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 lie 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 like 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 know 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; say 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!
