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
sketched 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 ha 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.
