第 19 页

Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought

herself now far more unhappy; for she had the experience

of grief, with the certainty that it would not end.

A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could

well allow herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic

prie-dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons

for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen for a blue

cashmere gown; she chose one of Lheureux’s finest

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scarves, and wore it knotted around her waist over her

dressing-gown; and, with closed blinds and a book in her

hand, she lay stretched out on a couch in this garb.

She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la

Chinoise, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in

on one side and rolled it under like a man’s.

She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a

grammar, and a supply of white paper. She tried serious

reading, history, and philosophy. Sometimes in the night

Charles woke up with a start, thinking he was being called

to a patient. ‘I’m coming,’ he stammered; and it was the

noise of a match Emma had struck to relight the lamp. But

her reading fared like her piece of embroidery, all of

which, only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it

up, left it, passed on to other books.

She had attacks in which she could easily have been

driven to commit any folly. She maintained one day, in

opposition to her husband, that she could drink off a large

glass of brandy, and, as Charles was stupid enough to dare

her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop.

In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of

Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed

gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that

immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids,

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and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale

all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn

at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. After

discovering three grey hairs on her temples, she talked

much of her old age.

She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as

Charles fussed around her showing his anxiety—

‘Bah!’ she answered, ‘what does it matter?’

Charles fled to his study and wept there, both his

elbows on the table, sitting in an arm-chair at his bureau

under the phrenological head.

Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and

they had many long consultations together on the subject

of Emma.

What should they decide? What was to be done since

she rejected all medical treatment? ‘Do you know what

your wife wants?’ replied Madame Bovary senior.

‘She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some

manual work. If she were obliged, like so many others, to

earn her living, she wouldn’t have these vapours, that

come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head,

and from the idleness in which she lives.

Yet she is always busy,’ said Charles.

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‘Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books,

works against religion, and in which they mock at priests

in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far

astray, my poor child. Anyone who has no religion always

ends by turning out badly.’

So it was decided to stop Emma reading novels. The

enterprise did not seem easy. The good lady undertook it.

She was, when she passed through Rouen, to go herself to

the lending-library and represent that Emma had

discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a

right to apply to the police if the librarian persisted all the

same in his poisonous trade? The farewells of mother and

daughter-in-law were cold. During the three weeks that

they had been together they had not exchanged half-adozen

words apart from the inquiries and phrases when

they met at table and in the evening before going to bed.

Madame Bovary left on a Wednesday, the market-day

at Yonville.

The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of

carts, which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all

along the line of houses from the church to the inn. On

the other side there were canvas booths, where cotton

checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold,

together with harness for horses, and packets of blue

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ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind. The coarse

hardware was spread out on the ground between pyramids

of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw

stuck out.

Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their

necks through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding

in the same place and unwilling to move thence,

sometimes threatened to smash the shop front of the

chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and

the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for

consultations. So great was Homais’ reputation in the

neighbouring villages. His robust aplomb had fascinated

the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than all

the doctors.

Emma was leaning out at the window; she was often

there. The window in the provinces replaces the theatre

and the promenade, she was amusing herself with

watching the crowd of boors when she saw a gentleman in

a green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he

wore heavy gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor’s

house, followed by a peasant walking with a bent head and

quite a thoughtful air.

‘Can I see the doctor?’ he asked Justin, who was talking

on the doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a

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servant of the house—‘Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe

Boulanger of La Huchette is here.’

It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival

added ‘of La Huchette’ to his name, but to make himself

the better known.

La Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where

he had just bought the chateau and two farms that he

cultivated himself, without, however, troubling very much

about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed to

have ‘at least fifteen thousand francs a year.’

Charles came into the room. Monsieur Boulanger

introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because he

felt ‘a tingling all over.’

‘That’ll purge me,’ he urged as an objection to all

reasoning.

So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked

Justin to hold it. Then addressing the peasant, who was

already pale—

‘Don’t be afraid, my lad.’

‘No, no, sir,’ said the other; ‘get on.’

And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm.

At the prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing

against the looking-glass.

‘Hold the basin nearer,’ exclaimed Charles.

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‘Lor!’ said the peasant, ‘one would swear it was a little

fountain flowing. How red my blood is! That’s a good

sign, isn’t it?’

‘Sometimes,’ answered the doctor, ‘one feels nothing at

first, and then syncope sets in, and more especially with

people of strong constitution like this man.’

At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was

twisting between his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders

made the chair-back creak. His hat fell off.

‘I thought as much,’ said Bovary, pressing his finger on

the vein.

The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin’s hands;

his knees shook, he turned pale.

‘Emma! Emma!’ called Charles.

With one bound she came down the staircase.

‘Some vinegar,’ he cried. ‘O dear! two at once!’

And in his emotion he could hardly put on the

compress.

‘It is nothing,’ said Monsieur Boulanger quietly, taking

Justin in his arms. He seated him on the table with his

back resting against the wall.

Madame Bovary began taking off his cravat. The strings

of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some

minutes moving her light fingers about the young fellow’s

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neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her cambric

handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs,

and then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived,

but Justin’s syncope still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared

in the pale sclerotics like blue flowers in milk.

‘We must hide this from him,’ said Charles.

Madame Bovary took the basin to put it under the

table. With the movement she made in bending down,

her dress (it was a summer dress with four flounces,

yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread out

around her on the flags of the room; and as Emma

stooping, staggered a little as she stretched out her arms.

The stuff here and there gave with the inflections of

her bust.

Then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was

melting some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived.

The servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing

his pupil’s eyes staring he drew a long breath; then going

around him he looked at him from head to foot.

‘Fool!’ he said, ‘really a little fool! A fool in four letters!

A phlebotomy’s a big affair, isn’t it! And a fellow who isn’t

afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who

climbs to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes!

you just talk to me, boast about yourself! Here’s a fine

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fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for under serious

circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in

order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you

would have to keep your head then, to reason, show

yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile.’

Justin did not answer. The chemist went on—

‘Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the

doctor and madame. On Wednesday, moreover, your

presence is indispensable to me. There are now twenty

people in the shop. I left everything because of the interest

I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and

keep an eye on the jars.’

When Justin, who was rearranging his dress, had gone,

they talked for a little while about fainting-fits. Madame

Bovary had never fainted.

‘That is extraordinary for a lady,’ said Monsieur

Boulanger; ‘but some people are very susceptible. Thus in

a duel, I have seen a second lose consciousness at the mere

sound of the loading of pistols.’

‘For my part,’ said the chemist, ‘the sight of other

people’s blood doesn’t affect me at all, but the mere

thought of my own flowing would make me faint if I

reflected upon it too much.’

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Monsieur Boulanger, however, dismissed his servant,

advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over.

‘It procured me the advantage of making your

acquaintance,’ he added, and he looked at Emma as he

said this. Then he put three francs on the corner of the

table, bowed negligently, and went out.

He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his

way back to La Huchette), and Emma saw him in the

meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace

now and then as one who reflects.

‘She is very pretty,’ he said to himself; ‘she is very

pretty, this doctor’s wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty

foot, a figure like a Parisienne’s. Where the devil does she

come from? Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?’

Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four; he was

of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having,

moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing

them well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was

thinking about her and her husband.

‘I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt.

He has dirty nails, and hasn’t shaved for three days. While

he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching

socks. And she gets bored! She would like to live in town

and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman! She is

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gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table.

With three words of gallantry she’d adore one, I’m sure of

it. She’d be tender, charming. Yes; but how to get rid of

her afterwards?’

Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the

distance made him by contrast think of his mistress. She

was an actress at Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had

pondered over this image, with which, even in

remembrance, he was satiated—

‘Ah! Madame Bovary,’ he thought, ‘is much prettier,

especially fresher. Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow

fat. She is so finikin about her pleasures; and, besides, she

has a mania for prawns.’

The fields were empty, and around him Rodolphe only

heard the regular beating of the grass striking against his

boots, with a cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance

among the oats. He again saw Emma in her room, dressed

as he had seen her, and he undressed her.

‘Oh, I will have her,’ he cried, striking a blow with his

stick at a clod in front of him. And he at once began to

consider the political part of the enterprise. He asked

himself—

‘Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall

always be having the brat on our hands, and the servant,

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the neighbours, and husband, all sorts of worries. Pshaw!

one would lose too much time over it.’

Then he resumed, ‘She really has eyes that pierce one’s

heart like a gimlet. And that pale complexion! I adore pale

women!’

When he reached the top of the Arguiel hills he had

made up his mind. ‘It’s only finding the opportunities.

Well, I will call in now and then. I’ll send them venison,

poultry; I’ll have myself bled, if need be. We shall become

friends; I’ll invite them to my place. By Jove!’ added he,

‘there’s the agricultural show coming on. She’ll be there. I

shall see her. We’ll begin boldly, for that’s the surest way.’

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CHAPTER EIGHT

At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the