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you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect

produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint,

on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an

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example whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux

(one of my old comrades, at present established in the Rue

Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon

as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even makes

the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at

Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple

sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal

organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?’

‘Yes,’ said Charles, who was not listening to him.

‘This shows us,’ went on the other, smiling with

benign self-sufficiency, ‘the innumerable irregularities of

the nervous system. With regard to madame, she has

always seemed to me, I confess, very susceptible. And so I

should by no means recommend to you, my dear friend,

any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of

attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no

useless physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients,

dulcification. Then, don’t you think that perhaps her

imagination should be worked upon?’

‘In what way? How?’ said Bovary.

‘Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. ‘That is the

question,’ as I lately read in a newspaper.’

But Emma, awaking, cried out—

‘The letter! the letter!’

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They thought she was delirious; and she was by

midnight. Brain-fever had set in.

For forty-three days Charles did not leave her. He gave

up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was

constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and

cold-water compresses. He sent Justin as far as Neufchatel

for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again.

He called Monsieur Canivet into consultation; he sent for

Dr. Lariviere, his old master, from Rouen; he was in

despair. What alarmed him most was Emma’s prostration,

for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to

suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together

after all their troubles.

About the middle of October she could sit up in bed

supported by pillows. Charles wept when he saw her eat

her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned to her; she

got up for a few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when

she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for

a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was

disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly,

dragging along her slippers, and leaning against Charles’s

shoulder. She smiled all the time.

They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the

terrace. She drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with

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her hand to look. She looked far off, as far as she could,

but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass

smoking on the hills.

‘You will tire yourself, my darling!’ said Bovary. And,

pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour, ‘Sit

down on this seat; you’ll be comfortable.’

‘Oh! no; not there!’ she said in a faltering voice.

She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening

her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain character,

it is true, and more complex symptoms. Now she suffered

in her heart, then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had

vomitings, in which Charles thought he saw the first signs

of cancer.

And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about

money matters.

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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,

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 bluestockings.

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

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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