Chapter Five
It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was
falling.
They had all, Monsieur and Madame Bovary, Homais, and Monsieur
Leon, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley
a mile and a half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon
and Athalie to give them some exercise, and Justin accompanied
them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder.
Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A
great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of
sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty,
surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of
little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be
seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the
stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears
fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.
Homais was talking. He explained to the company the future
importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the
floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely
not having a yard-stick such as Monsieur Binet possessed for his
own special use.
Emma, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder,
and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist
his pale splendour. She turned. Charles was there. His cap was
drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were
trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very
back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw
written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer.
While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a
sort of depraved pleasure, Leon made a step forward. The cold
that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his
face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar
of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from
beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the
clouds, seemed to Emma more limpid and more beautiful than those
mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.
"Wretched boy!" suddenly cried the chemist.
And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a
heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with
which he was being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while
Justin dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was
wanted; Charles offered his.
"Ah!" she said to herself, "he carried a knife in his pocket like
a peasant."
The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.
In the evening Madame Bovary did not go to her neighbour's, and
when Charles had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison
re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and
with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to
things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was burning,
she still saw, as she had down there, Leon standing up with one
hand behind his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who was
quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she
could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other
attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of
his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her
lips as if for a kiss--
"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?" she asked herself;
"but with whom? With me?"
All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The
flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she
turned on her back, stretching out her arms.
Then began the eternal lamentation: "Oh, if Heaven had out willed
it! And why not? What prevented it?"
When Charles came home at midnight, she seemed to have just
awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a
headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening.
"Monsieur Leon," he said, "went to his room early."
She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled
with a new delight.
The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Monsieur
Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this
shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his
southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby,
beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his
white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small
black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar said
some, a banker at Routot according to others. What was certain
was that he made complex calculations in his head that would have
frightened Binet himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always
held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows
or who invites.
After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put
down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to
madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till
that day without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was
not made to attract a "fashionable lady"; he emphasized the
words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to
provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery
or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly
four times a month. He was connected with the best houses. You
could speak of him at the "Trois Freres," at the "Barbe d'Or," or
at the "Grand Sauvage"; all these gentlemen knew him as well as
the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show
madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks
to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen
embroidered collars from the box.
Madame Bovary examined them. "I do not require anything," she
said.
Then Monsieur Lheureux delicately exhibited three Algerian
scarves, several packet of English needles, a pair of straw
slippers, and finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in
open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his
neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he
watched Emma's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid
these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he
filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full
length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green
twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like
little stars.
"How much are they?"
"A mere nothing," he replied, "a mere nothing. But there's no
hurry; whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews."
She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining
Monsieur Lheureux's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly--
"Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have
always got on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!"
Emma smiled.
"I wanted to tell you," he went on good-naturedly, after his
joke, "that it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I
could give you some, if need be."
She made a gesture of surprise.
"Ah!" said he quickly and in a low voice, "I shouldn't have to go
far to find you some, rely on that."
And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the
"Cafe Francais," whom Monsieur Bovary was then attending.
"What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes
his whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering
rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man!
Those sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's
burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the same, to see an
acquaintance go off."
And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's
patients.
"It's the weather, no doubt," he said, looking frowningly at the
floor, "that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the
thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor
for a pain I have in my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Bovary. At
your service; your very humble servant." And he closed the door
gently.
Emma had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the
fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with
her.
"How good I was!" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.
She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Leon. She got up and
took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be
hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy.
The conversation languished; Madame Bovary gave it up every few
minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a
low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory
thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down
the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he was
silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her
speech.
"Poor fellow!" she thought.
"How have I displeased her?" he asked himself.
At last, however, Leon said that he should have, one of these
days, to go to Rouen on some office business.
"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?"
"No," she replied.
"Why?"
"Because--"
And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey
thread.
This work irritated Leon. It seemed to roughen the ends of her
fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk
it.
"Then you are giving it up?" he went on.
"What?" she asked hurriedly. "Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house
to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in
fact, many duties that must be considered first?"
She looked at the clock. Charles was late. Then, she affected
anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, "He is so good!"
The clerk was fond of Monsieur Bovary. But this tenderness on his
behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on
his praises, which he said everyone was singing, especially the
chemist.
"Ah! he is a good fellow," continued Emma.
"Certainly," replied the clerk.
And he began talking of Madame Homais, whose very untidy
appearance generally made them laugh.
"What does it matter?" interrupted Emma. "A good housewife does
not trouble about her appearance."
Then she relapsed into silence.
It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners,
everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to
church regularly, and looked after her servant with more
severity.
She took Berthe from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite
brought her in, and Madame Bovary undressed her to show off her
limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her
consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her
caresses with lyrical outburst which would have reminded anyone
but the Yonville people of Sachette in "Notre Dame de Paris."
When Charles came home he found his slippers put to warm near the
fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt
buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the
night-caps arranged in piles of the same height. She no longer
grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he
proposed was always done, although she did not understand the
wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when Leon saw
him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach,
his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his
eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet,
and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his
arm-chair to kiss his forehead: "What madness!" he said to
himself. "And how to reach her!"
And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he
lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he
placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside
those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and
in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him
after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking
wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere
with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose
loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices.
Emma grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her
black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk,
and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through
life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague
impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at
once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself
seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume
of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. The others
even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist said--
"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a
sub-prefecture."
The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness,
the poor her charity.
But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That
dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose
torment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love with
Leon, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease
delight in his image. The sight of his form troubled the
voluptuousness of this mediation. Emma thrilled at the sound of
his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and
afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment
that ended in sorrow.
Leon did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after
he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about
his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite
a history to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's
wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her
thoughts constantly centered upon this house, like the "Lion
d'Or" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white
wings in its gutters. But the more Emma recognised her love, the
more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she
might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and
she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.
What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense
of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that
the time was past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of
being able to say to herself, "I am virtuous," and to look at
herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little
for the sacrifice she believed she was making.
Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the
melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering,
and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the
more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for
it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open
door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had
missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home.
What exasperated her was that Charles did not seem to notice her
anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to
her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point
ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not
for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery,
and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that
bucked her in on all sides.
On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that
resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only
augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other
reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation
between them. Her own gentleness to herself made her rebel
against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies,
marriage tenderness to adulterous desires. She would have like
Charles to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate
him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at
the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she
had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that
she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.
Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the
temptation to flee somewhere with Leon to try a new life; but at
once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.
"Besides, he no longer loves me," she thought. "What is to become
of me? What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what
solace?"
She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice,
with flowing tears.
"Why don't you tell master?" the servant asked her when she came
in during these crises.
"It is the nerves," said Emma. "Do not speak to him of it; it
would worry him."
"Ah! yes," Felicite went on, "you are just like La Guerine, Pere
Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know
at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see
her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to
you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness,
it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the
doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. When she
was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so
that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying
flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her
marriage, it went off, they say."
"But with me," replied Emma, "it was after marriage that it
began."
