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‘But I don’t know how to turn,’ answered the clerk.

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‘Ah! that’s true,’ said the other, rubbing his chin with

an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction.

Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover

he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the

repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest

inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with

Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain

persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond

endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was,

was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the

prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it

seduced him.

This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and

then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls

with the laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish reading

there, why not set out at once? What prevented him? And

he began making home-preparations; he arranged his

occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head an

apartment. He would lead an artist’s life there! He would

take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-

gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already

was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece,

with a death’s head on the guitar above them.

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The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing,

however, seemed more reasonable. Even his employer

advised him to go to some other chambers where he could

advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course, then, Leon

looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found

none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of

details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live

at Paris immediately. She consented.

He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried

boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and

from Rouen to Yonville; and when Leon had packed up

his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a

stock of neckties, in a word, had made more preparations

than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from

week to week, until he received a second letter from his

mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his

examination before the vacation.

When the moment for the farewells had come,

Madame Homais wept, Justin sobbed; Homais, as a man of

nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his

friend’s overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary,

who was taking Leon to Rouen in his carriage.

The latter had just time to bid farewell to Monsieur

Bovary.

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When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he

was so out of breath. As he came in, Madame Bovary

arose hurriedly.

‘It is I again!’ said Leon.

‘I was sure of it!’

She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her

skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of

her collar. She remained standing, leaning with her

shoulder against the wainscot.

‘The doctor is not here?’ he went on.

‘He is out.’ She repeated, ‘He is out.’

Then there was silence. They looked at one another

and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung

close together like two throbbing breasts.

‘I should like to kiss Berthe,’ said Leon.

Emma went down a few steps and called Felicite.

He threw one long look around him that took in the

walls, the decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate

everything, carry away everything. But she returned, and

the servant brought Berthe, who was swinging a windmill

roof downwards at the end of a string. Leon kissed her

several times on the neck.

‘Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one!

good-bye!’ And he gave her back to her mother.

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‘Take her away,’ she said.

They remained alone—Madame Bovary, her back

turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; Leon held

his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh.

‘It is going to rain,’ said Emma.

‘I have a cloak,’ he answered.

‘Ah!’

She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead

bent forward.

The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve

of the eyebrows, without one’s being able to guess what

Emma was seeing on the horizon or what she was

thinking within herself.

‘Well, good-bye,’ he sighed.

She raised her head with a quick movement.

‘Yes, good-bye—go!’

They advanced towards each other; he held out his

hand; she hesitated.

‘In the English fashion, then,’ she said, giving her own

hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.

Leon felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of

all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm.

Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he

disappeared.

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When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid

behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house

with the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow

behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding

along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly

opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single

movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a

plaster wall. Leon set off running.

From afar he saw his employer’s gig in the road, and by

it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. Homais and

Monsieur Guillaumin were talking. They were waiting for

him.

‘Embrace me,’ said the druggist with tears in his eyes.

‘Here is your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take

care of yourself; look after yourself.’

‘Come, Leon, jump in,’ said the notary.

Homais bend over the splash-board, and in a voice

broken by sobs uttered these three sad words—

‘A pleasant journey!’

‘Good-night,’ said Monsieur Guillaumin. ‘Give him his

head.’ They set out, and Homais went back.

Madame Bovary had opened her window overlooking

the garden and watched the clouds. They gathered around

the sunset on the side of Rouen and then swiftly rolled

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back their black columns, behind which the great rays of

the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended

trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was white as

porcelain. But a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and

suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves.

Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows

shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of

water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the

pink flowers of an acacia.

‘Ah! how far off he must be already!’ she thought.

Monsieur Homais, as usual, came at half-past six during

dinner.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘so we’ve sent off our young friend!’

‘So it seems,’ replied the doctor. Then turning on his

chair; ‘Any news at home?’

‘Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this

afternoon. You know women—a nothing upsets them,

especially my wife. And we should be wrong to object to

that, since their nervous organization is much more

malleable than ours.’

‘Poor Leon!’ said Charles. ‘How will he live at Paris?

Will he get used to it?’

Madame Bovary sighed.

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‘Get along!’ said the chemist, smacking his

lips. ‘The outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the

champagne—all that’ll be jolly enough, I assure you.’

‘I don’t think he’ll go wrong,’ objected Bovary.

‘Nor do I,’ said Monsieur Homais quickly; ‘although

he’ll have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit.

And you don’t know what a life those dogs lead in the

Latin quarter with actresses. Besides, students are thought a

great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few

accomplishments, they are received in the best society;

there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who

fall in love with them, which subsequently furnishes them

opportunities for making very good matches.’

‘But,’ said the doctor, ‘I fear for him that down there—

‘

‘You are right,’ interrupted the chemist; ‘that is the

reverse of the medal. And one is constantly obliged to

keep one’s hand in one’s pocket there. Thus, we will

suppose you are in a public garden. An individual presents

himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom

one would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he

insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up

your hat. Then you become more intimate; he takes you

to a cafe, invites you to his country-house, introduces you,

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between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three-

fourths of the time it’s only to plunder your watch or lead

you into some pernicious step.

‘That is true,’ said Charles; ‘but I was thinking

especially of illnesses—of typhoid fever, for example, that

attacks students from the provinces.’

Emma shuddered.

‘Because of the change of regimen,’ continued the

chemist, ‘and of the perturbation that results therefrom in

the whole system. And then the water at Paris, don’t you

know! The dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end

by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever people

may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have

always preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I

was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding

house; I dined with the professors.’

And thus he went on, expounding his opinions

generally and his personal likings, until Justin came to

fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted.

‘Not a moment’s peace!’ he cried; ‘always at it! I can’t

go out for a minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to

be moiling and toiling. What drudgery!’ Then, when he

was at the door, ‘By the way, do you know the news?’

‘What news?’

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‘That it is very likely,’ Homais went on, raising his

eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious expression,

‘that the agricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will

be held this year at Yonville-l’Abbaye. The rumour, at all

events, is going the round. This morning the paper alluded

to it. It would be of the utmost importance for our

district. But we’ll talk it over later on. I can see, thank

you; Justin has the lantern.’

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CHAPTER SEVEN

The next day was a dreary one for Emma. Everything

seemed to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating

confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was

engulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the

winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie

which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude

that seizes you after everything was done; that pain, in

fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the

sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on.

As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles

were running in her head, she was full of a gloomy

melancholy, of a numb despair. Leon reappeared, taller,

handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though

separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and

the walls of the house seemed to hold his shadow.

She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where

he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat.

The river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along

the slippery banks.

They had often walked there to the murmur of the

waves over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun

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had been! What happy afternoons they had seen along in

the shade at the end of the garden! He read aloud,

bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh

wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book

and the nasturtiums of the arbour. Ah! he was gone, the

only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy. Why

had she not seized this happiness when it came to her?

Why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with both

knees, when it was about to flee from her? And she cursed

herself for not having loved Leon. She thirsted for his lips.

The wish took possession of her to run after and rejoin

him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, ‘It is I; I

am yours.’ But Emma recoiled beforehand at the

difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by

regret, became only the more acute.

Henceforth the memory of Leon was the centre of her

boredom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire

travellers have left on the snow of a Russian steppe. She

sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she stirred

carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything

that could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences,

like the most immediate occasions, what she experienced

as well as what she imagined, her voluptuous desires that

were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness that crackled in

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the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost

hopes, the domestic tete-a-tete—she gathered it all up,

took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her

melancholy.

The flames, however, subsided, either because the

supply had exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up

too much. Love, little by little, was quelled by absence;

regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary light that

had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by

degrees. In the supineness of her conscience she even took

her repugnance towards her husband for aspirations

towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of

tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion

burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help came,

no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost

in the terrible cold that pierced her.