Part I

Chapter One

We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a “new

fellow,” not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a

large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if

just surprised at his work.

The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the

class-master, he said to him in a low voice--

“Monsieur Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he’ll be

in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into

one of the upper classes, as becomes his age.”

The “new fellow,” standing in the corner behind the door so that he

could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller

than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village

chorister’s; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was

not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black

buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the

opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in

blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by

braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.

We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as

attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean

on his elbow; and when at two o’clock the bell rang, the master was

obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.

When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on

the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to

toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a

lot of dust: it was “the thing.”

But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt

it, the “new fellow,” was still holding his cap on his knees even after

prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in

which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin

cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose

dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile’s face. Oval,

stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in

succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band;

after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with

complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord,

small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new;

its peak shone.

“Rise,” said the master.

He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to

pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked

it up once more.

“Get rid of your helmet,” said the master, who was a bit of a wag.

There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the

poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap

in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down

again and placed it on his knee.

“Rise,” repeated the master, “and tell me your name.”

The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name.

“Again!”

The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of

the class.

“Louder!” cried the master; “louder!”

The “new fellow” then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately

large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling someone

in the word “Charbovari.”

A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they

yelled, barked, stamped, repeated “Charbovari! Charbovari”), then died

away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and

now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose

here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.

However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established

in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of

“Charles Bovary,” having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read,

at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form

at the foot of the master’s desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.

“What are you looking for?” asked the master.

“My c-a-p,” timidly said the “new fellow,” casting troubled looks round

him.

“Five hundred lines for all the class!” shouted in a furious voice

stopped, like the _Quos ego_[1], a fresh outburst. “Silence!” continued

the master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he

had just taken from his cap. “As to you, ‘new boy,’ you will conjugate

‘_ridiculus sum_’[2] twenty times.”

[1] A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat.

[2] I am ridiculous.

Then, in a gentler tone, “Come, you’ll find your cap again; it hasn’t

been stolen.”

Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the “new fellow” remained

for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some

paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he

wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.

In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk,

arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him

working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and

taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he

showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his

rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure

of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from

motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.

His father, Monsieur Charles Denis Bartolome Bovary, retired

assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription

scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken

advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand

francs that offered in the person of a hosier’s daughter who had fallen

in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his

spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache,

his fingers always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours,

he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial

traveller.

Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife’s fortune,

dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in

at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law

died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, “went in for the

business,” lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he

thought he would make money.

But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses

instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of

selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased

his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding

out that he would do better to give up all speculation.

For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of

the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half

private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his

luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five,

sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace.

His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a

thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once,

expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the

fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered,

grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at

first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and

until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary,

stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent,

burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death.

She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She

called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due,

got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the

workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing,

eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself

to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting

into the cinders.

When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home,

the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him

with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the

philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the

young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain

virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing

him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong

constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink

off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But,

peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His

mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him

tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety

and charming nonsense. In her life’s isolation she centered on the

child’s head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of

high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as

an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old

piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this

Monsieur Bovary, caring little for letters, said, “It was not worth

while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to

buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man

always gets on in the world.” Madame Bovary bit her lips, and the child

knocked about the village.

He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens

that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the

geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in

the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and

at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he

might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward

by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on

hand, fresh of colour.

When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began

lessons. The curé took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and

irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare

moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and

a burial; or else the curé, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil

after the _Angelus_[3]. They went up to his room and settled down; the

flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child

fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his

stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions,

when Monsieur le Curé, on his way back after administering the viaticum

to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Charles

playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of

an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his

verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an

acquaintance passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and

even said the “young man” had a very good memory.

[3] A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a

bell. Here, the evening prayer.

Charles could not go on like this. Madame Bovary took strong steps.

Ashamed, or rather tired out, Monsieur Bovary gave in without a

struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take

his first communion.

Six months more passed, and the year after Charles was finally sent to

school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October,

at the time of the St. Romain fair.

It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about

him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked

in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory,

and ate well in the refectory. He had _in loco parentis_[4] a wholesale

ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on

Sundays after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to

look at the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven

o’clock before supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to

his mother with red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history

note-books, or read an old volume of “Anarchasis” that was knocking

about the study. When he went for walks he talked to the servant, who,

like himself, came from the country.

[4] In place of a parent.

By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once

even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his

third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study

medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself.

His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer’s she

knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his

board, got him furniture, table and two chairs, sent home for an old

cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with

the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child.

Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to

be good now that he was going to be left to himself.

The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures

on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on

pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics,

without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose

etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to

sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.

He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did

not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all

the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task

like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not

knowing what work he is doing.

To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a

piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back

from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall.

After this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the

hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the

evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his

room and set to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in

front of the hot stove.

On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are

empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors, he

opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter

of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the

bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling

on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting

from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite,

beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How

pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he

expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odours of the country

which did not reach him.

He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look

that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he

abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the

next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little,

he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the

public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every

evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the

small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his

freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see

life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put

his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things

hidden within him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to

his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to

make punch, and, finally, how to make love.

Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in his

examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night

to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning

of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused

him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners,

encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight.

It was only five years later that Monsieur Bovary knew the truth; it was

old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man

born of him could be a fool.

So Charles set to work again and crammed for his examination,

ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty

well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.

Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old

doctor. For a long time Madame Bovary had been on the look-out for his

death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Charles was

installed, opposite his place, as his successor.

But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him

taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practice it;

he must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at

Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs.

Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as

the spring has buds, Madame Dubuc had no lack of suitors. To attain her

ends Madame Bovary had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in

very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a pork-butcher backed up by the

priests.

Charles had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he

would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his

wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast

every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients

who did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings,

and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his

surgery.

She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She

constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of

footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to

her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Charles

returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from

beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit

down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he

was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be

unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little

more love.

Chapter Two

One night towards eleven o’clock they were awakened by the noise of

a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the

garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below.

He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs

shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left

his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He

pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in

a rag and presented it gingerly to Charles, who rested on his elbow on

the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light.

Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.

This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Monsieur

Bovary to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken

leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across

country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night;

Madame Bovary junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was

decided the stable-boy should go on first; Charles would start three

hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and

show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.

Towards four o’clock in the morning, Charles, well wrapped up in his

cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed,

he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped

of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that

are dug on the margin of furrows, Charles awoke with a start, suddenly

remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures

he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches

of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers

bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as

eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals

seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the

horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.

Charles from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and,

sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent

sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double

self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and

crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices

mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron

rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife

sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the

grass at the edge of a ditch.

“Are you the doctor?” asked the child.

And on Charles’s answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on

in front of him.

The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide’s talk

that Monsieur Rouault must be one of the well-to-do farmers.

He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a

Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour’s. His wife had been dead for two

years. There was with him only his daughter, who helped him to keep

house.

The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux.

The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared;

then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The

horse slipped on the wet grass; Charles had to stoop to pass under

the branches. The watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their

chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took fright and stumbled.

It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the

open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new

racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from

which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six

peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of

it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your

hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with

their whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool

were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The

courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and

the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.

A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the

threshold of the door to receive Monsieur Bovary, whom she led to the

kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant’s breakfast was

boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were

drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle

of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while

along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the

hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the

window, was mirrored fitfully.

Charles went up the first floor to see the patient. He found him in his

bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap

right away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin

and blue eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore earrings. By

his side on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured

himself a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon

as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of

swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan

freely.

The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication.

Charles could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind

the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients, he comforted the

sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon

that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some

splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Charles

selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment

of windowpane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and

Mademoiselle Emma tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before

she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer,

but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her

mouth to suck them. Charles was surprised at the whiteness of her nails.

They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of

Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not

white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too

long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in

her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and

her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.

The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Monsieur Rouault himself

to “pick a bit” before he left.

Charles went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks

and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a

huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing

Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped

from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were

sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from

the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of

decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the

wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre,

was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written

in Gothic letters “To dear Papa.”

First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold,

of the wolves that infested the fields at night.

Mademoiselle Rouault did not at all like the country, especially now

that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was

chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full lips,

that she had a habit of biting when silent.

Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose

two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was

parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the

curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined

behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the

country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of

her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two

buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.

When Charles, after bidding farewell to old Rouault, returned to the

room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the

window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked

down by the wind. She turned round. “Are you looking for anything?” she

asked.

“My whip, if you please,” he answered.

He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It

had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle

Emma saw it, and bent over the flour sacks.

Charles out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his

arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the

young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked

at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip.

Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised,

he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without

counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.

Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and

when, at the end of forty-six days, old Rouault was seen trying to walk

alone in his “den,” Monsieur Bovary began to be looked upon as a man

of great capacity. Old Rouault said that he could not have been cured

better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.

As to Charles, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure

to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have

attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the

money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits

to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of

his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on

his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black

gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing

the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads

run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old

Rouault, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the

small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Emma on the scoured flags of the

kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in

front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp

sound against the leather of her boots.

She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his

horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said

“Good-bye”; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round,

playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro

on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once,

during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on

the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold,

and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of

the colour of pigeons’ breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted

up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the

tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on

the stretched silk.

During the first period of Charles’s visits to the Bertaux, Madame

Bovary junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had

even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a

clean blank page for Monsieur Rouault. But when she heard he had a

daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle

Rouault, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called

“a good education”; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to

embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.

“So it is for this,” she said to herself, “that his face beams when he

goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of

spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! That woman!”

And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by

allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations

that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to

which he knew not what to answer. “Why did he go back to the Bertaux now

that Monsieur Rouault was cured and that these folks hadn’t paid yet?

Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who knew how to

talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted

town misses.” And she went on--

“The daughter of old Rouault a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was

a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes

for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss,

or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess.

Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn’t been for the colza last year,

would have had much ado to pay up his arrears.”

For very weariness Charles left off going to the Bertaux. Heloise made

him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more

after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He

obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the

servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive

hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to

love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all

weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her

shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they

were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the

laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings.

Charles’s mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few

days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and

then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and

observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much.

Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came?

What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a

notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Dubuc’s property, one fine

day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Heloise,

it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six

thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all

this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting

perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the

household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found

to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed

with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed

one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation,

Monsieur Bovary the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his

wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such

a harridan, whose harness wasn’t worth her hide. They came to Tostes.

Explanations followed. There were scenes. Heloise in tears, throwing her

arms about her husband, implored him to defend her from his parents.

Charles tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left the house.

But “the blow had struck home.” A week after, as she was hanging up some

washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and

the next day, while Charles had his back turned to her drawing the

window-curtain, she said, “O God!” gave a sigh and fainted. She was

dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Charles went

home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to

their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then,

leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried

in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!

Chapter Three

One morning old Rouault brought Charles the money for setting his

leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard

of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.

“I know what it is,” said he, clapping him on the shoulder; “I’ve been

through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be

quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I

talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the

branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it.

And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their

nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on

the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very

idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn’t believe it. Well,

quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an

autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb;

it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something

always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one’s

heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way

altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must

pull yourself together, Monsieur Bovary. It will pass away. Come to see

us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d’ye know, and she says

you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We’ll have some

rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit.”

Charles followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all

as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear

trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Rouault, on his legs again,

came and went, making the farm more full of life.

Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor

because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off,

spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended

to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him

than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He

told stories. Charles found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his

wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in;

he thought no more about her.

He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new

delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now

change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was

very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and

coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him.

On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his

business, since for a month people had been saying, “The poor young

man! what a loss!” His name had been talked about, his practice had

increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked.

He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better

looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.

One day he got there about three o’clock. Everybody was in the fields.

He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Emma; the

outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun

sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners

of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table

were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they

drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in

by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and

touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth

Emma was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of

perspiration on her bare shoulders.

After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to

drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have

a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao

from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the

brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked

glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent

back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the

strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her

tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the

bottom of her glass.

She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was

darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did

Charles. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the

flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing

in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the

yard. Emma from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her

hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.

She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from

giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began

talking of her convent, Charles of his school; words came to them. They

went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little

prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a

cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even

showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every

month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother’s tomb. But the

gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid!

She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town,

although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more

wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her

voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in

modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now

joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her

look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.

Going home at night, Charles went over her words one by one, trying to

recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life

she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts

other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her.

Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married,

and to whom! Alas! Old Rouault was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But

Emma’s face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the

humming of a top, sounded in his ears, “If you should marry after

all! If you should marry!” At night he could not sleep; his throat was

parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and

opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing

in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the

Bertaux.

Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Charles promised

himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each

time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words

sealed his lips.

Old Rouault would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who

was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her,

thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven,

since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune

by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in

bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other

hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of

the farm, suited him less than most people. He did not willingly take

his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that

concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep

well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, _glorias_[5] well

beaten up. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire,

on a little table brought to him all ready laid as on the stage.

[5] A mixture of coffee and spirits.

When, therefore, he perceived that Charles’s cheeks grew red if near his

daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days,

he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a

little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he

was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt

would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old

Rouault would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of “his property,”

as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the

shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, “If he asks for her,” he said

to himself, “I’ll give her to him.”

At Michaelmas Charles went to spend three days at the Bertaux.

The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to

hour. Old Rouault was seeing him off; they were walking along the road

full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Charles gave

himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past

it--

“Monsieur Rouault,” he murmured, “I should like to say something to

you.”

They stopped. Charles was silent.

“Well, tell me your story. Don’t I know all about it?” said old Rouault,

laughing softly.

“Monsieur Rouault--Monsieur Rouault,” stammered Charles.

“I ask nothing better”, the farmer went on. “Although, no doubt, the

little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get

off--I’ll go back home. If it is ‘yes’, you needn’t return because of

all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so

that you mayn’t be eating your heart, I’ll open wide the outer shutter

of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning

over the hedge.”

And he went off.

Charles fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited.

Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch.

Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown

back; the hook was still swinging.

The next day by nine o’clock he was at the farm. Emma blushed as

he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in

countenance. Old Rouault embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion

of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before

them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out

of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.

The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Rouault was busy with

her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself

chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When

Charles visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked

over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed

of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be

entrees.

Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding

with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea. So

there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which

they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to

some extent on the days following.

Chapter Four

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled

cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young

people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in

rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot

and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from

Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.

All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between

friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to.

From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then

the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the

steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all

sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets,

had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with

the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down

behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads,

dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes

(many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their

sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first

communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or

sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their

hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their

gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the

carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it

themselves. According to their different social positions they wore

tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats,

redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe

on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and

round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse

cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short

cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like

a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a

carpenter’s hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at

the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say,

with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small

plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.

And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had

just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been

close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and

not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or

cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh

air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were

mottled here and there with red dabs.

The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither

on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church.

The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated

across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn,

soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to

talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at

its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all

following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves

plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves

unseen. Emma’s dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from

time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her

gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns,

while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault,

with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands

up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur

Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply

in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing

compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed,

and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their

business or played tricks behind each other’s backs, egging one another

on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the

squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When

he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly

rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set

off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark

time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little

birds from afar.

The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six

chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle

a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At

the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round

the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine

beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least

shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of

the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot

had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up

on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself

brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin

with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a

temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and

in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second

stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications

in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and

finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of

jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate

swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.

Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they

went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the

granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to

sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began

songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with

their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad

jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed

up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they

kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore;

and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were

runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over

yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning

out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.

Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen.

The children had fallen asleep under the seats.

The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage

pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even

brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water

from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in

time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position

of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the

same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused

old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in

a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running

served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been

badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints

hoping he would ruin himself.

Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been

consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the

arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead

of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till

daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This

added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.

Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding.

He answered feebly to the puns, _doubles entendres_,[6] compliments,

and chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup

appeared.

[6] Double meanings.

The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who

might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before,

whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did

not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed

near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles

concealed nothing. He called her “my wife”, _tutoyéd_[7] her, asked for

her of everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her

into the yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees,

putting his arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her,

ruffling the chemisette of her bodice with his head.

[7] Used the familiar form of address.

Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of

his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back

in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here

he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way.

When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the

cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh.

Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of

his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her

from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion,

trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the

country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from

the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that

it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he

saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently

under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from

time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would

have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the

road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling

with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he

felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was

afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went

right away home.

Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o’clock.

The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor’s new wife.

The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not

having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should

look over her house.

Chapter Five

The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road.

Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black

leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were a pair of leggings,

still covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was

both dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the

top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly

stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways

at the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with

a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks

under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Charles’s

consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table,

three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the “Dictionary of Medical

Science,” uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive

sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the six shelves

of a deal bookcase.

The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw

patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in

the consulting room and recounting their histories.

Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large

dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and

pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements

past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to

guess.

The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered

apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the

middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with

eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed.

Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster

reading his breviary.

Emma went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second,

which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red

drapery. A shell box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary

near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin

ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride’s bouquet; it was the other

one’s. She looked at it. Charles noticed it; he took it and carried it

up to the attic, while Emma seated in an arm-chair (they were putting

her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in

a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she

were to die.

During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in

the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper

put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the

sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain

and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out,

picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard

in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.

He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together,

a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her

hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and

many another thing in which Charles had never dreamed of pleasure, now

made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by

her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down

on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen

thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on

waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the

shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of

different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the

surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw

himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round

his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window

to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of

geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Charles,

in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while

she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of

flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating,

described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before

it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare

standing motionless at the door. Charles from horseback threw her a

kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And

then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along

the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where

the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning

air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his

mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness,

like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are

digesting.

Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when

he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of

companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his

accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school

with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied medicine, and never

had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have

become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the

widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life

this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend

beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself

with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly,

ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Emma, in her room, was dressing;

he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.

He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her

fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on

her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm

from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away

half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.

Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that

should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought,

have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in

life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so

beautiful in books.

Chapter Six

She had read “Paul and Virginia,” and she had dreamed of the little

bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the

sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for

you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand,

bringing you a bird’s nest.

When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place

her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter,

where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the

story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped

here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the

tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.

Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the

society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel,

which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very

little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she

who always answered Monsieur le Vicaire’s difficult questions. Living

thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and

amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she

was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the

altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers.

Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with

their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred

heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the

cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a

whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.

When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she

might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined,

her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest.

The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal

marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of

unexpected sweetness.

In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in

the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or

the Lectures of the Abbe Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the

“Genie du Christianisme,” as a recreation. How she listened at first to

the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing

through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the

shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened

her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to

us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well;

she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs.

Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to

those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms,

and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.

She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected

as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her

heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking

for emotions, not landscapes.

At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to

mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an

ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the

refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit

of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped

out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs

of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.

She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on

the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the

pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed

long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers,

sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions

killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre

forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by

moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, “gentlemen” brave as lions,

gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and

weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of

age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.

Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events,

dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked

to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines

who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the

stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on

his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult

for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy

women. Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and

Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of

heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St.

Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a

little of St. Bartholomew’s Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always

the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.

In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but

little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild

compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity

of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria

of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought “keepsakes”

given them as new year’s gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden;

it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately

handling the beautiful satin bindings, Emma looked with dazzled eyes at

the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the

most part as counts or viscounts.

She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and

saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the

balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his

arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or

there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who

looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear

eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through

parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at

a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on

sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open

window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their

cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or,

smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a

marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked

shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining

beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres,

Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands,

that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a

lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by

a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam

trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white

excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.

And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Emma’s head

lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one

by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some

belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.

When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a

funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter

sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be

buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill,

and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at

a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre

hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened

to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of

the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of

the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not

confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel

herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her

brow.

The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with

great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping

from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,

novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to

saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of

the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined

horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This

nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the

church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the

songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against

the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing

antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,

no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she

had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.

Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the

servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.

When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself

quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to

feel.

But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance

caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe

that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a

great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies

of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived

was the happiness she had dreamed.

Chapter Seven

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time

of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full

sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those

lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of

laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride

slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed

by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of

a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume

of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in

hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her

that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar

to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean

over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch

cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails,

and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked

to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable

uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed

her--the opportunity, the courage.

If Charles had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but

once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have

gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by

a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater

became the gulf that separated her from him.

Charles’s conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and

everyone’s ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without

exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity,

he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors

from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day

he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come

across in a novel.

A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold

activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements

of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing,

wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm,

this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.

Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Charles to stand

there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes

half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers,

little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers

glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb,

and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken

up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the

other end of the village when the window was open, and often the

bailiff’s clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list

slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.

Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the

patients’ accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of

a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to

have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves,

served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying

finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was

extended to Bovary.

Charles finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife.

He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by

her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the

wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his

door in his wool-work slippers.

He came home late--at ten o’clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked

for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Emma waited

on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one

after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been,

the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he

finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off

the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to

bed, and lay on his back and snored.

As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief

would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was

all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of

the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore

thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely

towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight

line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that “was quite good

enough for the country.”

His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly

when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary

senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought “her

ways too fine for their position”; the wood, the sugar, and the candles

disappeared as “at a grand establishment,” and the amount of firing in

the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her

linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on

the butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with these lessons.

Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the words “daughter” and “mother”

were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the

lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.

In Madame Dubuc’s time the old woman felt that she was still the

favorite; but now the love of Charles for Emma seemed to her a desertion

from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched

her son’s happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through

the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as

remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with

Emma’s negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to

adore her so exclusively.

Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved

his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible,

and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam

Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or

two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Emma

proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his

patients.

And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make

herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all

the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many

melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and

Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.

When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without

getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did

not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself

in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that

Charles’s passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became

regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among

other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony

of dinner.

A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had

given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for

she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see

before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far

as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an

angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of

the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you.

She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last

she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and

wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and

the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always

closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts,

aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round

and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing

the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.

Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass

that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Emma repeated to

herself, “Good heavens! Why did I marry?”

She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not

been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would

have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown

husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been

handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old

companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In

town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the

lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands,

the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose

dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was

weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive

her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and

open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her

seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was

full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows;

the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all

of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and

smoothed the long delicate head, saying, “Come, kiss mistress; you have

no troubles.”

Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned

slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud

as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.

Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in

one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought

even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground,

whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their

summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew her shawl

round her shoulders and rose.

In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss

that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky

showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform,

and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out

against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali,

and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an

armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.

But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her

life; she was invited by the Marquis d’Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.

Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to

re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to

the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a

great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically

demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had

suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by miracle by

giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes

to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some

superb cherries in the doctor’s little garden. Now cherry trees did not

thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips; made it

his business to thank his personally; saw Emma; thought she had a pretty

figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not

think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other

hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.

On Wednesday at three o’clock, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, seated in

their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped

on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles

held a bandbox between his knees.

They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit

to show the way for the carriages.

Chapter Eight

The château, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting

wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense

green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees

set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,

syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of

green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge;

through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs

scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered

hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel

lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old

château.

Charles’s dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants

appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the

doctor’s wife, conducted her to the vestibule.

It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of

footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.

Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery

overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one

could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the

drawing room, Emma saw standing round the table men with grave faces,

their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled

silently as they made their strokes.

On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at

the bottom names written in black letters. She read: “Jean-Antoine

d’Andervilliers d’Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la

Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October,

1587.” And on another: “Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d’Andervilliers de

la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St.

Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of

May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693.” One could

hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered

over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the

horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where

there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares

framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the

painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over

and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a

well-rounded calf.

The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the

Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma. She made her sit down by her on

an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her

a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook

nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair

a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young

woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers

in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.

At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down

at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the

dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness.

Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a

blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes

of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers

reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal

covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays;

bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in

the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a

bishop’s mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped

roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open

baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke

was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and

frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved

dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon

gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid

with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed

motionless on the room full of life.

Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their

glasses.

But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent

over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an

old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes

were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He

was the Marquis’s father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on

a time favourite of the Count d’Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil

hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans’, and had been, it was said,

the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and

Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels,

bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his

family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the

dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma’s eyes

turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something

extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!

Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt

it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted

pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than

elsewhere.

The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.

Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her

debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,

and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed.

Charles’s trousers were tight across the belly.

“My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing,” he said.

“Dancing?” repeated Emma.

“Yes!”

“Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.

Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor,” she added.

Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish

dressing.

He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes

seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone

with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,

with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of

pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with

green.

Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.

“Let me alone!” she said; “you are tumbling me.”

One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She

went downstairs restraining herself from running.

Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.

She sat down on a form near the door.

The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up

and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line

of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling

faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed

hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh

at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets

trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms.

The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape,

bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate

blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places,

mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.

Emma’s heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the

tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and

waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,

swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight

movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate

phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other

instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis

d’or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room;

then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note,

feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted;

the same eyes falling before you met yours again.

A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here

and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished

themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their

differences in age, dress, or face.

Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,

brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate

pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that

is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the

veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite

nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low

cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they

wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave

forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air

of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young.

In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and

through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality,

the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised

and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society

of loose women.

A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy

with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.

They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter’s, Tivoly,

Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum

by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation

full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very

young man who the week before had beaten “Miss Arabella” and “Romolus,”

and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained

that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers’ errors

that had disfigured the name of his horse.

The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.

Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair

and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary

turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed

against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux

came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in

a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,

skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But

in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until

then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She

was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest.

She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand

in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her

teeth.

A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.

“Would you be so good,” said the lady, “as to pick up my fan that has

fallen behind the sofa?”

The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw

the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,

into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady

respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began

smelling her bouquet.

After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups _à la

bisque_ and _au lait d’amandes_,[8] puddings _à la Trafalgar_, and all

sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the

carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners

of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns

glimmering through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some

card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of

their fingers on their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back

propped against a door.

[8] With almond milk

At three o’clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.

Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers herself and the

Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a

dozen persons.

One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and

whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time

to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and

that she would get through it very well.

They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them

was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like

a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma’s dress

caught against his trousers.

Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to

his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a

more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with

her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for

a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but

more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the

wall and covered her eyes with her hands.

When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three

waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.

She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.

Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body,

her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved,

his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to

waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.

Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or

rather good mornings, the guests of the château retired to bed.

Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His “knees were going

up into his body.” He had spent five consecutive hours standing

bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without

understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief

that he pulled off his boots.

Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.

The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the

damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still

murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to

prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to

give up.

Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the château,

trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the

evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,

blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and

cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.

There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten

minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.

Next, Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a

small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and

they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling

with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from

over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.

The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the

outhouses of the château. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took

her to see the stables.

Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the

horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when

anyone went near and said “Tchk! tchk!” The boards of the harness room

shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was

piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the

whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.

Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The

dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels

being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and

Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.

Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge

of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little

horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose

reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened

on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.

They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen

with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she

recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the

movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the

trot or gallop.

A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces

that had broken.

But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the

ground between his horse’s legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with

a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a

carriage.

“There are even two cigars in it,” said he; “they’ll do for this evening

after dinner.”

“Why, do you smoke?” she asked.

“Sometimes, when I get a chance.”

He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.

When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper.

Nastasie answered rudely.

“Leave the room!” said Emma. “You are forgetting yourself. I give you

warning.”

For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.

Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands gleefully.

“How good it is to be at home again!”

Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl.

She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him

company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest

acquaintance in the place.

“Have you given her warning for good?” he asked at last.

“Yes. Who is to prevent me?” she replied.

Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being

made ready. Charles began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding,

spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.

“You’ll make yourself ill,” she said scornfully.

He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the

pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back

of the cupboard.

The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up

and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier,

before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things

of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed

already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day

before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard

had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that

a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was

resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down

to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of

the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against

wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced.

The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Emma.

Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, “Ah!

I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago.”

And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.

She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries

and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret

remained with her.

Chapter Nine

Often when Charles was out she took from the cupboard, between the

folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case.

She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odour of the lining--a

mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount’s? Perhaps

it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some

rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had

occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the

pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the

canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and

all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same

silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away

with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled

chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes;

he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague

name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it

rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes,

even on the labels of her pomade-pots.

At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts

singing the “Marjolaine,” she awoke, and listened to the noise of the

iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon

deadened by the soil. “They will be there to-morrow!” she said to

herself.

And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing

villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the

end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into

which her dream died.

She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map

she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at

every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white

squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of

her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind

and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles

of theatres.

She took in “La Corbeille,” a lady’s journal, and the “Sylphe des

Salons.” She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of

first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a

singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the

addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In

Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and

George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires.

Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages

while Charles ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always

returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made

comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened

round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened

out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.

Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma’s eyes in an

atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult

were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma

perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in

themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over

polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables

covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with

trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the

society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o’clock; the

women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men,

unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to

death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards

the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants,

where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the

motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as

kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence

outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of

storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it

was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. The nearer

things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them.

All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class

imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a

peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as

far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused

in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart,

elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like

Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs

by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all

the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be

separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence,

from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled

flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of precious

stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.

The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning

passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes

in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the

groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done,

he did not come back again all day, for Charles on his return put up

his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the

servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could

into the manger.

To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Emma

took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet

face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in

the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before

coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a

lady’s-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not

to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,

Félicité every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone

in her bed after she had said her prayers.

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.

Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that

showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with

three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and

her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell

over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case,

pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she

dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book,

and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She

longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same

time to die and to live in Paris.

Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on

farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid

spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined

basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he

found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed

woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say

whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous

her chemise.

She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of

arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on

her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the

servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with pleasure to the last

mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the

watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two

large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a

silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles understood these refinements

the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the

senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust

sanding all along the narrow path of his life.

He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established.

The country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the

children, never went to the public house, and, moreover, his morals

inspired confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest

complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact

only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath,

or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people

copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the

“devil’s own wrist.”

Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in “La Ruche Medicale,”

a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little

after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to

the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin

on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the

lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was

not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their

books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism

sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat?

She could have wished this name of Bovary, which was hers, had been

illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers’, repeated in the

newspapers, known to all France. But Charles had no ambition.

An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat

humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled

relatives. When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote, Emma

inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was much touched. He

kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with

shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window

in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.

“What a man! What a man!” she said in a low voice, biting her lips.

Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his

manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles;

after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup

he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting

fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up

to the temples.

Sometimes Emma tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his

waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was

going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it

was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation.

Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in

a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the “upper ten” that she

had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Charles was something, an

ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to

her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to

the pendulum of the clock.

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to

happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the

solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of

the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would

bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a

shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the

portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that

day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that

it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for

the morrow.

Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees

began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.

From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to

October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d’Andervilliers would give

another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or

visits.

After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained

empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would

thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing

nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some

event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and

the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so!

The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.

She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her?

Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking

with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel

the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while

boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery

she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing

irritated her. “I have read everything,” she said to herself. And she

sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.

How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull

attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over

some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the

highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and

the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away

over the fields.

But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the

peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along

in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six

men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door

of the inn.

The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with

rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass,

sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o’clock the lamp

had to be lighted.

On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the

cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one

to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the

espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent

under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the

many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the

curé in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right

foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white

scabs on his face.

Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with

the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever.

She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of

shame restrained her.

Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened

the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre

over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by

three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the

bell of a public house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear

the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser’s shop

creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving

of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a

woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted

calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big

town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the

theatre--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church,

sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Bovary looked up, she

always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skullcap over

his ears and his vest of lasting.

Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room, the head of a

man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with

a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately

began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of

a finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock

coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas,

the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together

at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle,

looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again,

while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone,

with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his

shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music

escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under

a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at

the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted

lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Emma. Endless

sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the

flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream

to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers

in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ

on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going.

But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this

small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking

door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life

seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there

rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Charles was a slow

eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused

herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point

of her knife.

She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame

Bovary senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much

surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty,

now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and

burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since

they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that

Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth

of her mother-in-law. Besides, Emma no longer seemed inclined to follow

her advice; once even, Madame Bovary having thought fit to maintain that

mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she

had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good

woman did not interfere again.

Emma was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself,

then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next

cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then,

stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had

well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see

neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her

purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible

to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always

retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal

hands.

Towards the end of February old Rouault, in memory of his cure, himself

brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes.

Charles being with his patients, Emma kept him company. He smoked in the

room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and

municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with

a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover she no

longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she

set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which

others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which

made her husband open his eyes widely.

Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet

she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen

duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she

execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls

to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent

pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these

must surely yield.

She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart.

Charles prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried

only seemed to irritate her the more.

On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this

over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which

she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was

pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.

As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Charles fancied that her

illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea,

began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.

From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and

completely lost her appetite.

It cost Charles much to give up Tostes after living there four years and

“when he was beginning to get on there.” Yet if it must be! He took her

to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of

air was needed.

After looking about him on this side and on that, Charles learnt that

in the Neufchâtel arrondissement there was a considerable market town

called Yonville-l’Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a

week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the

number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what

his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being

satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Emma’s

health did not improve.

One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer,

something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet.

The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin

ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared

up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the

cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn.

The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold

lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black

butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney.

When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant.