第 9 页

‘There are even two cigars in it,’ said he; ‘they’ll do for

this evening after dinner.’

‘Why, do you smoke?’ she asked.

‘Sometimes, when I get a chance.’

He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.

When they reached home the dinner was not ready.

Madame lost her temper. Nastasie answered rudely.

‘Leave the room!’ said Emma. ‘You are forgetting

yourself. I give you warning.’

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For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal

with sorrel.

Charles, seated opposite Emma, rubbed his hands

gleefully.

‘How good it is to be at home again!’

Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of

the poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome

time of his widowhood, kept him company many an

evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest

acquaintance in the place.

‘Have you given her warning for good?’ he asked at

last.

‘Yes. Who is to prevent me?’ she replied.

Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while

their room was being made ready. Charles began to

smoke. He smoked with lips protruding, spitting every

moment, recoiling at every puff.

‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ she said scornfully.

He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of

cold water at the pump. Emma seizing hold of the cigar

case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard.

The next day was a long one. She walked about her

little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before

the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate,

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looking with amazement at all these things of once-on-atime

that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed

already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the

morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of

to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in

her life, like one of those great crevices that a storm will

sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was

resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her

beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were

yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her

heart was like these. In its friction against wealth

something had come over it that could not be effaced.

The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation

for Emma.

Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to

herself as she awoke, ‘Ah! I was there a week—a

fortnight—three weeks ago.’

And little by little the faces grew confused in her

remembrance.

She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw

the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details

escaped her, but the regret remained with her.

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CHAPTER NINE

Often when Charles was out she took from the

cupboard, between the folds of the linen where she had

left it, the green silk cigar case. She looked at it, opened it,

and even smelt the odour of the lining—a mixture of

verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount’s?

Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had been

embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little

thing, hidden from all eyes, that had occupied many

hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the

pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the

stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed

there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven

threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent

passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it

away with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay

upon the wide-mantelled chimneys between flower-vases

and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at Paris

now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague

name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere

pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell;

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it shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her

pomade-pots.

At night, when the carriers passed under her windows

in their carts singing the ‘Marjolaine,’ she awoke, and

listened to the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as

they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the

soil. ‘They will be there to-morrow!’ she said to herself.

And she followed them in thought up and down the

hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by the

light of the stars. At the end of some indefinite distance

there was always a confused spot, into which her dream

died.

She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her

finger on the map she walked about the capital. She went

up the boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the

lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that

represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of

her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring

in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much

noise before the peristyles of theatres.

She took in ‘La Corbeille,’ a lady’s journal, and the

‘Sylphe des Salons.’ She devoured, without skipping a

work, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees,

took interest in the debut of a singer, in the opening of a

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new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of

the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In

Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read

Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them imaginary

satisfaction for her own desires. Even at table she had her

book by her, and turned over the pages while Charles ate

and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always

returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary

personages she made comparisons. But the circle of which

he was the centre gradually widened round him, and the

aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened out

beyond, lighting up her other dreams.

Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before

Emma’s eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. The many

lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided

into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Emma perceived

only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in

themselves represented all humanity. The world of

ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing rooms

lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet

and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with trains,

deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came

the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at

four o’clock; the women, poor angels, wore English point

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on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses

under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at

pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and

towards the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms

of restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the light

of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of

letters and actresses. They were prodigal as kings, full of

ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence

outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the

midst of storms, having something of the sublime. For the

rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place and as

if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover, the

more her thoughts turned away from them. All her

immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the

middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence,

seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had

caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eye

could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She

confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the

delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of

sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special

soil, a particular temperature? Signs by moonlight, long

embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers

of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be

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separated from the balconies of great castles full of

indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick

carpets, well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias,

nor from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-

knots of liveries.

The lad from the posting house who came to groom

the mare every morning passed through the passage with

his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes in his blouse;

his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the groom

in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His

work done, he did not come back again all day, for

Charles on his return put up his horse himself, unsaddled

him and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a

bundle of straw and threw it as best she could into the

manger.

To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents

of tears) Emma took into her service a young girl of

fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. She forbade her

wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third

person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock

before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress

her—wanted to make a lady’s-maid of her. The new

servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not to be sent

away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard,

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Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she

ate alone in her bed after she had said her prayers.

Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the

postilions.

Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open

dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of

her bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons.

Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her

small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon

that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting

book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although

she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not,

looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then,

dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She

longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished

at the same time to die and to live in Paris.

Charles in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate

omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp

beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face,

listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a

good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he found a

blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-

dressed woman, charming with an odour of freshness,

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though no one could say whence the perfume came, or if

it were not her skin that made odorous her chemise.

She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was

some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles,

a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an

extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the

servant had spoilt, but that Charles swallowed with

pleasure to the last mouthful. At Rouen she saw some

ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the watch-chains;

she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece

two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory

necessaire with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Charles

understood these refinements the more they seduced him.

They added something to the pleasure of the senses and to

the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust

sanding all along the narrow path of his life.

He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly

established.

The country-folk loved him because he was not proud.

He petted the children, never went to the public house,

and, moreover, his morals inspired confidence. He was

specially successful with catarrhs and chest complaints.

Being much afraid of killing his patients, Charles, in fact

only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a

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footbath, or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of

surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and for the

taking out of teeth he had the ‘devil’s own wrist.’

Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in ‘La

Ruche Medicale,’ a new journal whose prospectus had

been sent him. He read it a little after dinner, but in about

five minutes the warmth of the room added to the effect

of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin

on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the

foot of the lamp. Emma looked at him and shrugged her

shoulders. Why, at least, was not her husband one of those

men of taciturn passions who work at their books all

night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism

sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black

coat? She could have wished this name of Bovary, which

was hers, had been illustrious, to see it displayed at the

booksellers’, repeated in the newspapers, known to all

France. But Charles had no ambition.

An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in

consultation had somewhat humiliated him at the very

bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives.

When, in the evening, Charles told her this anecdote,

Emma inveighed loudly against his colleague. Charles was

much touched. He kissed her forehead with a tear in his

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eyes. But she was angered with shame; she felt a wild

desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the

passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.

‘What a man! What a man!’ she said in a low voice,

biting her lips.

Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As

he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut

the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his

teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling