第 13 页

‘Like me,’ replied Leon. ‘And indeed, what is better

than to sit by one’s fireside in the evening with a book,

while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is

burning?’

‘What, indeed?’ she said, fixing her large black eyes

wide open upon him.

‘One thinks of nothing,’ he continued; ‘the hours slip

by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and

your thought, blinding with the fiction, playing with the

details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles

with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself

palpitating beneath their costumes.’

‘That is true! That is true?’ she said.

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‘Has it ever happened to you,’ Leon went on, ‘to come

across some vague idea of one’s own in a book, some dim

image that comes back to you from afar, and as the

completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?’

‘I have experienced it,’ she replied.

‘That is why,’ he said, ‘I especially love the poets. I

think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far

more easily to tears.’

‘Still in the long run it is tiring,’ continued Emma.

Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly

along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and

moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature.’

‘In fact,’ observed the clerk, ‘these works, not touching

the heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so

sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to

dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections,

and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from

the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords

so few resources.’

‘Like Tostes, no doubt,’ replied Emma; ‘and so I always

subscribed to a lending library.’

‘If madame will do me the honour of making use of it’,

said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, ‘I

have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors,

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Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the ‘Echo des

Feuilletons’; and in addition I receive various periodicals,

among them the ‘Fanal de Rouen’ daily, having the

advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of

Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and vicinity.’

For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the

servant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers

over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot

everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-

room half open, so that it beat against the wall with its

hooks.

Unconsciously, Leon, while talking, had placed his foot

on one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Bovary

was sitting. She wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up

like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the

movements of her head the lower part of her face gently

sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side,

while Charles and the chemist chatted, they entered into

one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all

that is said brings you back to the fixed centre of a

common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of novels,

new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes,

where she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they

examined all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner.

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When coffee was served Felicite went away to get

ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon

raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was asleep near the

cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting

to show Monsieur and Madame Bovary the way home.

Bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his

left leg. When he had taken in his other hand the cure’s

umbrella, they started.

The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw

great shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer’s

night. But as the doctor’s house was only some fifty paces

from the inn, they had to say good-night almost

immediately, and the company dispersed.

As soon as she entered the passage, Emma felt the cold

of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The

walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their

bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish light passed through

the curtainless windows.

She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the

fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the

moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of

the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles,

curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and

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basins on the ground—the two men who had brought the

furniture had left everything about carelessly.

This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange

place.

The first was the day of her going to the convent; the

second, of her arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard;

and this was the fourth. And each one had marked, as it

were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. She did

not believe that things could present themselves in the

same way in different places, and since the portion of her

life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to

be lived would be better.

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CHAPTER THREE

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk

on the Place. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up

and bowed. She nodded quickly and reclosed the window.

Leon waited all day for six o’clock in the evening to

come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but

Monsieur Binet, already at table. The dinner of the

evening before had been a considerable event for him; he

had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a

‘lady.’ How then had he been able to explain, and in such

language, the number of things that he could not have said

so well before? He was usually shy, and maintained that

reserve which partakes at once of modesty and

dissimulation.

At Yonville he was considered ‘well-bred.’ He listened

to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem

hot about politics—a remarkable thing for a young man.

Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in watercolours,

could read the key of G, and readily talked

literature after dinner when he did not play cards.

Monsieur Homais respected him for his education;

Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for he

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often took the little Homais into the garden—little brats

who were always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat

lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look

after them, they had Justin, the chemist’s apprentice, a

second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been taken

into the house from charity, and who was useful at the

same time as a servant.

The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave

Madame Bovary information as to the trades-people, sent

expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink

himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the

cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply of

butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois,

the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral

functions, looked after the principal gardens at Yonville by

the hour or the year, according to the taste of the

customers.

The need of looking after others was not the only thing

that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there

was a plan underneath it all.

He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi.,

article I, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to

practise medicine; so that, after certain anonymous

denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen to

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see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the

magistrate receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder

and cap on head. It was in the morning, before the court

opened. In the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the

gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks

that were shut. The druggist’s ears tingled as if he were

about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of

dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars

dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a cafe and take a

glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits.

Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew

fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne

consultations in his back-parlour. But the mayor resented

it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was to be feared;

gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his attentions was to

earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later on,

should he notice anything. So every morning Homais

brought him ‘the paper,’ and often in the afternoon left his

shop for a few moments to have a chat with the Doctor.

Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained

seated for hours without speaking, went into his

consulting room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing.

Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a

workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint

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which had been left behind by the painters. But money

matters worried him. He had spent so much for repairs at

Tostes, for madame’s toilette, and for the moving, that the

whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped

away in two years.

Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during

their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting

the plaster cure, who falling out of the coach at an over-

severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on

the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came

to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the

time of her confinement approached he cherished her the

more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself,

and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex

union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and her

figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when

opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while

she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness

knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed his

hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to

make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all

kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The

idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he

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wanted nothing. He knew human life from end to end,

and he sat down to it with serenity.

Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was

anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was

to be a mother. But not being able to spend as much as

she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette with rose

silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit of bitterness

she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the

whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing

or discussing anything. Thus she did not amuse herself

with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of

mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset,

perhaps, to some extent attenuated.

As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal,

she soon began to think of him more consecutively.

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she

would call him George; and this idea of having a male

child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence

in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over

passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of

the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always

hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her

the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will,

like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in

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every wind; there is always some desire that draws her,

some conventionality that restrains.

She was confined on a Sunday at about six o’clock, as

the sun was rising.

‘It is a girl!’ said Charles.

She turned her head away and fainted.

Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the

Lion d’Or, almost immediately came running in to

embrace her. The chemist, as man of discretion, only

offered a few provincial felicitations through the half-

opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it

well made.

Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much

in seeking a name for her daughter. First she went over all

those that have Italian endings, such as Clara, Louisa,

Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde pretty well, and Yseult

or Leocadie still better.

Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother;

Emma opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end

to end, and then consulted outsiders.

‘Monsieur Leon,’ said the chemist, ‘with whom I was

talking about it the other day, wonders you do not chose

Madeleine. It is very much in fashion just now.’

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But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against

this name of a sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a

preference for all those that recalled some great man, an

illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it was on this

system that he had baptized his four children. Thus

Napoleon represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was

perhaps a concession to romanticism, but Athalie was a

homage to the greatest masterpiece of the French stage.

For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his

artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of

sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances

for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for

example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the

style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the