第 39 页

And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her

lips that fastened to his mouth.

On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as

he bent his arm beneath a golden garland. They had

laughed at it many a time, but when they had to part

everything seemed serious to them.

Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating,

‘Till Thursday, till Thursday.’

Suddenly she seized his head between her hands, kissed

him hurriedly on the forehead, crying, ‘Adieu!’ and rushed

down the stairs.

She went to a hairdresser’s in the Rue de la Comedie

to have her hair arranged. Night fell; the gas was lighted in

the shop. She heard the bell at the theatre calling the

mummers to the performance, and she saw, passing

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opposite, men with white faces and women in faded

gowns going in at the stage-door.

It was hot in the room, small, and too low where the

stove was hissing in the midst of wigs and pomades. The

smell of the tongs, together with the greasy hands that

handled her head, soon stunned her, and she dozed a little

in her wrapper. Often, as he did her hair, the man offered

her tickets for a masked ball.

Then she went away. She went up the streets; reached

the Croix-Rouge, put on her overshoes, that she had

hidden in the morning under the seat, and sank into her

place among the impatient passengers. Some got out at the

foot of the hill. She remained alone in the carriage. At

every turning all the lights of the town were seen more

and more completely, making a great luminous vapour

about the dim houses. Emma knelt on the cushions and

her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed;

called on Leon, sent him tender words and kisses lost in

the wind.

On the hillside a poor devil wandered about with his

stick in the midst of the diligences. A mass of rags covered

his shoulders, and an old staved-in beaver, turned out like

a basin, hid his face; but when he took it off he discovered

in the place of eyelids empty and bloody orbits. The flesh

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hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids that

congealed into green scale down to the nose, whose black

nostrils sniffed convulsively. To speak to you he threw

back his head with an idiotic laugh; then his bluish

eyeballs, rolling constantly, at the temples beat against the

edge of the open wound. He sang a little song as he

followed the carriages—

‘Maids an the warmth of a summer day Dream of love,

and of love always.’

And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green

leaves.

Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Emma,

bareheaded, and she drew back with a cry. Hivert made

fun of him. He would advise him to get a booth at the

Saint Romain fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his

young woman was.

Often they had started when, with a sudden

movement, his hat entered the diligence through the small

window, while he clung with his other arm to the

footboard, between the wheels splashing mud. His voice,

feeble at first and quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in

the night like the indistinct moan of a vague distress; and

through the ringing of the bells, the murmur of the trees,

and the rumbling of the empty vehicle, it had a far-off

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sound that disturbed Emma. It went to the bottom of her

soul, like a whirlwind in an abyss, and carried her away

into the distances of a boundless melancholy. But Hivert,

noticing a weight behind, gave the blind man sharp cuts

with his whip. The thong lashed his wounds, and he fell

back into the mud with a yell. Then the, passengers in the

‘Hirondelle’ ended by falling asleep, some with open

mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning against their

neighbour’s shoulder, or with their arm passed through

the strap, oscillating regularly with the jolting of the

carriage; and the reflection of the lantern swinging

without, on the crupper of the wheeler; penetrating into

the interior through the chocolate calico curtains, threw

sanguineous shadows over all these motionless people.

Emma, drunk with grief, shivered in her clothes, feeling

her feet grow colder and colder, and death in her soul.

Charles at home was waiting for her; the ‘Hirondelle’

was always late on Thursdays. Madame arrived at last, and

scarcely kissed the child. The dinner was not ready. No

matter! She excused the servant. This girl now seemed

allowed to do just as she liked.

Often her husband, noting her pallor, asked if she were

unwell.

‘No,’ said Emma.

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‘But,’ he replied, ‘you seem so strange this evening.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing! nothing!’

There were even days when she had no sooner come

in than she went up to her room; and Justin, happening to

be there, moved about noiselessly, quicker at helping her

than the best of maids. He put the matches ready, the

candlestick, a book, arranged her nightgown, turned back

the bedclothes.

‘Come!’ said she, ‘that will do. Now you can go.’

For he stood there, his hands hanging down and his

eyes wide open, as if enmeshed in the innumerable threads

of a sudden reverie.

The following day was frightful, and those that came

after still more unbearable, because of her impatience to

once again seize her happiness; an ardent lust, inflamed by

the images of past experience, and that burst forth freely

on the seventh day beneath Leon’s caresses. His ardours

were hidden beneath outbursts of wonder and gratitude.

Emma tasted this love in a discreet, absorbed fashion,

maintained it by all the artifices of her tenderness, and

trembled a little lest it should be lost later on.

She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy

voice—

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‘Ah! you too, you will leave me! You will marry! You

will be like all the others.’

He asked, ‘What others?’

‘Why, like all men,’ she replied. Then added, repulsing

him with a languid movement—

‘You are all evil!’

One day, as they were talking philosophically of earthly

disillusions, to experiment on his jealousy, or yielding,

perhaps, to an over-strong need to pour out her heart, she

told him that formerly, before him, she had loved

someone.

‘Not like you,’ she went on quickly, protesting by the

head of her child that ‘nothing had passed between them.’

The young man believed her, but none the less

questioned her to find out what he was.

‘He was a ship’s captain, my dear.’

Was this not preventing any inquiry, and, at the same

time, assuming a higher ground through this pretended

fascination exercised over a man who must have been of

warlike nature and accustomed to receive homage?

The clerk then felt the lowliness of his position; he

longed for epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that would please

her—he gathered that from her spendthrift habits.

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Emma nevertheless concealed many of these

extravagant fancies, such as her wish to have a blue tilbury

to drive into Rouen, drawn by an English horse and

driven by a groom in top-boots. It was Justin who had

inspired her with this whim, by begging her to take him

into her service as valet-de-chambre*, and if the privation

of it did not lessen the pleasure of her arrival at each

rendezvous, it certainly augmented the bitterness of the

return.

* Manservant.

Often, when they talked together of Paris, she ended

by murmuring, ‘Ah! how happy we should be there!’

‘Are we not happy?’ gently answered the young man

passing his hands over her hair.

‘Yes, that is true,’ she said. ‘I am mad. Kiss me!’

To her husband she was more charming than ever. She

made him pistachio-creams, and played him waltzes after

dinner. So he thought himself the most fortunate of men

and Emma was without uneasiness, when, one evening

suddenly he said—

‘It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, isn’t it, who gives you

lessons?’

‘Yes.’

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‘Well, I saw her just now,’ Charles went on, ‘at

Madame Liegeard’s. I spoke to her about you, and she

doesn’t know you.’

This was like a thunderclap. However, she replied quite

naturally—

‘Ah! no doubt she forgot my name.’

‘But perhaps,’ said the doctor, ‘there are several

Demoiselles Lempereur at Rouen who are music-

mistresses.’

‘Possibly!’ Then quickly—‘But I have my receipts here.

See!’

And she went to the writing-table, ransacked all the

drawers, rummaged the papers, and at last lost her head so

completely that Charles earnestly begged her not to take

so much trouble about those wretched receipts.

‘Oh, I will find them,’ she said.

And, in fact, on the following Friday, as Charles was

putting on one of his boots in the dark cabinet where his

clothes were kept, he felt a piece of paper between the

leather and his sock. He took it out and read—

‘Received, for three months’ lessons and several pieces

of music, the sum of sixty-three francs.—Felicie

Lempereur, professor of music.’

‘How the devil did it get into my boots?’

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‘It must,’ she replied, ‘have fallen from the old box of

bills that is on the edge of the shelf.’

From that moment her existence was but one long

tissue of lies, in which she enveloped her love as in veils to

hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleasure carried to such

an extent that if she said she had the day before walked on

the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the

left.

One morning, when she had gone, as usual, rather

lightly clothed, it suddenly began to snow, and as Charles

was watching the weather from the window, he caught

sight of Monsieur Bournisien in the chaise of Monsieur

Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. Then he went

down to give the priesta thick shawl that he was to hand

over to Emma as soon as he reached the ‘Croix-Rouge.’

When he got to the inn, Monsieur Bournisien asked for

the wife of the Yonville doctor. The landlady replied that

she very rarely came to her establishment. So that evening,

when he recognised Madame Bovary in the ‘Hirondelle,’

the cure told her his dilemma, without, however,

appearing to attach much importance to it, for he began

praising a preacher who was doing wonders at the

Cathedral, and whom all the ladies were rushing to hear.

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Still, if he did not ask for any explanation, others, later

on, might prove less discreet. So she thought well to get

down each time at the ‘Croix-Rouge,’ so that the good

folk of her village who saw her on the stairs should suspect

nothing.

One day, however, Monsieur Lheureux met her

coming out of the Hotel de Boulogne on Leon’s arm; and

she was frightened, thinking he would gossip. He was not

such a fool. But three days after he came to her room, shut

the door, and said, ‘I must have some money.’

She declared she could not give him any. Lheureux

burst into lamentations and reminded her of all the

kindnesses he had shown her.

In fact, of the two bills signed by Charles, Emma up to

the present had paid only one. As to the second, the

shopkeeper, at her request, had consented to replace it by

another, which again had been renewed for a long date.

Then he drew from his pocket a list of goods not paid for;

to wit, the curtains, the carpet, the material for the

armchairs, several dresses, and divers articles of dress, the

bills for which amounted to about two thousand francs.

She bowed her head. He went on—

‘But if you haven’t any ready money, you have an

estate.’ And he reminded her of a miserable little hovel

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situated at Barneville, near Aumale, that brought in almost

nothing. It had formerly been part of a small farm sold by

Monsieur Bovary senior; for Lheureux knew everything,

even to the number of acres and the names of the

neighbours.

‘If I were in your place,’ he said, ‘I should clear myself

of my debts, and have money left over.’

She pointed out the difficulty of getting a purchaser.

He held out the hope of finding one; but she asked him

how she should manage to sell it.

‘Haven’t you your power of attorney?’ he replied.

The phrase came to her like a breath of fresh air. ‘Leave

me the bill,’ said Emma.

‘Oh, it isn’t worth while,’ answered Lheureux.

He came back the following week and boasted of

having, after much trouble, at last discovered a certain

Langlois, who, for a long time, had had an eye on the

property, but without mentioning his price.

‘Never mind the price!’ she cried.

But they would, on the contrary, have to wait, to

sound the fellow. The thing was worth a journey, and, as

she could not undertake it, he offered to go to the place to

have an interview with Langlois. On his return he

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announced that the purchaser proposed four thousand

francs.

Emma was radiant at this news.

‘Frankly,’ he added, ‘that’s a good price.’

She drew half the sum at once, and when she was

about to pay her account the shopkeeper said—

‘It really grieves me, on my word! to see you depriving

yourself all at once of such a big sum as that.’

Then she looked at the bank-notes, and dreaming of

the unlimited number of rendezvous represented by those

two thousand francs, she stammered—

‘What! what!’

‘Oh!’ he went on, laughing good-naturedly, ‘one puts

anything one likes on receipts. Don’t you think I know

what household affairs are?’ And he looked at her fixedly,

while in his hand he held two long papers that he slid

between his nails. At last, opening his pocket-book, he

spread out on the table four bills to order, each for a

thousand francs.