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wounded.

Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She

sewed clothes for the poor, she sent wood to women in

childbed; and Charles one day, on coming home, found

three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table

eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her

illness her husband had sent back to the nurse, brought

home. She wanted to teach her to read; even when Berthe

cried, she was not vexed. She had made up her mind to

resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about

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everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her

child, ‘Is your stomach-ache better, my angel?’

Madame Bovary senior found nothing to censure

except perhaps this mania of knitting jackets for orphans

instead of mending her own house-linen; but, harassed

with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in

this quiet house, and she even stayed there till after Easter,

to escape the sarcasms of old Bovary, who never failed on

Good Friday to order chitterlings.

Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who

strengthened her a little by the rectitude of her judgment

and her grave ways, Emma almost every day had other

visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron,

Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from

two to five o’clock the excellent Madame Homais, who,

for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle

about her neighbour. The little Homais also came to see

her; Justin accompanied them. He went up with them to

her bedroom, and remained standing near the door,

motionless and mute. Often even Madame Bovary; taking

no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by taking

out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement,

and when he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that

fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him,

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poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and

strange, whose splendour terrified him.

Emma, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or

his timidity. She had no suspicion that the love vanished

from her life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath

that coarse holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the

emanations of her beauty. Besides, she now enveloped all

things with such indifference, she had words so

affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory

ways, that one could no longer distinguish egotism from

charity, or corruption from virtue. One evening, for

example, she was angry with the servant, who had asked

to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext.

Then suddenly—

‘So you love him?’ she said.

And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who

was blushing, she added, ‘There! run along; enjoy

yourself!’

In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned

up from end to end, despite Bovary’s remonstrances.

However, he was glad to see her at last manifest a wish of

any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more

wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet,

the nurse, who during her convalescence had contracted

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the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her two

nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a

cannibal. Then she got rid of the Homais family,

successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even

frequented church less assiduously, to the great approval of

the druggist, who said to her in a friendly way—

‘You were going in a bit for the cassock!’

As formerly, Monsieur Bournisien dropped in every

day when he came out after catechism class. He preferred

staying out of doors to taking the air ‘in the grove,’ as he

called the arbour. This was the time when Charles came

home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out,

and they drank together to madame’s complete

restoration.

Binet was there; that is to say, a little lower down

against the terrace wall, fishing for crayfish. Bovary invited

him to have a drink, and he thoroughly understood the

uncorking of the stone bottles.

‘You must,’ he said, throwing a satisfied glance all

round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape,

‘hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table, and after the

strings are cut, press up the cork with little thrusts, gently,

gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at restaurants.’

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But during his demonstration the cider often spurted

right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick

laugh, never missed this joke—

‘Its goodness strikes the eye!’

He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not

even scandalised at the chemist, who advised Charles to

give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre

at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Homais,

surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion, and

the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous

for morals than literature.

But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The

theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices, and,

beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue.

‘‘Castigat ridendo mores,’* Monsieur Bournisien! Thus

consider the greater part of Voltaire’s tragedies; they are

cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections, that made

them a vast school of morals and diplomacy for the

people.’

*It corrects customs through laughter.

‘I,’ said Binet, ‘once saw a piece called the ‘Gamin de

Paris,’ in which there was the character of an old general

that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell

who had seduced a working girl, who at the ending—‘

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‘Certainly,’ continued Homais, ‘there is bad literature

as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the

most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a

Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that

imprisoned Galileo.’

‘I know very well,’ objected the cure, ‘that there are

good works, good authors. However, if it were only those

persons of different sexes united in a bewitching

apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those effeminate

voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a certain

mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and

impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all

the Fathers. Finally,’ he added, suddenly assuming a mystic

tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his

fingers, ‘if the Church has condemned the theatre, she

must be right; we must submit to her decrees.’

‘Why,’ asked the druggist, ‘should she excommunicate

actors? For formerly they openly took part in religious

ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted;

they performed a kind of farce called ‘Mysteries,’ which

often offended against the laws of decency.’

The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a

groan, and the chemist went on—

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‘It’s like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know,

more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!’

And on a gesture of irritation from Monsieur

Bournisien—

‘Ah! you’ll admit that it is not a book to place in the

hands of a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie—‘

‘But it is the Protestants, and not we,’ cried the other

impatiently, ‘who recommend the Bible.’

‘No matter,’ said Homais. ‘I am surprised that in our

days, in this century of enlightenment, anyone should still

persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is

inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it

not, doctor?’

‘No doubt,’ replied the doctor carelessly, either

because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no

one, or else because he had not any ideas.

The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist

thought fit to shoot a Parthian arrow.

‘I’ve known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go

‘Come, come!’ said the cure.

‘Ah! I’ve known some!’ And separating the words of

his sentence, Homais repeated, ‘I—have—known—some!’

and see dancers kicking about.’

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‘Well, they were wrong,’ said Bournisien, resigned to

anything.

‘By Jove! they go in for more than that,’ exclaimed the

druggist.

‘Sir!’ replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that

the druggist was intimidated by them.

‘I only mean to say,’ he replied in less brutal a tone,

‘that toleration is the surest way to draw people to

religion.’

‘That is true! that is true!’ agreed the good fellow,

sitting down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few

moments.

Then, as soon as he had gone, Monsieur Homais said to

the doctor—

‘That’s what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see,

in a way!—Now take my advice. Take madame to the

theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one

of these ravens, hang it! If anyone could take my place, I

would accompany you myself. Be quick about it. Lagardy

is only going to give one performance; he’s engaged to go

to England at a high salary. From what I hear, he’s a

regular dog; he’s rolling in money; he’s taking three

mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists

burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life,

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that suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at

the hospital, because they haven’t the sense when young

to lay by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till tomorrow.’

The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Bovary’s

head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at

first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense;

but, for a wonder, Charles did not give in, so sure was he

that this recreation would be good for her. He saw

nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three

hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the

current debts were not very large, and the falling in of

Lheureux’s bills was still so far off that there was no need

to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was

refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by

dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the

next day at eight o’clock they set out in the ‘Hirondelle.’

The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at

Yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge

from it, sighed as he saw them go.

‘Well, a pleasant journey!’ he said to them; ‘happy

mortals that you are!’

Then addressing himself to Emma, who was wearing a

blue silk gown with four flounces—

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‘You are as lovely as a Venus. You’ll cut a figure at

Rouen.’

The diligence stopped at the ‘Croix-Rouge’ in the

Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every

provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms,

where one sees in the middle of the court chickens

pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial

travellers—a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies

that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of

people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky

with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow

by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine,

and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys

dressed in Sundayclothes, has a cafe on the street, and

towards the countryside a kitchen-garden. Charles at once

set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery,

the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not

understand them; was sent from the box-office to the

acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the

theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length

of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.

Madame Bovary bought a bonnet, gloves, and a

bouquet. The doctor was much afraid of missing the

beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a

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plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of

the theatre, which were still closed. Chapter Fifteen

The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically

enclosed between the balustrades. At the corner of the

neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters

‘Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc.’ The weather

was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid

the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were

mopping red foreheads; and now and then a warm wind

that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the

tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses.

A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a

current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This

was an exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of

large black warehouses where they made casks.

For fear of seeming ridiculous, Emma before going in

wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and Bovary

prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his

trousers, which he pressed against his stomach.

Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the

vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing

the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while

she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. She was as

pleased as a child to push with her finger the large

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tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the

dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her

box she bent forward with the air of a duchess.

The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were

taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight

of one another, were bowing. They came to seek

relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business;

but ‘business’ was not forgotten; they still talked cottons,

spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to