Madame Bovary

hapter Five

It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.

They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur Léon,
gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a
half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give
them some exercise, and Justin accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas
on his shoulder.

Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great
piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and
stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a
quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The
building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the
roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed
with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.

Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future importance
of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the
thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick
such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his own special use.

Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and
she looked at the sun’s disc shedding afar through the mist his pale
splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was drawn down over
his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look
of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating
to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the
bearer.

While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of
depraved pleasure, Léon made a step forward. The cold that made him pale
seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and
his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the
lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large
blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more
beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.

“Wretched boy!” suddenly cried the chemist.

And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of
lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was
being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Justin dried his shoes
with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Charles offered his.

“Ah!” she said to herself, “he carried a knife in his pocket like a
peasant.”

The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.

In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour’s, and when
Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began
with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that
lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from
her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had
down there, Léon standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with
the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She
thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she
recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the
sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
lips as if for a kiss--

“Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?” she asked herself; “but
with whom? With me?”

All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of
the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back,
stretching out her arms.

Then began the eternal lamentation: “Oh, if Heaven had not willed it!
And why not? What prevented it?”

When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened,
and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then
asked carelessly what had happened that evening.

“Monsieur Léon,” he said, “went to his room early.”

She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a
new delight.

The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur Lheureux, the
draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but
bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of
the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a
decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the
keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been
formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others.
What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that
would have frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always
held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who
invites.

After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down
a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with
many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without
gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract
a “fashionable lady”; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to
command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might
wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for
he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the
best houses. You could speak of him at the “Trois Freres,” at the “Barbe
d’Or,” or at the “Grand Sauvage”; all these gentlemen knew him as
well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show
madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to
the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered
collars from the box.

Madame Bovary examined them. “I do not require anything,” she said.

Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves,
several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and
finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts.
Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure
bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Emma’s look, who was walking up
and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove
some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread
out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the
green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little
stars.

“How much are they?”

“A mere nothing,” he replied, “a mere nothing. But there’s no hurry;
whenever it’s convenient. We are not Jews.”

She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Monsieur
Lheureux’s offer. He replied quite unconcernedly--

“Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got
on with ladies--if I didn’t with my own!”

Emma smiled.

“I wanted to tell you,” he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, “that
it isn’t the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some,
if need be.”

She made a gesture of surprise.

“Ah!” said he quickly and in a low voice, “I shouldn’t have to go far to
find you some, rely on that.”

And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the “Cafe
Francais,” whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.

“What’s the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his
whole house, and I’m afraid he’ll soon want a deal covering rather than
a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people,
madame, have not the least regularity; he’s burnt up with brandy. Still
it’s sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off.”

And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor’s
patients.

“It’s the weather, no doubt,” he said, looking frowningly at the floor,
“that causes these illnesses. I, too, don’t feel the thing. One of these
days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my
back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At your service; your very humble
servant.” And he closed the door gently.

Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she
was a long time over it; everything was well with her.

“How good I was!” she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.

She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Léon. She got up and took
from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When
he came in she seemed very busy.

The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few minutes,
whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near
the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She
stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with
her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence,
as he would have been by her speech.

“Poor fellow!” she thought.

“How have I displeased her?” he asked himself.

At last, however, Léon said that he should have, one of these days, to
go to Rouen on some office business.

“Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?”

“No,” she replied.

“Why?”

“Because--”

And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread.

This work irritated Léon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers.
A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.

“Then you are giving it up?” he went on.

“What?” she asked hurriedly. “Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to
look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many
duties that must be considered first?”

She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected anxiety.
Two or three times she even repeated, “He is so good!”

The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his behalf
astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises,
which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist.

“Ah! he is a good fellow,” continued Emma.

“Certainly,” replied the clerk.

And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy appearance
generally made them laugh.

“What does it matter?” interrupted Emma. “A good housewife does not
trouble about her appearance.”

Then she relapsed into silence.

It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners,
everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church
regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity.

She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Félicité brought her
in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared
she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion,
and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have
reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in “Notre Dame de
Paris.”

When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire.
His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was
quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles
of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn
in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not
understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when
Léon saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes
moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this
woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his
forehead: “What madness!” he said to himself. “And how to reach her!”

And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all
hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on
an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly
attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she
rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent
manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure
feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because
they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion
rejoices.

Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black
hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always
silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely
touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine
destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved,
that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder
in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the
marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist
said--

“She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn’t be misplaced in a
sub-prefecture.”

The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the
poor her charity.

But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with
the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste
lips said nothing. She was in love with Léon, and sought solitude that
she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his
form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at
the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and
afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended
in sorrow.

Léon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had
gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings
and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find
an excuse for going to his room. The chemist’s wife seemed happy to her
to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon
this house, like the “Lion d’Or” pigeons, who came there to dip their
red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised
her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident,
that she might make it less. She would have liked Léon to guess it, and
she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.

What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of
shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was
past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to
herself, “I am virtuous,” and to look at herself in the glass taking
resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she
was making.

Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy
of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of
turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself
to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by
an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had
not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow
home.

What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her
anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an
imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose
sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all
felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of
that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.

On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that
resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented
it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair,
and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own
gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity
drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires.
She would have liked Charles to beat her, that she might have a better
right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised
sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and
she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she
was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.

Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
temptation to flee somewhere with Léon to try a new life; but at once a
vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.

“Besides, he no longer loves me,” she thought. “What is to become of me?
What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?”

She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with
flowing tears.

“Why don’t you tell master?” the servant asked her when she came in
during these crises.

“It is the nerves,” said Emma. “Do not speak to him of it; it would
worry him.”

“Ah! yes,” Félicité went on, “you are just like La Guerine, Pere
Guerin’s daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at
Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her
standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a
winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was
a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do
anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went
off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his
rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle.
Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say.”

“But with me,” replied Emma, “it was after marriage that it began.”