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 work, 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, Felicite 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 sum. 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 hear, one saw the many-footed woodlice
crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curie 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 like 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 Neufchatel 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 least flew up the
chimney.
When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Bovary was
pregnant.
