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framed in very large frames, and hung up against the

wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass

saw him at his door in his wool-work slippers.

He came home late—at ten o’clock, at midnight

sometimes. Then he asked for something to eat, and as the

servant had gone to bed, Emma waited on him. He took

off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one after

the other, the people he had met, the villages where he

had been, the prescriptions ha had written, and, well

pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the

boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese,

munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then

went to bed, and lay on his back and snored.

As he had been for a time accustomed to wear

nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over his

ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled pellmell

about his face and whitened with the feathers of the

pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He

always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the

instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest

of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a

wooden foot. He said that ‘was quite good enough for the

country.’

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His mother approved of his economy, for she came to

see him as formerly when there had been some violent

row at her place; and yet Madame Bovary senior seemed

prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought ‘her

ways too fine for their position"; the wood, the sugar, and

the candles disappeared as ‘at a grand establishment,’ and

the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been

enough for twenty-five courses. She put her linen in order

for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the

butcher when he brought the meat. Emma put up with

these lessons. Madame Bovary was lavish of them; and the

words ‘daughter’ and ‘mother’ were exchanged all day

long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one

uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.

In Madame Dubuc’s time the old woman felt that she

was still the favorite; but now the love of Charles for

Emma seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an

encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her

son’s happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks

through the windows at people dining in his old house.

She recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and her

sacrifices, and, comparing these with Emma’s negligence,

came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore

her so exclusively.

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Charles knew not what to answer: he respected his

mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the

judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the

conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam

Bovary had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms

to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he

had heard from his mamma. Emma proved to him with a

word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his

patients.

And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she

wanted to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in

the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew

by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy

adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and

Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.

When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her

heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of

understanding what she did not experience as of believing

anything that did not present itself in conventional forms,

she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles’s

passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became

regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one

habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked

forward to after the monotony of dinner.

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A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of

the lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she

took her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order

to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes

the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far as

the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion

which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the

country. Amidst the vegetation of the ditch there are long

reeds with leaves that cut you.

She began by looking round her to see if nothing had

changed since last she had been there. She found again in

the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of

nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of

lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always

closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her

thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her

greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields,

yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-

mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.

Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and,

sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her

sunshade, Emma repeated to herself, ‘Good heavens! Why

did I marry?’

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She asked herself if by some other chance combination

it would have not been possible to meet another man; and

she tried to imagine what would have been these

unrealised events, this different life, this unknown

husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might

have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such

as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had

married. What were they doing now? In town, with the

noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights

of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart

expands, the senses bourgeon out. But she—her life was

cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north,

and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the

darkness in every corner of her heart.

She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the

platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long

plaits. In her white frock and open prunella shoes she had

a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the

gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the

courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her

through their windows; the music master with his violin

case bowed in passing by. How far all of this! How far

away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and

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smoothed the long delicate head, saying, ‘Come, kiss

mistress; you have no troubles.’

Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful

animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing

her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in

trouble whom one is consoling.

Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from

the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the

Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt

freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the

branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits,

ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Emma drew

her shawl round her shoulders and rose.

In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up

the short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The

sun was setting; the sky showed red between the branches,

and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a

straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out

against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she

called Djali, and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high

road, threw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the

evening did not speak.

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But towards the end of September something

extraordinary fell upon her life; she was invited by the

Marquis d’Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.

Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis,

anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his

candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand.

In the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in

the Conseil General always enthusiastically demanded new

roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had

suffered from an abscess, which Charles had cured as if by

miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The

steward sent to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in

the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the

doctor’s little garden. Now cherry trees did not thrive at

Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Bovary for some slips;

made it his business to thank his personally; saw Emma;

thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow

like a peasant; so that he did not think he was going

beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other

hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.

On Wednesday at three o’clock, Monsieur and

Madame Bovary, seated in their dog-cart, set out for

Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a

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bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Charles

held a bandbox between his knees.

They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park

were being lit to show the way for the carriages.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with

two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the

foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows

were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular

intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron,

syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular

clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path. A river

flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could

distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the

field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered

hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two

parallel lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left

of the ruined old chateau.

Charles’s dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of

steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and,

offering his arm to the doctor’s wife, conducted her to the

vestibule.

It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the

sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it

as in a church.

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Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a

gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard room,

through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory

balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing room, Emma

saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their

chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and

smiled silently as they made their strokes.

On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames

bore at the bottom names written in black letters. She

read: ‘Jean-Antoine d’Andervilliers d’Yvervonbille, Count

de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the

battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1857.’ And on

another: ‘Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d’Andervilliers de la

Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the

Order of St. Michael, wounded at the battle of the

Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May, 1692; died at

Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693.’ One could

hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the

lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow

round the room. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it

broke up against these in delicate lines where there were

cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares

framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter

portion of the painting—a pale brow, two eyes that

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looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-

coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-

rounded calf.

The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of

the ladies (the Marchioness herself) came to meet Emma.

She made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began

talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long

time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine

shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this

evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure

fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman

sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with

flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round

the fire.

At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the

majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the

ladies at the second in the dining room with the Marquis

and Marchioness.

Emma, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the

warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the

fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of the

truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax

candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with

light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays;

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bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the

table; and in the large-bordered plates each napkin,

arranged after the fashion of a bishop’s mitre, held

between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The

red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in

open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in

their plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings,

knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward,

grave as a judge, offering ready carved dishes between the

shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave

you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain

inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman,