Chapter Fourteen
To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Monsieur Homais
for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man,
he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a
little at such an obligation. Then the expenses of the household,
now that the servant was mistress, became terrible. Bills rained
in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; Monsieur Lheureux
especially harassed him. In fact, at the height of Emma's
illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to
make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the
travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other
things. It was very well for Charles to say he did not want them.
The tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been
ordered, and that he would not take them back; besides, it would
vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had better think it
over; in short, he was resolved to sue him rather than give up
his rights and take back his goods. Charles subsequently ordered
them to be sent back to the shop. Felicite forgot; he had other
things to attend to; then thought no more about them. Monsieur
Lheureux returned to the charge, and, by turns threatening and
whining, so managed that Bovary ended by signing a bill at six
months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea
occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from
Lheureux. So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were
possible to get them, adding that it would be for a year, at any
interest he wished. Lheureux ran off to his shop, brought back
the money, and dictated another bill, by which Bovary undertook
to pay to his order on the 1st of September next the sum of one
thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty
already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus
lending at six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission:
and the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this
ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and
thirty francs. He hoped that the business would not stop there;
that the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and
that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at
a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more
plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.
Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for
a supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Monsieur
Guillaumin promised him some shares in the turf-pits of
Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence service
between Arcueil and Rouen, which no doubt would not be long in
ruining the ramshackle van of the "Lion d'Or," and that,
travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage,
would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.
Charles several times asked himself by what means he should next
year be able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined
expedients, such as applying to his father or selling something.
But his father would be deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell.
Then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed so
disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind. He reproached
himself with forgetting Emma, as if, all his thoughts belonging
to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to be
constantly thinking of her.
The winter was severe, Madame Bovary's convalescence slow. When
it was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that
overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy to the
garden, and the blinds on that side were always down. She wished
the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now displeased her.
All her ideas seemed to be limited to the care of herself. She
stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the servant to
inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on the
market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the
rain began to fall; and Emma waited daily with a mind full of
eagerness for the inevitable return of some trifling events which
nevertheless had no relation to her. The most important was the
arrival of the "Hirondelle" in the evening. Then the landlady
shouted out, and other voices answered, while Hippolyte's
lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a star
in the darkness. At mid-day Charles came in; then he went out
again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as
the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging
their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the
shutters with their rulers one after the other.
It was at this hour that Monsieur Bournisien came to see her. He
inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to
religion, in a coaxing little prattle that was not without its
charm. The mere thought of his cassock comforted her.
One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought
herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they
were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while
they were turning the night table covered with syrups into an
altar, and while Felicite was strewing dahlia flowers on the
floor, Emma felt some power passing over her that freed her from
her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. Her body,
relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it
seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would be
annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into
vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the
priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was
fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept
the body of the Saviour presented to her. The curtains of the
alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the
two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like
dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she
heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an
azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding
green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a
sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in
their arms.
This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful
thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to
recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less
exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured
by pride, at length found rest in Christian humility, and,
tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the
destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for
the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in the place
of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all loves,
without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She
saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating
above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She
wanted to become a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets;
she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a
reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening.
The cure marvelled at this humour, although Emma's religion, he
thought, might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy,
extravagance. But not being much versed in these matters, as soon
as they went beyond a certain limit he wrote to Monsieur Boulard,
bookseller to Monsignor, to send him "something good for a lady
who was very clever." The bookseller, with as much indifference
as if he had been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up,
pellmell, everything that was then the fashion in the pious book
trade. There were little manuals in questions and answers,
pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Monsieur de
Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a
honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent
blue-stockings. There were the "Think of it; the Man of the World
at Mary's Feet, by Monsieur de ***, decorated with many Orders";
"The Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young," etc.
Madame Bovary's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply
herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading
in too much hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of
religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by
their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the
secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in
such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her
from the truths for whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless,
she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she
fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that
an ethereal soul could conceive.
As for the memory of Rodolphe, she had thrust it back to the
bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more
motionless than a king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation
escaped from this embalmed love, that, penetrating through
everything, perfumed with tenderness the immaculate atmosphere in
which she longed to live. When she knelt on her Gothic prie-Dieu,
she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that she had
murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. It
was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the
heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling
of a gigantic dupery.
This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the
more, and in the pride of her devoutness Emma compared herself to
those grand ladies of long ago whose glory she, had dreamed of
over a portrait of La Valliere, and who, trailing with so much
majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long gowns, retired into
solitudes to shed at the feet of Christ all the tears of hearts
that life had wounded.
Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes
for the poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Charles one
day, on coming home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen
seated at the table eating soup. She had her little girl, whom
during her illness her husband had sent back to the nurse,
brought home. She wanted to teach her to read; even when Berthe
cried, she was not vexed. She had made up her mind to
resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about
everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child,
"Is your stomach-ache better, my angel?"
Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this
mania of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own
house-linen; but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman
took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even stayed there till
after Easter, to escape the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never
failed on Good Friday to order chitterlings.
Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened
her a little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways,
Emma almost every day had other visitors. These were Madame
Langlois, Madame Caron, Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and
regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent Madame Homais,
who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle
about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to see her;
Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom, and
remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even
Madame Bovary; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She
began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick
movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of
hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was
to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and
strange, whose splendour terrified him.
Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his
timidity. She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her
life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse
holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of
her beauty. Besides, she now enveloped all things with such
indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so
haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer
distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. One
evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had
asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.
Then suddenly--
"So you love him?" she said.
And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was
blushing, she added, "There! run along; enjoy yourself!"
In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end
to end, despite Bovary's remonstrances. However, he was glad to
see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger
she displayed more wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel
Mere Rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had
contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her
two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a
cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family, successively
dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented church less
assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said to
her in a friendly way--
"You were going in a bit for the cassock!"
As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every day when he
came out after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors
to taking the air "in the grove," as he called the arbour. This
was the time when Charles came home. They were hot; some sweet
cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's
complete restoration.
Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the
terrace wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited him to have a
drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone
bottles.
"You must," he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him,
even to the very extremity of the landscape, "hold the bottle
perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut,
press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed
they do seltzer-water at restaurants."
But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into
their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never
missed this joke--
"Its goodness strikes the eye!"
He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even
scandalised at the chemist, who advised Charles to give madame
some distraction by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear
the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Homais, surprised at this
silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that
he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature.
But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he
contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask
of pleasure, taught virtue.
"'Castigat ridendo mores,'* Monsieur Bournisien! Thus consider
the greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly
strewn with philosophical reflections, that made them a vast
school of morals and diplomacy for the people."
*It corrects customs through laughter.
"I," said Binet, "once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,'
in which there was the character of an old general that is really
hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a
working girl, who at the ending--"
"Certainly," continued Homais, "there is bad literature as there
is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of
the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of
the abominable times that imprisoned Galileo."
"I know very well," objected the cure, "that there are good
works, good authors. However, if it were only those persons of
different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated
rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in
the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to
immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is
the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally," he added, suddenly
assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff
between his fingers, "if the Church has condemned the theatre,
she must be right; we must submit to her decrees."
"Why," asked the druggist, "should she excommunicate actors? For
formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in
the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of
farce called 'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws
of decency."
The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the
chemist went on--
"It's like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more
than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!"
And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur Bournisien--
"Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of
a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie--"
"But it is the Protestants, and not we," cried the other
impatiently, "who recommend the Bible."
"No matter," said Homais. "I am surprised that in our days, in
this century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in
proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive,
moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?"
"No doubt," replied the doctor carelessly, either because,
sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else
because he had not any ideas.
The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to
shoot a Parthian arrow.
"I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see
dancers kicking about."
"Come, come!" said the cure.
"Ah! I've known some!" And separating the words of his sentence,
Homais repeated, "I--have--known--some!"
"Well, they were wrong," said Bournisien, resigned to anything.
"By Jove! they go in for more than that," exclaimed the druggist.
"Sir!" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the
druggist was intimidated by them.
"I only mean to say," he replied in less brutal a tone, "that
toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion."
"That is true! that is true!" agreed the good fellow, sitting
down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.
Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to the doctor--
"That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a
way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were
only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang
it! If anyone could take my place, I would accompany you myself.
Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance;
he's engaged to go to England at a high salary. From what I hear,
he's a regular dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three
mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists
burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that
suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at the
hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay by.
Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow."
The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary's head, for
he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused,
alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder,
Charles did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation
would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother
had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer
expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling
in of Lheureux's bills was still so far off that there was no
need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was
refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of
worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at
eight o'clock they set out in the "Hirondelle."
The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who
thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them
go.
"Well, a pleasant journey!" he said to them; "happy mortals that
you are!"
Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a blue silk gown
with four flounces--
"You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen."
The diligence stopped at the "Croix-Rouge" in the Place
Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg,
with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the
middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy
gigs of the commercial travellers--a good old house, with
worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights,
always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are
sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by
the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that
always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in
Sundayclothes, has a cafe on the street, and towards the
countryside a kitchen-garden. Charles at once set out. He muddled
up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes;
asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from
the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn,
returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the
whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.
Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor
was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had
time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the
doors of the theatre, which were still closed.
Chapter Fifteen
The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed
between the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring
streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters "Lucie de
Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc." The weather was fine, the people
were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs
taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a
warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of
the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A
little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy
air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an
exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black
warehouses where they made casks.
For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in wished to
have a little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary prudently kept
his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he
pressed against his stomach.
Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She
involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to
the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase
to the reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with
her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all
her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated
in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess.
The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from
their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another,
were bowing. They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after
the anxieties of business; but "business" was not forgotten; they
still talked cottons, spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of
old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their
hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by
steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting about in the pit,
showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or
applegreen cravats, and Madame Bovary from above admired them
leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of
their yellow gloves.
Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down
from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a
sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one
after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the
basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes
and flageolets fifing. But three knocks were heard on the stage,
a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some
chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene.
It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an
oak to the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their
shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain
suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both
his arms to heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the
hunters started afresh. She felt herself transported to the
reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed
to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes
re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel
helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story
phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her
dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. She gave
herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being
vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had
not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors,
the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet
caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated
amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a
young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in
green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the
murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her
cavatina in G major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for
wings. Emma, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away
in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared.
He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty
of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was
tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled
poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast round laughing
looks showing his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess
having heard him sing one night on the beach at Biarritz, where
he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. She had ruined
herself for him. He had deserted her for other women, and this
sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic
reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into
his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his
person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ,
imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more
power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this
admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the
hairdresser and the toreador.
From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his
arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had
outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness,
and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses.
Emma leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box
with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious
lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the
double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a
tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that
had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna seemed to her
to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that
charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on
earth had loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar
that last moonlit night when they said, "To-morrow! to-morrow!"
The theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire
movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows,
exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, Emma
gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last
chords.
"But why," asked Bovary, "does that gentleman persecute her?"
"No, no!" she answered; "he is her lover!"
"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who
came on before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he
went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her
father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in
his hat?"
Despite Emma's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began
in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his
master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to
deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He
confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because
of the music, which interfered very much with the words.
"What does it matter?" said Emma. "Do be quiet!"
"Yes, but you know," he went on, leaning against her shoulder, "I
like to understand things."
"Be quiet! be quiet!" she cried impatiently.
Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange
blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown.
Emma dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again
amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church.
Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on
the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into
which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her
beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of
adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great,
strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty
blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness.
But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair
of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that
art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Emma
determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a
plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even
smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the
stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak.
His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately
the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing
with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice;
Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie
uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated
tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed
forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his
words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row
gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and
stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened
mouths. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his
guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and
he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against
the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out
at the ankles. He, she thought must have an inexhaustible love
to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. All her small
fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed
her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the
character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life
resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers
if fate had willed it. They would have known one another, loved
one another. With him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she
would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his
fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him,
herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening, at the back
of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would have drunk in
eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her
alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked at
her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it
was certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his
strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to
him, to cry out, "Take me away! carry me with you! let us go!
Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!"
The curtain fell.
The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving
of the fans, made the air more suffocating. Emma wanted to go
out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her
arm-chair with palpitations that choked her. Charles, fearing
that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass
of barley-water.
He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his
elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in
his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a
Rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running
down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were
being assassinated. Her husband, who was a millowner, railed at
the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping
up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he
angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. At last
Charles reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath--
"Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such
a crowd--SUCH a crowd!"
He added--
"Just guess whom I met up there! Monsieur Leon!"
"Leon?"
"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects." And as he
finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.
He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame
Bovary extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a
stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when
the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye
standing at the window. But soon recalling herself to the
necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the
torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words.
"Ah, good-day! What! you here?"
"Silence!" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was
beginning.
"So you are at Rouen?"
"Yes."
"And since when?"
"Turn them out! turn them out!" People were looking at them. They
were silent.
But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the
guests, the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet
in D major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had
grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. She
remembered the games at cards at the druggist's, and the walk to
the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, the tete-a-tete by the
fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so
discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless forgotten. And
why had he come back? What combination of circumstances had
brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her,
leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and
again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his
nostrils falling upon her hair.
"Does this amuse you?" said he, bending over her so closely that
the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied
carelessly--
"Oh, dear me, no, not much."
Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and
take an ice somewhere.
"Oh, not yet; let us stay," said Bovary. "Her hair's undone; this
is going to be tragic."
But the mad scene did not at all interest Emma, and the acting of
the singer seemed to her exaggerated.
"She screams too loud," said she, turning to Charles, who was
listening.
"Yes--a little," he replied, undecided between the frankness of
his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.
Then with a sigh Leon said--
"The heat is--"
"Unbearable! Yes!"
"Do you feel unwell?" asked Bovary.
"Yes, I am stifling; let us go."
Monsieur Leon put her long lace shawl carefully about her
shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in
the open air, outside the windows of a cafe.
First they spoke of her illness, although Emma interrupted
Charles from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Monsieur
Leon; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two
years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his
profession, which was different in Normandy and Paris. Then he
inquired after Berthe, the Homais, Mere Lefrancois, and as they
had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one
another, the conversation soon came to an end.
People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement,
humming or shouting at the top of their voices, "O bel ange, ma
Lucie!*" Then Leon, playing the dilettante, began to talk music.
He had seen Tambourini, Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared
with them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere.
*Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie.
"Yet," interrupted Charles, who was slowly sipping his
rum-sherbet, "they say that he is quite admirable in the last
act. I regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to
amuse me."
"Why," said the clerk, "he will soon give another performance."
But Charles replied that they were going back next day. "Unless,"
he added, turning to his wife, "you would like to stay alone,
kitten?"
And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that
presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of
Lagardy in the last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then
Charles insisted--
"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are
wrong if you feel that this is doing you the least good."
The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and
stood discreetly near them. Charles, who understood, took out his
purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave
two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble.
"I am really sorry," said Bovary, "about the money which you
are--"
The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking
his hat said--
"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?"
Charles explained once more that he could not absent himself
longer, but that nothing prevented Emma--
"But," she stammered, with a strange smile, "I am not sure--"
"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel."
Then to Leon, who was walking along with them, "Now that you are
in our part of the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some
dinner now and then."
The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged,
moreover, to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And
they parted before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock
in the cathedral struck half-past eleven.
