During the journeys he made to see her, Léon had often dined at the chemist’s, and he felt obliged from politeness to invite him in turn.
“With pleasure!” Monsieur Homais replied; “besides, I must invigorate my mind, for I am getting rusty here. We’ll go to the theatre, to the restaurant; we’ll make a night of it.”
“Oh, my dear!” tenderly murmured Madame Homais, alarmed at the vague perils he was preparing to brave.
“Well, what? Do you think I’m not sufficiently ruining my health living here amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy? But there! that is the way with women! They are jealous of science, and then are opposed to our taking the most legitimate distractions. No matter! Count upon me. One of these days I shall turn up at Rouen, and we’ll go the pace together.”
The druggist would formerly have taken good care not to use such an expression, but he was cultivating a gay Parisian style, which he thought in the best taste; and, like his neighbour, Madame Bovary, he questioned the clerk curiously about the customs of the capital; he even talked slang to dazzle the bourgeois, saying bender, crummy, dandy, macaroni, the cheese, cut my stick and “I’ll hook it,” for “I am going.”
So one Thursday Emma was surprised to meet Monsieur Homais in the kitchen of the “Lion d’Or,” wearing a traveller’s costume, that is to say, wrapped in an old cloak which no one knew he had, while he carried a valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his establishment in the other. He had confided his intentions to no one, for fear of causing the public anxiety by his absence.
The idea of seeing again the place where his youth had been spent no doubt excited him, for during the whole journey he never ceased talking, and as soon as he had arrived, he jumped quickly out of the diligence to go in search of Léon. In vain the clerk tried to get rid of him. Monsieur Homais dragged him off to the large Cafe de la Normandie, which he entered majestically, not raising his hat, thinking it very provincial to uncover in any public place.
Emma waited for Léon three quarters of an hour. At last she ran to his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing him of indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the afternoon, her face pressed against the window-panes.
At two o’clock they were still at a table opposite each other. The large room was emptying; the stove-pipe, in the shape of a palm-tree, spread its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and near them, outside the window, in the bright sunshine, a little fountain gurgled in a white basin, where; in the midst of watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters stretched across to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on their sides.
Homais was enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated with the luxury than the rich fare, the Pommard wine all the same rather excited his faculties; and when the omelette au rhum[20] appeared, he began propounding immoral theories about women. What seduced him above all else was chic. He admired an elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and as to bodily qualities, he didn’t dislike a young girl.
[20] In rum.
Léon watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking, eating, and talking.
“You must be very lonely,” he said suddenly, “here at Rouen. To be sure your lady-love doesn’t live far away.”
And the other blushed –
“Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville – ”
The young man stammered something.
“At Madame Bovary’s, you’re not making love to – ”
“To whom?”
“The servant!”
He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all prudence, Léon, in spite of himself protested. Besides, he only liked dark women.
“I approve of that,” said the chemist; “they have more passion.”
And whispering into his friend’s ear, he pointed out the symptoms by which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: the German was vapourish, the French woman licentious, the Italian passionate.
“And negresses?” asked the clerk.
“They are an artistic taste!” said Homais. “Waiter! two cups of coffee!”
“Are we going?” at last asked Léon impatiently.
“Ja!”
But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the establishment and made him a few compliments. Then the young man, to be alone, alleged he had some business engagement.
“Ah! I will escort you,” said Homais.
And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he talked of his wife, his children; of their future, and of his business; told him in what a decayed condition it had formerly been, and to what a degree of perfection he had raised it.
Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Léon left him abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in great excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn’t his fault; didn’t she know Homais – did she believe that he would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose, full of concupiscence and supplication.
She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and Léon was pressing them to his lips when a servant appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.
“You will come back?” she said.
“Yes.”
“But when?”
“Immediately.”
“It’s a trick,” said the chemist, when he saw Léon. “I wanted to interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let’s go and have a glass of garus at Bridoux’.”
Léon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist joked him about quill-drivers and the law.
“Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents you? Be a man! Let’s go to Bridoux’. You’ll see his dog. It’s very interesting.”
And as the clerk still insisted –
“I’ll go with you. I’ll read a paper while I wait for you, or turn over the leaves of a ‘Code.’”
Léon, bewildered by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’ chatter, and, perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as it were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating –
“Let’s go to Bridoux’. It’s just by here, in the Rue Malpalu.”
Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that indefinable feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts, he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux’, whom they found in his small yard, superintending three workmen, who panted as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water. Homais gave them some good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times Léon tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm saying –
“Presently! I’m coming! We’ll go to the ‘Fanal de Rouen’ to see the fellows there. I’ll introduce you to Thornassin.”
At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.
Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.
They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.
Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague and dreary that seemed to Léon to glide between them subtly as if to separate them.
He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked, by her personality. He begrudged Emma this constant victory. He even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at the sight of strong drinks.
She did not fail, in truth, to lavish all sorts of attentions upon him, from the delicacies of food to the coquettries of dress and languishing looks. She brought roses to her breast from Yonville, which she threw into his face; was anxious about his health, gave him advice as to his conduct; and, in order the more surely to keep her hold on him, hoping perhaps that heaven would take her part, she tied a medal of the Virgin round his neck. She inquired like a virtuous mother about his companions. She said to him –
“Don’t see them; don’t go out; think only of ourselves; love me!”
She would have liked to be able to watch over his life; and the idea occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near the hotel there was always a kind of loafer who accosted travellers, and who would not refuse. But her pride revolted at this.
“Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does it matter to me? As If I cared for him!”
One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she sat down on a form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that time had been! How she longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure to herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed before her eyes. And Léon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the others.
“Yet I love him,” she said to herself.
No matter! She was not happy – she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life – this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet’s heart in an angel’s form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.
A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard from the convent-clock. Four o’clock! And it seemed to her that she had been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space.
Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more about money matters than an archduchess.
Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald, came to her house, saying he had been sent by Monsieur Vincart of Rouen. He took out the pins that held together the side-pockets of his long green overcoat, stuck them into his sleeve, and politely handed her a paper.
It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, and which Lheureux, in spite of all his professions, had paid away to Vincart. She sent her servant for him. He could not come. Then the stranger, who had remained standing, casting right and left curious glances, that his thick, fair eyebrows hid, asked with a naive air –
“What answer am I to take Monsieur Vincart?”
“Oh,” said Emma, “tell him that I haven’t it. I will send next week; he must wait; yes, till next week.”
And the fellow went without another word.
But the next day at twelve o’clock she received a summons, and the sight of the stamped paper, on which appeared several times in large letters, “Maitre Hareng, bailiff at Buchy,” so frightened her that she rushed in hot haste to the linendraper’s. She found him in his shop, doing up a parcel.
“Your obedient!” he said; “I am at your service.”
But Lheureux, all the same, went on with his work, helped by a young girl of about thirteen, somewhat hunch-backed, who was at once his clerk and his servant.
Then, his clogs clattering on the shop-boards, he went up in front of Madame Bovary to the first door, and introduced her into a narrow closet, where, in a large bureau in sapon-wood, lay some ledgers, protected by a horizontal padlocked iron bar. Against the wall, under some remnants of calico, one glimpsed a safe, but of such dimensions that it must contain something besides bills and money. Monsieur Lheureux, in fact, went in for pawnbroking, and it was there that he had put Madame Bovary’s gold chain, together with the earrings of poor old Tellier, who, at last forced to sell out, had bought a meagre store of grocery at Quincampoix, where he was dying of catarrh amongst his candles, that were less yellow than his face.
Lheureux sat down in a large cane arm-chair, saying: “What news?”
“See!”
And she showed him the paper.
“Well how can I help it?”
Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he had given not to pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.
“But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own throat.”
“And what will happen now?” she went on.
“Oh, it’s very simple; a judgment and then a distraint – that’s about it!”
Emma kept down a desire to strike him, and asked gently if there was no way of quieting Monsieur Vincart.
“I dare say! Quiet Vincart! You don’t know him; he’s more ferocious than an Arab!”
Still Monsieur Lheureux must interfere.
“Well, listen. It seems to me so far I’ve been very good to you.” And opening one of his ledgers, “See,” he said. Then running up the page with his finger, “Let’s see! let’s see! August 3d, two hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23d, forty-six. In April – ”
He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.
“Not to speak of the bills signed by Monsieur Bovary, one for seven hundred francs, and another for three hundred. As to your little installments, with the interest, why, there’s no end to ‘em; one gets quite muddled over ‘em. I’ll have nothing more to do with it.”
She wept; she even called him “her good Monsieur Lheureux.” But he always fell back upon “that rascal Vincart.” Besides, he hadn’t a brass farthing; no one was paying him now-a-days; they were eating his coat off his back; a poor shopkeeper like him couldn’t advance money.
Emma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was biting the feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at her silence, for he went on –
“Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I might – ”
“Besides,” said she, “as soon as the balance of Barneville – ”
“What!”
And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemed much surprised. Then in a honied voice –
“And we agree, you say?”
“Oh! to anything you like.”
On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures, and declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affair was shady, and that he was being bled, he wrote out four bills for two hundred and fifty francs each, to fall due month by month.
“Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it’s settled. I don’t play the fool; I’m straight enough.”
Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of which, however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.
“When I think that there’s a dress at threepence-halfpenny a yard, and warranted fast colours! And yet they actually swallow it! Of course you understand one doesn’t tell them what it really is!” He hoped by this confession of dishonesty to others to quite convince her of his probity to her.
Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipure that he had lately picked up “at a sale.”
“Isn’t it lovely?” said Lheureux. “It is very much used now for the backs of arm-chairs. It’s quite the rage.”
And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the guipure in some blue paper and put it in Emma’s hands.
“But at least let me know – ”
“Yes, another time,” he replied, turning on his heel.
That same evening she urged Bovary to write to his mother, to ask her to send as quickly as possible the whole of the balance due from the father’s estate. The mother-in-law replied that she had nothing more, the winding up was over, and there was due to them besides Barneville an income of six hundred francs, that she would pay them punctually.
Then Madame Bovary sent in accounts to two or three patients, and she made large use of this method, which was very successful. She was always careful to add a postscript: “Do not mention this to my husband; you know how proud he is. Excuse me. Yours obediently.” There were some complaints; she intercepted them.
To get money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she picked up nick-nacks secondhand, that, in default of anyone else, Monsieur Lheureux would certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from Félicité, from Madame Lefrancois, from the landlady at the Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no matter where.
With the money she at last received from Barneville she paid two bills; the other fifteen hundred francs fell due. She renewed the bills, and thus it was continually.
Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make a calculation, but she discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them possible. Then she recommenced, soon got confused, gave it all up, and thought no more about it.
The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen leaving it with angry faces. Handkerchiefs were lying about on the stoves, and little Berthe, to the great scandal of Madame Homais, wore stockings with holes in them. If Charles timidly ventured a remark, she answered roughly that it wasn’t her fault.
What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? He explained everything through her old nervous illness, and reproaching himself with having taken her infirmities for faults, accused himself of egotism, and longed to go and take her in his arms.
“Ah, no!” he said to himself; “I should worry her.”
And he did not stir.
After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he took little Berthe on his knees, and unfolding his medical journal, tried to teach her to read. But the child, who never had any lessons, soon looked up with large, sad eyes and began to cry. Then he comforted her; went to fetch water in her can to make rivers on the sand path, or broke off branches from the privet hedges to plant trees in the beds. This did not spoil the garden much, all choked now with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois for so many days. Then the child grew cold and asked for her mother.
“Call the servant,” said Charles. “You know, dearie, that mamma does not like to be disturbed.”
Autumn was setting in, and the leaves were already falling, as they did two years ago when she was ill. Where would it all end? And he walked up and down, his hands behind his back.
Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there all day long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning Turkish pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian’s shop. In order not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of manoeuvring, she at last succeeded in banishing him to the second floor, while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures of orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out, and Charles hurried to her.
“Oh, go away!” she would say.
Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner flame to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all desire, she threw open her window, breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her masses of hair, too heavy, and, gazing upon the stars, longed for some princely love. She thought of him, of Léon. She would then have given anything for a single one of those meetings that surfeited her.
These were her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous, and when he alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally, which happened pretty well every time. He tried to make her understand that they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller hotel, but she always found some objection.
One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her bag (they were old Roualt’s wedding present), begging him to pawn them at once for her, and Léon obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him. He was afraid of compromising himself.
Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress’s ways were growing odd, and that they were perhaps not wrong in wishing to separate him from her.
In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was “ruining himself with a married woman,” and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such an intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself. He implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage’s sake.
At last Léon swore he would not see Emma again, and he reproached himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry and lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without reckoning the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the stove in the morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.
He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.
They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.
But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Léon of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to it herself.
She none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of the notion that a woman must write to her lover.
But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading, her strongest lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible, that she palpitated wondering, without, however, the power to imagine him clearly, so lost was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in that azure land where silk ladders hang from balconies under the breath of flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was coming, and would carry her right away in a kiss.
Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied her more than great debauchery.
She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.
On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a club wig, and three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced all night to the wild tones of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six masks,débardeuses[21] and sailors, Léon’s comrades, who were talking about having supper.
[21] People dressed as longshoremen.
The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of one on the harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed them to a little room on the fourth floor.
The men were whispering in a corner, no doubt consorting about expenses. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shopman – what company for her! As to the women, Emma soon perceived from the tone of their voices that they must almost belong to the lowest class. Then she was frightened, pushed back her chair, and cast down her eyes.
The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was on fire, her eyes smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her head she seemed to feel the floor of the ball-room rebounding again beneath the rhythmical pulsation of the thousands of dancing feet. And now the smell of the punch, the smoke of the cigars, made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her to the window.
Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour broadened out in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The livid river was shivering in the wind; there was no one on the bridges; the street lamps were going out.
She revived, and began thinking of Berthe asleep yonder in the servant’s room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron passed by, and made a deafening metallic vibration against the walls of the houses.
She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Léon she must get back, and at last was alone at the Hotel de Boulogne. Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.
She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, and the Faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked some gardens. She walked rapidly; the fresh air calming her; and, little by little, the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the lights, the supper, those women, all disappeared like mists fading away. Then, reaching the “Croix-Rouge,” she threw herself on the bed in her little room on the second floor, where there were pictures of the “Tour de Nesle.” At four o’clock Hivert awoke her.
When she got home, Félicité showed her behind the clock a grey paper. She read –
“In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment.”
What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening before another paper had been brought that she had not yet seen, and she was stunned by these words –
“By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Bovary.” Then, skipping several lines, she read, “Within twenty-four hours, without fail – ” But what? “To pay the sum of eight thousand francs.” And there was even at the bottom, “She will be constrained thereto by every form of law, and notably by a writ of distraint on her furniture and effects.”
What was to be done? In twenty-four hours – tomorrow. Lheureux, she thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she saw through all his devices, the object of his kindnesses. What reassured her was the very magnitude of the sum.
However, by dint of buying and not paying, of borrowing, signing bills, and renewing these bills that grew at each new falling-in, she had ended by preparing a capital for Monsieur Lheureux which he was impatiently awaiting for his speculations.
She presented herself at his place with an offhand air.
“You know what has happened to me? No doubt it’s a joke!”
“How so?”
He turned away slowly, and, folding his arms, said to her –
“My good lady, did you think I should go on to all eternity being your purveyor and banker, for the love of God? Now be just. I must get back what I’ve laid out. Now be just.”
She cried out against the debt.
“Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it. There’s a judgment. It’s been notified to you. Besides, it isn’t my fault. It’s Vincart’s.”
“Could you not – ?”
“Oh, nothing whatever.”
“But still, now talk it over.”
And she began beating about the bush; she had known nothing about it; it was a surprise.
“Whose fault is that?” said Lheureux, bowing ironically. “While I’m slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about.”
“Ah! no lecturing.”
“It never does any harm,” he replied.
She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty white and slender hand against the shopkeeper’s knee.
“There, that’ll do! Anyone’d think you wanted to seduce me!”
“You are a wretch!” she cried.
“Oh, oh! go it! go it!”
“I will show you up. I shall tell my husband.”
“All right! I too. I’ll show your husband something.”
And Lheureux drew from his strong box the receipt for eighteen hundred francs that she had given him when Vincart had discounted the bills.
“Do you think,” he added, “that he’ll not understand your little theft, the poor dear man?”
She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a pole-axe. He was walking up and down from the window to the bureau, repeating all the while –
“Ah! I’ll show him! I’ll show him!” Then he approached her, and in a soft voice said –
“It isn’t pleasant, I know; but, after all, no bones are broken, and, since that is the only way that is left for you paying back my money – ”
“But where am I to get any?” said Emma, wringing her hands.
“Bah! when one has friends like you!”
And he looked at her in so keen, so terrible a fashion, that she shuddered to her very heart.
“I promise you,” she said, “to sign – ”
“I’ve enough of your signatures.”
“I will sell something.”
“Get along!” he said, shrugging his shoulders; “you’ve not got anything.”
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.
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. Félicité 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 Léon, 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 –
“Léon, 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, Léon, 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, Léon, 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 Félicité, 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 Félicité 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?
Félicité 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 Félicité 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 – Léon – 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.”
“Ah! 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.