第 50 页

views. That was his phrase. Homais was digging and

delving; he was becoming dangerous.

However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of

journalism, and soon a book, a work was necessary to him.

Then he composed ‘General Statistics of the Canton of

Yonville, followed by Climatological Remarks.’ The

statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with

great questions: the social problem: moralisation of the

poorer classes, pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He

even began to blush at being a bourgeois. He affected the

artistic style, he smoked. He bought two chic Pompadour

statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.

He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he

kept well abreast of new discoveries. He followed the

great movement of chocolates; he was the first to

introduce ‘cocoa’ and ‘revalenta’ into the Seine-Inferieure.

He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric

Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at

night he took off his flannel vest, Madame Homais stood

quite dazzled before the golden spiral beneath which he

was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for this man

more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the

Magi.

562 of 570

Madame Bovary

He had fine ideas about Emma’s tomb. First he

proposed a broken column with some drapery, next a

pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of rotunda, or else

a ‘mass of ruins.’ And in all his plans Homais always stuck

to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the

indispensable symbol of sorrow.

Charles and he made a journey to Rouen together to

look at some tombs at a funeral furnisher’s, accompanied

by an artist, one Vaufrylard, a friend of Bridoux’s, who

made puns all the time. At last, after having examined

some hundred designs, having ordered an estimate and

made another journey to Rouen, Charles decided in

favour of a mausoleum, which on the two principal sides

was to have a ‘spirit bearing an extinguished torch.’

As to the inscription, Homais could think of nothing so

fine as Sta viator*, and he got no further; he racked his

brain, he constantly repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon

Amabilen conjugem calcas**, which was adopted.

* Rest traveler. ** Tread upon a loving wife.

A strange thing was that Bovary, while continually

thinking of Emma, was forgetting her. He grew desperate

as he felt this image fading from his memory in spite of all

efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt of her; it was

563 of 570

Madame Bovary

always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he

was about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms.

For a week he was seen going to church in the

evening. Monsieur Bournisien even paid him two or three

visits, then gave him up. Moreover, the old fellow was

growing intolerant, fanatic, said Homais. He thundered

against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other

week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of

Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone

knows.

In spite of the economy with which Bovary lived, he

was far from being able to pay off his old debts. Lheureux

refused to renew any more bills. A distraint became

imminent. Then he appealed to his mother, who

consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but

with a great many recriminations against Emma; and in

return for her sacrifice she asked for a shawl that had

escaped the depredations of Felicite. Charles refused to

give it her; they quarrelled.

She made the first overtures of reconciliation by

offering to have the little girl, who could help her in the

house, to live with her. Charles consented to this, but

when the time for parting came, all his courage failed him.

Then there was a final, complete rupture.

564 of 570

Madame Bovary

As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the

love of his child. She made him anxious, however, for she

coughed sometimes, and had red spots on her cheeks.

Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the

family of the chemist, with whom everything was

prospering. Napoleon helped him in the laboratory,

Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds

of paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited

Pythagoras’ table in a breath. He was the happiest of

fathers, the most fortunate of men.

Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Homais

hankered after the cross of the Legion of Honour. He had

plenty of claims to it.

‘First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished

myself by a boundless devotion; second, by having

published, at my expense, various works of public utility,

such as’ (and he recalled his pamphlet entitled, ‘Cider, its

manufacture and effects,’ besides observation on the

lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of

statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); ‘without

counting that I am a member of several learned societies’

(he was member of a single one).

‘In short!’ he cried, making a pirouette, ‘if it were only

for distinguishing myself at fires!’

565 of 570

Madame Bovary

Then Homais inclined towards the Government. He

secretly did the prefect great service during the elections.

He sold himself—in a word, prostituted himself. He even

addressed a petition to the sovereign in which he implored

him to ‘do him justice"; he called him ‘our good king,’

and compared him to Henri IV.

And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to

see if his nomination were in it. It was never there. At last,

unable to bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his

garden designed to represent the Star of the Cross of

Honour with two little strips of grass running from the top

to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded

arms, meditating on the folly of the Government and the

ingratitude of men.

From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made

him carry on his investigations slowly, Charles had not yet

opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which

Emma had generally used. One day, however, he sat

down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All

Leon’s letters were there. There could be no doubt this

time. He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every

corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls,

sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box

566 of 570

Madame Bovary

and broke it open with a kick. Rodolphe’s portrait flew

full in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters.

People wondered at his despondency. He never went

out, saw no one, refused even to visit his patients. Then

they said ‘he shut himself up to drink.’

Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on

to the garden hedge, and saw with amazement this long-

bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as

he walked up and down.

In the evening in summer he took his little girl with

him and led her to the cemetery. They came back at

nightfall, when the only light left in the Place was that in

Binet’s window.

The voluptuousness of his grief was, however,

incomplete, for he had no one near him to share it, and he

paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be able to speak of

her.

But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having

troubles like himself. For Lheureux had at last established

the ‘Favorites du Commerce,’ and Hivert, who enjoyed a

great reputation for doing errands, insisted on a rise of

wages, and was threatening to go over ‘to the opposition

shop.’

567 of 570

Madame Bovary

One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to

sell his horse—his last resource—he met Rodolphe.

They both turned pale when they caught sight of one

another. Rodolphe, who had only sent his card, first

stammered some apologies, then grew bolder, and even

pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and

very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of

beer at the public-house.

Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar

as he talked, and Charles was lost in reverie at this face that

she had loved. He seemed to see again something of her in

it. It was a marvel to him. He would have liked to have

been this man.

The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage,

filling out with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion

might slip in. Charles was not listening to him; Rodolphe

noticed it, and he followed the succession of memories

that crossed his face. This gradually grew redder; the

nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at last a

moment when Charles, full of a sombre fury, fixed his

eyes on Rodolphe, who, in something of fear, stopped

talking. But soon the same look of weary lassitude came

back to his face.

‘I don’t blame you,’ he said.

568 of 570

Madame Bovary

Rodolphe was dumb. And Charles, his head in his

hands, went on in a broken voice, and with the resigned

accent of infinite sorrow—

‘No, I don’t blame you now.’

He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever

made—

‘It is the fault of fatality!’

Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the

remark very offhand from a man in his position, comic

even, and a little mean.

The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in

the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis,

the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the

jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish

flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was

suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences

that filled his aching heart.

At seven o’clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all

the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner.

His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes

closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of

black hair.

‘Come along, papa,’ she said.

569 of 570

Madame Bovary

And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him

gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead.

Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist’s request,

Monsieur Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem

and found nothing.

When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-

five centimes remained, that served to pay for

Mademoiselle Bovary’s going to her grandmother. The

good woman died the same year; old Rouault was

paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She

is poor, and sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living.

Since Bovary’s death three doctors have followed one

another at Yonville without any success, so severely did

Homais attack them. He has an enormous practice; the

authorities treat him with consideration, and public

opinion protects him.

He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.

570 of 570