Chapter Eight
The chateau, 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
chateau.
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, 1857." 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 mytosotis, 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
a la bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a 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.
*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 chateau 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 that this
luxurious life that she would soon have to give up.
Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the
chateau, 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 chateau. 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.
