Felicite came
up to say that he wanted some of her hair.
"Cut some off," replied the druggist.
And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors
in hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in
several places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion,
Homais gave two or three great cuts at random that left white
patches amongst that beautiful black hair.
The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not
without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each
other reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Monsieur
Bournisien sprinkled the room with holy water and Homais threw a
little chlorine water on the floor.
Felicite had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each
of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And
the druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in
the morning sighed--
"My word! I should like to take some sustenance."
The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say
mass, came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a
little without knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that
comes upon us after times of sadness, and at the last glass the
priest said to the druggist, as he clapped him on the shoulder--
"We shall end by understanding one another."
In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker's men, who were
coming in. Then Charles for two hours had to suffer the torture
of hearing the hammer resound against the wood. Next day they
lowered her into her oak coffin, that was fitted into the other
two; but as the bier was too large, they had to fill up the gaps
with the wool of a mattress. At last, when the three lids had
been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was placed outside in
front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the people of
Yonville began to flock round.
Old Rouault arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the
black cloth!
Chapter Ten
He had only received the chemist's letter thirty-six hours after
the event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Homais had
so worded it that it was impossible to make out what it was all
about.
First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next,
he understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last,
he had put on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to
his boots, and set out at full speed; and the whole of the way
old Rouault, panting, was torn by anguish. Once even he was
obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he heard voices round about
him; he felt himself going mad.
Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He
shuddered, horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy
Virgin three chasubles for the church, and that he would go
barefooted from the cemetery at Bertaux to the chapel of
Vassonville.
He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open
the door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats,
emptied a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again
mounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it dashed along.
He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors
would discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the
miraculous cures he had been told about. Then she appeared to him
dead. She was there; before his eyes, lying on her back in the
middle of the road. He reined up, and the hallucination
disappeared.
At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of
coffee one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in
the name in writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt
it there, but did not dare to open it.
At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the
jest of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have
known it. But no! There was nothing extraordinary about the
country; the sky was blue, the trees swayed; a flock of sheep
passed. He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward
upon his horse, belabouring it with great blows, the girths
dripping with blood.
When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into
Bovary's arms: "My girl! Emma! my child! tell me--"
The other replied, sobbing, "I don't know! I don't know! It's a
curse!"
The druggist separated them. "These horrible details are useless.
I will tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people
coming. Dignity! Come now! Philosophy!"
The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several
times. "Yes! courage!"
"Oh," cried the old man, "so I will have, by God! I'll go along
o' her to the end!"
The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And
seated in a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and
repass in front of them continually the three chanting
choristers.
The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Monsieur
Bournisien, in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He
bowed before the tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his
arms. Lestiboudois went about the church with his whalebone
stick. The bier stood near the lectern, between four rows of
candles. Charles felt inclined to get up and put them out.
Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw
himself into the hope of a future life in which he should see her
again. He imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far
away, for a long time. But when he thought of her lying there, and
that all was over, that they would lay her in the earth, he was
seized with a fierce, gloomy, despairful rage. At times he
thought he felt nothing more, and he enjoyed this lull in his
pain, whilst at the same time he reproached himself for being a
wretch.
The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the
stones, striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the
end of the church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man
in a coarse brown jacket knelt down painfully. It was Hippolyte,
the stable-boy at the "Lion d'Or." He had put on his new leg.
One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection,
and the coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate.
"Oh, make haste! I am in pain!" cried Bovary, angrily throwing
him a five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow.
They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He
remembered that once, in the early times, they had been to mass
together, and they had sat down on the other side, on the right,
by the wall. The bell began again. There was a great moving of
chairs; the bearers slipped their three staves under the coffin,
and everyone left the church.
Then Justin appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in
again, pale, staggering.
People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Charles at
the head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with
a nod those who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors,
stood amidst the crowd.
The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a
little. The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys
recited the De profundis*, and their voices echoed over the
fields, rising and falling with their undulations. Sometimes they
disappeared in the windings of the path; but the great silver
cross rose always before the trees.
*Psalm CXXX.
The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each
of them carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Charles
felt himself growing weaker at this continual repetition of
prayers and torches, beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of
cassocks. A fresh breeze was blowing; the rye and colza were
sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at the roadsides and on the
hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds filled the air; the
jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the crowing of a
cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal running
away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy
clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris.
Charles as he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered
mornings like this, when, after visiting some patient, he came
out from one and returned to her.
The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to
time, laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more
slowly, and it advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that
pitches with every wave.
They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in
the grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all
round; and while the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the
sides kept noiselessly slipping down at the corners.
Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon
them. He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At
last a thud was heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up.
Then Bournisien took the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois;
with his left hand all the time sprinkling water, with the right
he vigorously threw in a large spadeful; and the wood of the
coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth that dread sound that
seems to us the reverberation of eternity.
The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his
neighbour. This was Homais. He swung it gravely, then handed it
to Charles, who sank to his knees in the earth and threw in
handfuls of it, crying, "Adieu!" He sent her kisses; he dragged
himself towards the grave, to engulf himself with her. They led
him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps, like the
others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over.
Old Rouault on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which
Homais in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing.
He also noticed that Monsieur Binet had not been present, and
that Tuvache had "made off" after mass, and that Theodore, the
notary's servant wore a blue coat, "as if one could not have got
a black coat, since that is the custom, by Jove!" And to share
his observations with others he went from group to group. They
were deploring Emma's death, especially Lheureux, who had not
failed to come to the funeral.
"Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!"
The druggist continued, "Do you know that but for me he would
have committed some fatal attempt upon himself?"
"Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in
my shop."
"I haven't had leisure," said Homais, "to prepare a few words
Back to Full Books
|