第 41 页

passion.’

And whispering into his friend’s ear, he pointed out the

symptoms by which one could find out if a woman had

passion. He even launched into an ethnographic

digression: the German was vapourish, the French woman

licentious, the Italian passionate.

‘And negresses?’ asked the clerk.

‘They are an artistic taste!’ said Homais. ‘Waiter! two

cups of coffee!’

‘Ja!’

But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of

the establishment and made him a few compliments. Then

‘Are we going?’ at last asked Leon impatiently.

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the young man, to be alone, alleged he had some business

engagement.

‘Ah! I will escort you,’ said Homais.

And all the while he was walking through the streets

with him he talked of his wife, his children; of their

future, and of his business; told him in what a decayed

condition it had formerly been, and to what a degree of

perfection he had raised it.

Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Leon left

him abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in

great excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into

a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn’t

his fault; didn’t she know Homais—did she believe that he

would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew

her back, and, sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with

his arms in a languorous pose, full of concupiscence and

supplication.

She was standing; up, her large flashing eyes looked at

him seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them,

her red eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and

Leon was pressing them to his lips when a servant

appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.

‘You will come back?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

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‘But when?’

‘Immediately.’

‘It’s a trick,’ said the chemist, when he saw Leon. ‘I

wanted to interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy

you. Let’s go and have a glass of garus at Bridoux’.’

Leon vowed that he must get back to his office. Then

the druggist joked him about quill-drivers and the law.

‘Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil

prevents you? Be a man! Let’s go to Bridoux’. You’ll see

his dog. It’s very interesting.’

And as the clerk still insisted—

‘I’ll go with you. I’ll read a paper while I wait for you,

or turn over the leaves of a ‘Code.’’

Leon, bewildered by Emma’s anger, Monsieur Homais’

chatter, and, perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon,

was undecided, and, as it were, fascinated by the chemist,

who kept repeating—

‘Let’s go to Bridoux’. It’s just by here, in the Rue

Malpalu.’

Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through

that indefinable feeling that drags us into the most

distasteful acts, he allowed himself to be led off to

Bridoux’, whom they found in his small yard,

superintending three workmen, who panted as they

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turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-

water. Homais gave them some good advice. He

embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times

Leon tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm

saying—

‘Presently! I’m coming! We’ll go to the ‘Fanal de

Rouen’ to see the fellows there. I’ll introduce you to

Thornassin.’

At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed

straight to the hotel. Emma was no longer there. She had

just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This

failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult,

and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself

from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal,

more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and

cowardly.

Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that

she had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging

of those we love always alienates us from them to some

extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our

fingers.

They gradually came to talking more frequently of

matters outside their love, and in the letters that Emma

wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the

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stars, naive resources of a waning passion striving to keep

itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly

promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey.

Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing

extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a

new hope, and Emma returned to him more inflamed,

more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off

the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips

like a gliding snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see

once more that the door was closed, then, pale, serious,

and, without speaking, with one movement, she threw

herself upon his breast with a long shudder.

Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops,

on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of

those arms, something vague and dreary that seemed to

Leon to glide between them subtly as if to separate them.

He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so

skilled, she must have passed, he thought, through every

experience of suffering and of pleasure. What had once

charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he rebelled

against his absorption, daily more marked, by her

personality. He begrudged Emma this constant victory. He

even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the

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creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at

the sight of strong drinks.

She did not fail, in truth, to lavish all sorts of attentions

upon him, from the delicacies of food to the coquettries of

dress and languishing looks. She brought roses to her

breast from Yonville, which she threw into his face; was

anxious about his health, gave him advice as to his

conduct; and, in order the more surely to keep her hold

on him, hoping perhaps that heaven would take her part,

she tied a medal of the Virgin round his neck. She

inquired like a virtuous mother about his companions. She

said to him—

‘Don’t see them; don’t go out; think only of ourselves;

love me!’

She would have liked to be able to watch over his life;

and the idea occurred to her of having him followed in

the streets. Near the hotel there was always a kind of loafer

who accosted travellers, and who would not refuse. But

her pride revolted at this.

‘Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What

does it matter to me? As If I cared for him!’

One day, when they had parted early and she was

returning alone along the boulevard, she saw the walls of

her convent; then she sat down on a form in the shade of

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the elm-trees. How calm that time had been! How she

longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had

tried to figure to herself out of books! The first month of

her marriage, her rides in the wood, the viscount that

waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed before her eyes.

And Leon suddenly appeared to her as far off as the others.

‘Yet I love him,’ she said to herself.

No matter! She was not happy—she never had been.

Whence came this insufficiency in life—this instantaneous

turning to decay of everything on which she leant? But if

there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a

valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a

poet’s heart in an angel’s form, a lyre with sounding

chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why,

perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible!

Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it;

everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom,

every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest

kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a

greater delight.

A metallic clang droned through the air, and four

strokes were heard from the convent-clock. Four o’clock!

And it seemed to her that she had been there on that form

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an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be contained in

a minute, like a crowd in a small space.

Emma lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more

about money matters than an archduchess.

Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund

and bald, came to her house, saying he had been sent by

Monsieur Vincart of Rouen. He took out the pins that

held together the side-pockets of his long green overcoat,

stuck them into his sleeve, and politely handed her a

paper.

It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her,

and which Lheureux, in spite of all his professions, had

paid away to Vincart. She sent her servant for him. He

could not come. Then the stranger, who had remained

standing, casting right and left curious glances, that his

thick, fair eyebrows hid, asked with a naive air—

‘What answer am I to take Monsieur Vincart?’

‘Oh,’ said Emma, ‘tell him that I haven’t it. I will send

next week; he must wait; yes, till next week.’

And the fellow went without another word.

But the next day at twelve o’clock she received a

summons, and the sight of the stamped paper, on which

appeared several times in large letters, ‘Maitre Hareng,

bailiff at Buchy,’ so frightened her that she rushed in hot

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haste to the linendraper’s. She found him in his shop,

doing up a parcel.

‘Your obedient!’ he said; ‘I am at your service.’

But Lheureux, all the same, went on with his work,

helped by a young girl of about thirteen, somewhat

hunch-backed, who was at once his clerk and his servant.

Then, his clogs clattering on the shop-boards, he went

up in front of Madame Bovary to the first door, and

introduced her into a narrow closet, where, in a large

bureau in sapon-wood, lay some ledgers, protected by a

horizontal padlocked iron bar. Against the wall, under

some remnants of calico, one glimpsed a safe, but of such

dimensions that it must contain something besides bills and

money. Monsieur Lheureux, in fact, went in for

pawnbroking, and it was there that he had put Madame

Bovary’s gold chain, together with the earrings of poor old

Tellier, who, at last forced to sell out, had bought a

meagre store of grocery at Quincampoix, where he was

dying of catarrh amongst his candles, that were less yellow

than his face.

Lheureux sat down in a large cane arm-chair, saying:

‘What news?’

‘See!’

And she showed him the paper.

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‘Well how can I help it?’

Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he

had given not to pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.

‘But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own

throat.’

‘And what will happen now?’ she went on.

‘Oh, it’s very simple; a judgment and then a distraint—

that’s about it!’

Emma kept down a desire to strike him, and asked

gently if there was no way of quieting Monsieur Vincart.

‘I dare say! Quiet Vincart! You don’t know him; he’s

more ferocious than an Arab!’

Still Monsieur Lheureux must interfere.

‘Well, listen. It seems to me so far I’ve been very good

to you.’ And opening one of his ledgers, ‘See,’ he said.

Then running up the page with his finger, ‘Let’s see! let’s

see! August 3d, two hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred

and fifty; March 23d, forty-six. In April—‘

He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.

‘Not to speak of the bills signed by Monsieur Bovary,

one for seven hundred francs, and another for three

hundred. As to your little installments, with the interest,

why, there’s no end to ‘em; one gets quite muddled over

‘em. I’ll have nothing more to do with it.’

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She wept; she even called him ‘her good Monsieur

Lheureux.’ But he always fell back upon ‘that rascal

Vincart.’ Besides, he hadn’t a brass farthing; no one was

paying him now-a-days; they were eating his coat off his

back; a poor shopkeeper like him couldn’t advance

money.

Emma was silent, and Monsieur Lheureux, who was

biting the feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at

her silence, for he went on—

‘Unless one of these days I have something coming in,

I might—‘

‘Besides,’ said she, ‘as soon as the balance of

Barneville—‘

‘What!’

And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he

seemed much surprised. Then in a honied voice—

‘And we agree, you say?’

‘Oh! to anything you like.’

On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few

figures, and declaring it would be very difficult for him,

that the affair was shady, and that he was being bled, he

wrote out four bills for two hundred and fifty francs each,

to fall due month by month.

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‘Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it’s

settled. I don’t play the fool; I’m straight enough.’

Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not

one of which, however, was in his opinion worthy of

madame.

‘When I think that there’s a dress at threepence-

halfpenny a yard, and warranted fast colours! And yet they

actually swallow it! Of course you understand one doesn’t

tell them what it really is!’ He hoped by this confession of

dishonesty to others to quite convince her of his probity to

her.

Then he called her back to show her three yards of

guipure that he had lately picked up ‘at a sale.’

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ said Lheureux. ‘It is very much used

now for the backs of arm-chairs. It’s quite the rage.’

And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the

guipure in some blue paper and put it in Emma’s hands.

‘But at least let me know—‘

‘Yes, another time,’ he replied, turning on his heel.

That same evening she urged Bovary to write to his

mother, to ask her to send as quickly as possible the whole