Madame Bovary (22 page)

And yet the flames died down, either because the supply of fuel was exhausted or because too much was piled on. Little by little, love was extinguished by absence, longing smothered by routine; and the incendiary glow that had reddened her pale sky was covered over in shadow and by degrees faded away. In the torpor of her consciousness, she even misunderstood her feelings of repugnance for her husband to be yearnings for her lover, the scorching of hatred for the rekindling of affection; but since the storm continued to rage and her passion burned itself to ashes, and since no help came and no sun appeared, night closed in completely around her, and she remained lost in a terrible, piercing cold.

Then the bad days of Tostes began again. She considered herself far
more unhappy now: for along with her experience of sorrow, she now had the certainty that it would never end.

A woman who had required of herself such great sacrifices could surely be permitted to indulge her whims. She bought herself a Gothic prie-dieu, and she spent fourteen francs in one month on lemons for blanching her fingernails; she sent away to Rouen for a dress of blue cashmere; at Lheureux’s, she chose the most beautiful of his scarves; she tied it around her waist over her dressing gown; and outfitted in this way, with the shutters closed, she would lie down on a couch with a book in her hand.

She would often change the way she wore her hair: she would arrange it à la Chinoise, or in gentle curls, or intertwined braids; she parted it on the side of her head and rolled it under, like a man’s.

She decided to learn Italian: she bought dictionaries, a grammar, a supply of white paper. She attempted some serious reading, in history and philosophy. At night, sometimes, Charles would wake with a start, thinking he was being called to a sickbed.

“I’m coming,” he would mumble.

And it was the sound of Emma striking a match to relight the lamp. But it was the same with her reading as with her tapestry-work projects, which, barely begun, crowded her cupboard; she would take them up, leave them off, go on to others.

She had moods in which she could easily have been provoked into extravagant behavior. One day she insisted, in defiance of her husband, that she could indeed drink half a large glass of eau-de-vie, and when Charles foolishly challenged her to do it, she swallowed the eau-de-vie to the last drop.

Despite her flightiness (this was what the townswomen of Yonville called it), Emma did not look happy, and the corners of her mouth were usually marked by those stiff creases that line the faces of old maids and people of failed ambitions. She was pale all over, as white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was stretched tight around the nostrils; her eyes stared at you vaguely. Because she had discovered three gray hairs at her temples, she talked a good deal about growing old.

She often had dizzy spells. One day she even spat blood, and when Charles fussed over her, showing his concern:

“Bah!” she answered, “what does it matter?”

Charles retreated into his office; and he wept, his elbows on the table, sitting in his office chair, under the phrenological head.

Then he wrote to his mother asking her to come, and together they had long conferences on the subject of Emma.

What was the answer? What could they do, since she was refusing all treatment?

“Do you know what your wife needs?” Mère Bovary went on. “She needs to be forced to work, to work with her hands! If she was obliged to earn her living, like so many others, she wouldn’t be having these vapors—they come from all the ideas she stuffs her head with, and her idle life.”

“She does keep busy, though,” said Charles.

“Ah! Busy! With what, pray tell? Reading novels, evil books, books against religion that make fun of the priests with speeches from Voltaire. But all of that has its effect, my poor child, and a person who has no religion always comes to a bad end.”

So it was decided that Emma would be prevented from reading novels. The project did not seem an easy one. The good lady took it upon herself: when she passed through Rouen, she would go in person to the proprietor of the lending library and inform him that Emma was terminating her subscription. Wouldn’t one have the right to alert the police if, despite this, the bookseller persisted in his business as purveyor of poison?

The farewells between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were curt. During the three weeks they had been together, they had not exchanged four words, apart from formal greetings and polite inquiries when they encountered each other at the table and at night before going to bed.

Madame Bovary senior left on a Wednesday, which was market day at Yonville.

From morning on, the Square was congested with a line of carts, all tipped up with their shafts in the air, extending along the housefronts from the church to the inn. On the opposite side were canvas booths selling cotton goods, woolen blankets and stockings, halters for horses, and bundles of blue ribbons whose ends flew in the wind. Larger metal goods were spread over the ground, between the pyramids of eggs and the small hampers of cheeses, from which sticky pieces of straw poked out; near the threshers, clucking hens in flat cages thrust their necks through the bars. The people, crowding together in one spot and unwilling to move, at times seemed about to break the pharmacy’s front window. On Wednesdays the shop never emptied out, and people pushed their way in
not so much to buy medicines as to have consultations, so celebrated was Monsieur Homais’s reputation in the surrounding villages. His robust confidence had bewitched
the countrypeople. They regarded him as a greater doctor than any real doctor.

Emma was leaning on her elbows at her window (she would often sit there: a window, in the country, takes the place of a theater or a public walk), and she was amusing herself contemplating the mob of rustics, when she saw a gentleman dressed in a green velvet frock coat. He wore yellow gloves, though he was shod in heavy gaiters; and he was headed toward the doctor’s house, followed by a countryman walking with bowed head and pensive air.

“May I see Monsieur?” he asked Justin, who was talking on the doorsill with Félicité.

And taking him for the servant of the house:

“Tell him that Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger, of La Huchette, is here.”

It was not out of a landowner’s vanity that the new arrival had added “of La Huchette” to his name, but to identify himself more clearly. La Huchette, indeed, was an estate near Yonville whose château he had just acquired, along with two farms that he was cultivating himself, though without taking excessive trouble over them. He was a bachelor and was said to have
at least fifteen thousand livres in income!

Charles came into the parlor. Monsieur Boulanger introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because he was feeling
ants all up and down his body.

“It’ll clear me out,” was his objection to every argument.

So Bovary ordered a bandage and a basin to be brought, and asked Justin to hold it. Then, speaking to the villager, who was already pale:

“Don’t be afraid, my good fellow.”

“No, no,” answered the other, “go ahead!”

And with an air of bravado, he held out his thick arm. At the prick of the lancet, the blood spurted forth and spattered over the mirror.

“Bring the bowl closer!” exclaimed Charles.

“Mark that!”
said the countryman. “It’s like a little spring coming up! What red blood I have! A good sign, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes,” said the officer of health, “they don’t feel anything at first, then the syncope occurs afterward, especially in people with good constitutions, like this one.”

At these words, the countryman let go of the lancet case he had been turning around and around in his fingers. The jolt of his shoulders made the back of the chair creak. His hat fell off.

“I expected as much,” said Bovary, applying his finger to the vein.

The basin was beginning to tremble in Justin’s hands; his knees wobbled, he turned pale.

“Where’s my wife? Emma!” called Charles.

Immediately she came down the stairs.

“Vinegar!” he cried. “Oh, Lord, two at once!”

And he was so agitated that he had trouble applying the compress.

“It’s nothing,” said Monsieur Boulanger calmly, as he took Justin in his arms.

And he sat him on the table, leaning his back against the wall.

Madame Bovary began removing his cravat. There was a knot in the strings of his shirt; for a few minutes she moved her light fingers around the boy’s neck; then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; with it she dampened his temples with little pats, and she blew on them softly.

The carter came to; but Justin remained in his faint, and his irises were sinking into the whites, like blue flowers in milk.

“We ought to hide that from him,” said Charles.

Madame Bovary took the basin. With the movement she made, bending down to put it under the table, her dress (it was a summer dress with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist, wide in the skirt) flared out around her over the stone floor of the room; —and as Emma, stooping, swayed a little, putting out her arms, the material swelled and subsided here and there, following the contours of her body. She went to get a carafe of water, and she was melting lumps of sugar in it when the pharmacist arrived. The servant had gone to find him in the hubbub; seeing his student with his eyes open, he drew a long breath. Then, walking around him, he looked him up and down.

“Fool!” he said. “You little fool! Really! Fool, spelled f-o-o-l! Quite an event, isn’t it—a phlebotomy! A strapping fellow like you, who isn’t afraid of anything! Just look at him—like a squirrel, he climbs up to shake the nuts down from dizzying heights. Ah, yes! Speak up, boast about yourself! What a fine natural aptitude you’ll have for being a pharmacist later on; you know, you may be called before a tribunal in some serious
situation, to enlighten the magistrates; and you’ll have to maintain your composure, speak rationally, show yourself to be a man, or else be taken for an imbecile!”

Justin did not answer. The apothecary continued:

“Who asked you to come? You’re always bothering Monsieur and Madame! Besides, on Wednesdays, your presence is especially indispensable to me. Right now there are twenty people over at the house. I left everything because of my concern for you. Now, come on! Hurry! Wait for me there and keep an eye on the jars!”

When Justin, who was putting his things back on, had gone, they talked a little about fainting spells. Madame Bovary had never had one.

“That’s extraordinary for a lady!” said Monsieur Boulanger. “The fact is, some people are very sensitive. At a duel, for example, I once saw a witness lose consciousness merely at the sound of the pistols being loaded.”

“I myself,” said the apothecary, “am not in the least affected by the sight of other people’s blood; but the very idea of shedding my own would be enough to make me faint, if I thought about it too much.”

Meanwhile, Monsieur Boulanger sent his servant away, advising him to set his mind at rest, now that his whim had been gratified.

“It has afforded me the advantage of making your acquaintance,” he added.

And he was looking at Emma as he spoke.

Then he laid three francs on the corner of the table, bowed casually, and went off.

He was soon on the other side of the river (this was the path he took back to La Huchette); and Emma saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slowing down from time to time, like someone deep in thought.

“She’s very nice!” he was saying to himself; “she’s very nice, that doctor’s wife! Lovely teeth, dark eyes, a trim little foot, and a figure like a Parisian. Where the devil did she come from? Where did he find her, that gross fellow?”

Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four years old; his nature was rough and his intelligence keen; he had known many women and was a good judge of them. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her, and about her husband.

“I believe he’s very stupid. She’s probably tired of him. He has dirty
nails and a three-day-old beard. While he trots off to his patients, she stays at home darning socks. And we’re bored! We’d like to live in the city, dance the polka every night! Poor little woman! That one’s gasping for love like a carp for water on a kitchen table. With three pretty compliments, that one would adore me, I’m sure of it! It would be lovely! Charming! … Yes, but how to get rid of the woman afterward?”

And so his glimpse of the hindrances that might stand in the way of his pleasure made him, by contrast, think of his mistress. She was an actress in Rouen whom he was supporting; and as he paused over her image, which gave him, even in recollection, feelings of satiety:

“Ah,” he thought, “Madame Bovary is much prettier than she is, and fresher! Virginie is definitely beginning to grow fat. She’s so tiresome with her enthusiasms. And what a passion she has for prawns!”

The countryside was deserted, and around him Rodolphe heard only the regular beat of the grass whipping his boots, and far away the chirping of the crickets hiding under the oats; he saw Emma again in that room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.

“I’ll have her!” he cried, striking a clod of earth in front of him with a stick and crushing it.

And he immediately examined the tactical part of the undertaking. He asked himself:

“Where would one meet? How would one manage it? The brat would be constantly hanging around one’s neck, and the maid, the neighbors, the husband, every kind of serious bother! Bah!” he said, “It would take too much time!”

Then he began again:

“The thing is, her eyes bore into your heart like gimlets. And that pale complexion! … How I love pale women!”

By the time he reached the top of the Argueil hill, he had made up his mind.

“Now it’s only a matter of looking for opportunities. Well, I’ll stop by there from time to time, I’ll send them some game, some poultry; I’ll have myself bled, if necessary; we’ll become friends, I’ll invite them to my house … Why, yes! Yes, of course!” he added, “the fair is coming up; she’ll be there; I’ll see her. We’ll make a start, a bold start. That’s the surest way.”