Chapter Seven
She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff,
with two assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up
the inventory for the distraint.
They began with Bovary's consulting-room, and did not write down
the phrenological head, which was considered an "instrument of
his profession"; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the
saucepans, the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all
the nick-nacks on the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the
linen, the dressing-room; and her whole existence to its most
intimate details, was, like a corpse on whom a post-mortem is
made, outspread before the eyes of these three men.
Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a
white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to
time--"Allow me, madame. You allow me?" Often he uttered
exclamations. "Charming! very pretty." Then he began writing
again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand.
When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She
kept a desk there in which Rodolphe's letters were locked. It had
to be opened.
"Ah! a correspondence," said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet
smile. "But allow me, for I must make sure the box contains
nothing else." And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to
shake out napoleons. Then she grew angered to see this coarse
hand, with fingers red and pulpy like slugs, touching these pages
against which her heart had beaten.
They went at last. Felicite came back. Emma had sent her out to
watch for Bovary in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly
installed the man in possession under the roof, where he swore he
would remain.
During the evening Charles seemed to her careworn. Emma watched
him with a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in
every line of his face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the
chimney-piece ornamented with Chinese screens, over the large
curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had,
softened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather
an immense regret, that, far from crushing, irritated her
passion. Charles placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the
fire-dogs.
Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight
noise.
"Is anyone walking upstairs?" said Charles.
"No," she replied; "it is a window that has been left open, and
is rattling in the wind."
The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the
brokers whose names she knew. They were at their country-places
or on journeys. She was not discouraged; and those whom she did
manage to see she asked for money, declaring she must have some,
and that she would pay it back. Some laughed in her face; all
refused.
At two o'clock she hurried to Leon, and knocked at the door. No
one answered. At length he appeared.
"What brings you here?"
"Do I disturb you?"
"No; but--" And he admitted that his landlord didn't like his
having "women" there.
"I must speak to you," she went on.
Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.
"No, no! Down there, in our home!"
And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.
On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very
pale. She said to him--
"Leon, you will do me a service?"
And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she
added
"Listen, I want eight thousand francs."
"But you are mad!"
"Not yet."
And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she
explained her distress to him; for Charles knew nothing of it;
her mother-in-law detested her; old Rouault could do nothing; but
he, Leon, he would set about finding this indispensable sum.
"How on earth can I?"
"What a coward you are!" she cried.
Then he said stupidly, "You are exaggerating the difficulty.
Perhaps, with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be
stopped."
All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible
that they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Leon,
could be security instead of her.
"Go, try, try! I will love you so!"
He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with
solemn face--
"I have been to three people with no success."
Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney
corners, motionless, in silence. Emma shrugged her shoulders as
she stamped her feet. He heard her murmuring--
"If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some."
"But where?"
"At your office." And she looked at him.
An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their
lids drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look,
so that the young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute
will of this woman who was urging him to a crime. Then he was
afraid, and to avoid any explanation he smote his forehead,
crying--
"Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope"
(this was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant);
"and I will bring it you to-morrow," he added.
Emma did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had
expected. Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--
"However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for
me, my darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!"
He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Emma had no
strength left for any sentiment.
Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville,
mechanically obeying the force of old habits.
The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and
sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen
folk, in Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She
reached the Place du Parvis. People were coming out after
vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three doors like a
stream through the three arches of a bridge, and in the middle
one, more motionless than a rock, stood the beadle.
Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope,
she had entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out
before her, less profound than her love; and she walked on
weeping beneath her veil, giddy, staggering, almost fainting.
"Take care!" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard
that was thrown open.
She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between
the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who
was it? She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.
Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was
empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean
against a wall to keep herself from falling.
Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know.
All within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost,
sinking at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost
with joy that, on reaching the "Croix-Rouge," she saw the good
Homais, who was watching a large box full of pharmaceutical
stores being hoisted on to the "Hirondelle." In his hand he held
tied in a silk handkerchief six cheminots for his wife.
Madame Homais was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped
loaves, that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige
of Gothic food that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the
Crusades, and with which the robust Normans gorged themselves of
yore, fancying they saw on the table, in the light of the yellow
torches, between tankards of hippocras and huge boars' heads, the
heads of Saracens to be devoured. The druggist's wife crunched
them up as they had done--heroically, despite her wretched teeth.
And so whenever Homais journeyed to town, he never failed to
bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the
Rue Massacre.
"Charmed to see you," he said, offering Emma a hand to help her
into the "Hirondelle." Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords
of the netting, and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive
and Napoleonic.
But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill
he exclaimed--
"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable
industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to
work. Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are
floundering about in mere barbarism."
The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door,
as if it were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.
"This," said the chemist, "is a scrofulous affection."
And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for
the first time, murmured something about "cornea," "opaque
cornea," "sclerotic," "facies," then asked him in a paternal
tone--
"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of
getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself."
He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The
blind man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost
idiotic. At last Monsieur Homais opened his purse--
"Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my
advice: you'll be the better for it."
Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the
druggist said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic
pomade of his own composition, and he gave his address--"Monsieur
Homais, near the market, pretty well known."
"Now," said Hivert, "for all this trouble you'll give us your
performance."
The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown
back, whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue,
and rubbed his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of
hollow yell like a famished dog. Emma, filled with disgust, threw
him over her shoulder a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune.
It seemed to her very fine thus to throw it away.
The coach had gone on again when suddenly Monsieur Homais leant
out through the window, crying--
"No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose
the diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries."
The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes
gradually diverted Emma from her present trouble. An intolerable
fatigue overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied,
discouraged, almost asleep.
"Come what may come!" she said to herself. "And then, who knows?
Why, at any moment could not some extraordinary event occur?
Lheureux even might die!"
At nine o'clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of
voices in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a
large bill fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Justin, who was
climbing on to a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this
moment the rural guard seized him by the collar. Monsieur Homais
came out of his shop, and Mere Lefrangois, in the midst of the
crowd, seemed to be perorating.
"Madame! madame!" cried Felicite, running in, "it's abominable!"
And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that
she had just torn off the door. Emma read with a glance that all
her furniture was for sale.
Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and
mistress had no secret one from the other. At last Felicite
sighed--
"If I were you, madame, I should go to Monsieur Guillaumin."
"Do you think--"
And this question meant to say--
"You who know the house through the servant, has the master
spoken sometimes of me?"
"Yes, you'd do well to go there."
She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads,
and that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the
Place), she took the path by the river, outside the village.
She reached the notary's gate quite breathless. The sky was
sombre, and a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell,
Theodore in a red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to
open the door almost familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and
showed her into the dining-room.
A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up
the niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the
oak-stained paper hung Steuben's "Esmeralda" and Schopin's
"Potiphar." The ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes,
the crystal door-knobs, the parquet and the furniture, all shone
with a scrupulous, English cleanliness; the windows were
ornamented at each corner with stained glass.
"Now this," thought Emma, "is the dining-room I ought to have."
The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his
breast with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and
quickly put on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked
on the right side, whence looked out the ends of three fair curls
drawn from the back of the head, following the line of his bald
skull.
After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast,
apologising profusely for his rudeness.
"I have come," she said, "to beg you, sir--"
"What, madame? I am listening."
And she began explaining her position to him. Monsieur Guillaumin
knew it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from
whom he always got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was
asked to make.
So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the
bills, small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made
out at long dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when,
gathering together all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had
bidden his friend Vincart take in his own name all the necessary
proceedings, not wishing to pass for a tiger with his
fellow-citizens.
She mingled her story with recriminations against Lheureux, to
which the notary replied from time to time with some
insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he
buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which were thrust
two diamond pins, held together by a small gold chain; and he
smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous fashion. But
noticing that her feet were damp, he said--
"Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the
porcelain."
She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a gallant
tone--
"Beautiful things spoil nothing."
Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began
telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her
wants. He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without
leaving off eating, he had turned completely round towards her,
so that his knee brushed against her boot, whose sole curled
round as it smoked against the stove.
But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and
declared he was very sorry he had not had the management of her
fortune before, for there were hundreds of ways very convenient,
even for a lady, of turning her money to account. They might,
either in the turf-peats of Grumesnil or building-ground at
Havre, almost without risk, have ventured on some excellent
speculations; and he let her consume herself with rage at the
thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly have made.
"How was it," he went on, "that you didn't come to me?"
"I hardly know," she said.
"Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary,
who ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very
devoted to you. You do not doubt that, I hope?"
He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss,
then held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her
fingers whilst he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid
voice murmured like a running brook; a light shone in his eyes
through the glimmering of his spectacles, and his hand was
advancing up Emma's sleeve to press her arm. She felt against her
cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed her horribly.
She sprang up and said to him--
"Sir, I am waiting."
"For what?" said the notary, who suddenly became very pale.
"This money."
"But--" Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire,
"Well, yes!"
He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his
dressing-gown.
"For pity's sake, stay. I love you!"
He seized her by her waist. Madame Bovary's face flushed purple.
She recoiled with a terrible look, crying--
"You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am
to be pitied--not to be sold."
And she went out.
The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine
embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of
them at last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an
adventure might have carried him too far.
"What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!" she said to
herself, as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the
path. The disappointment of her failure increased the indignation
of her outraged modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued
her implacably, and, strengthening herself in her pride, she had
never felt so much esteem for herself nor so much contempt for
others. A spirit of warfare transformed her. She would have liked
to strike all men, to spit in their faces, to crush them, and she
walked rapidly straight on, pale, quivering, maddened, searching
the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes, and as it were rejoicing
in the hate that was choking her.
When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go
on; and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?
Felicite was waiting for her at the door. "Well?"
"No!" said Emma.
And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the
various persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help
her. But each time that Felicite named someone Emma replied--
"Impossible! they will not!"
"And the master'll soon be in."
"I know that well enough. Leave me alone."
She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now;
and when Charles came in she would have to say to him--
"Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours.
In your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and
it is I, poor man, who have ruined you."
Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly,
and at last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.
"Yes," she murmured, grinding her teeth, "he will forgive me, he
who would give a million if I would forgive him for having known
me! Never! never!"
This thought of Bovary's superiority to her exasperated her.
Then, whether she confessed or did not confess, presently,
immediately, to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the
same; so she must wait for this horrible scene, and bear the
weight of his magnanimity. The desire to return to Lheureux's
seized her--what would be the use? To write to her father--it was
too late; and perhaps, she began to repent now that she had not
yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of a horse in the
alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter than the
plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the
square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to
Lestiboudois in front of the church, saw her go in to the
tax-collector's.
She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up
to the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props,
stationed themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of
Binet's room.
He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those
indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres
hollowed out one within the other, the whole as straight as an
obelisk, and of no use whatever; and he was beginning on the last
piece--he was nearing his goal. In the twilight of the workshop
the white dust was flying from his tools like a shower of sparks
under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the two wheels were
turning, droning; Binet smiled, his chin lowered, his nostrils
distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete
happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace
occupations, which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and
satisfy by a realisation of that beyond which such minds have not
a dream.
"Ah! there she is!" exclaimed Madame Tuvache.
But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was
saying.
At last these ladies thought they made out the word "francs," and
Madame Tuvache whispered in a low voice--
"She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes."
"Apparently!" replied the other.
They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the
candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Binet
stroked his beard with satisfaction.
"Do you think she wants to order something of him?" said Madame
Tuvache.
"Why, he doesn't sell anything," objected her neighbour.
The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as
if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant
manner. She came nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no
longer spoke.
"Is she making him advances?" said Madame Tuvache. Binet was
scarlet to his very ears. She took hold of his hands.
"Oh, it's too much!"
And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for
the tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at
Lutzen, had been through the French campaign, and had even been
recommended for the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a
serpent, recoiled as far as he could from her, crying--
"Madame! what do you mean?"
"Women like that ought to be whipped," said Madame Tuvache.
"But where is she?" continued Madame Caron, for she had
disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going
up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if making for the
cemetery, they were lost in conjectures.
"Nurse Rollet," she said on reaching the nurse's, "I am choking;
unlace me!" She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her
with a petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she
did not answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began
spinning flax.
"Oh, leave off!" she murmured, fancying she heard Binet's lathe.
"What's bothering her?" said the nurse to herself. "Why has she
come here?"
She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove
her from her home.
Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw
things but vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic
persistence. She looked at the scales on the walls, two brands
smoking end to end, and a long spider crawling over her head in a
rent in the beam. At last she began to collect her thoughts. She
remembered--one day--Leon--Oh! how long ago that was--the sun was
shining on the river, and the clematis were perfuming the air.
Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon began to
recall the day before.
"What time is it?" she asked.
Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to
that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly,
saying--
"Nearly three."
"Ahl thanks, thanks!"
For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would,
perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told
the nurse to run to her house to fetch him.
"Be quick!"
"But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!"
She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first.
Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she
already saw herself at Lheureux's spreading out her three
bank-notes on his bureau. Then she would have to invent some
story to explain matters to Bovary. What should it be?
The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no
clock in the cot, Emma feared she was perhaps exaggerating the
length of time. She began walking round the garden, step by step;
she went into the path by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping
that the woman would have come back by another road. At last,
weary of waiting, assailed by fears that she thrust from her, no
longer conscious whether she had been here a century or a moment,
she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and stopped her ears.
The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken Mere Rollet
said to her--
"There is no one at your house!"
"What?"
"Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you;
they're looking for you."
Emma answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about
her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back
instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and
uttered a cry; for the thought of Rodolphe, like a flash of
lightning in a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so
good, so delicate, so generous! And besides, should he hesitate
to do her this service, she would know well enough how to
constrain him to it by re-waking, in a single moment, their lost
love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not seeing that she was
hastening to offer herself to that which but a while ago had so
angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.
