Madame Bovary (51 page)

The six men, three on either side, were walking with small steps and panting a little. The priests, the choristers, and the two altarboys were reciting the
De profundis;
and their voices went out into the countryside, rising and falling in waves. Now and then they would disappear at a bend in the path; but the great silver cross always rose up between the trees.

The women followed, covered in black cloaks with the hoods folded back; each carried a thick, burning taper in one hand; and Charles felt faint at the endless repetition of prayers and flames, amid the sickening smells of wax and soutanes. A fresh breeze was blowing, the rye and rapeseed were turning green, little dewdrops trembled at the roadside on the thorn hedges. Joyful sounds of all kinds filled the air: the distant rattle of a cart rolling along a rutted road, the crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, or the gallop of a colt running away under the apple trees. The pure sky was dappled with pink clouds; spirals of bluish smoke trailed down over thatched cottages covered in iris; Charles, as he passed, recognized the farmyards. He remembered mornings like this one, when, after visiting some patient, he would come outside and return to her.

The black pall, spangled with white teardrops, lifted from time to time, uncovering the coffin. The tired bearers were slowing down, and the bier moved forward in little jolts, like a boat pitching with every wave.

They arrived.

The men continued on to the far end, to a place in the turf where the grave had been dug.

They ranged themselves all around it; and while the priest was speaking, the red earth, thrown up onto the edges, trickled down at the corners, continuously, noiselessly.

Then, when the four ropes were in position, they pushed the bier onto them. He watched it go down. It was still going down.

At last they heard a thud; the ropes, creaking, came back up. Then Bournisien took the spade that Lestiboudois was holding out to him; with his left hand, as he continued to sprinkle the holy water with his right, he vigorously pushed in a large spadeful; and the pebbles striking the wood of the coffin made that terrible sound that seems to us like the reverberation of eternity itself.

The clergyman passed the aspergillum to his neighbor. It was Monsieur Homais. He shook it gravely, then held it out to Charles, who sank to his knees in the earth and threw in great handfuls of it, crying out: “Goodbye!” He blew her kisses; he dragged himself toward the grave so that he might be swallowed up in it along with her.

They led him away; and he soon calmed down, perhaps feeling, like everyone else, the vague satisfaction of being done with it.

On the way back, Père Rouault began calmly smoking a pipe; something that Homais privately judged to be hardly proper. He likewise noticed that Monsieur Binet had refrained from making an appearance, that Tuvache “had taken off” after the Mass, and that Théodore, the notary’s servant, was wearing a blue coat, “as if he couldn’t find a black one, seeing as it’s the custom, for goodness’ sake!” And he went from one group to another, communicating his observations. They were deploring Emma’s death, especially Lheureux, who had not failed to attend the burial.

“That poor little lady! How painful for her husband!”

The apothecary said:

“If it hadn’t been for me, you may be quite sure, he’d have made a fatal attempt upon himself!”

“Such a good person! To think, though, that I saw her just last Saturday in my shop!”

“I did not have the leisure,” said Homais, “to prepare a few words to speak over her grave.”

At home, Charles took off his funeral clothes, and Père Rouault put back on his blue smock. It was new, and as he had often wiped his eyes with the sleeves on his way there, the dye had come off on his face; and his tears had made little tracks in the layer of dust that soiled it.

The elder Madame Bovary was with them. All three were quiet. At last the old man said with a sigh:

“You remember, my friend, I came to Tostes once, when you had just lost your first wife. I was able to console you in those days! I could think of something to say; but now …”

Then, with a long moan that lifted his whole chest:

“Ah! It’s the end for me, you know! I’ve seen my wife go … my son after her … and now, today, my daughter!”

He intended to return to Les Bertaux right away, saying that he could not sleep in that house. He even refused to see his granddaughter.

“No, no! It would cause me too much grief. Only, give her a big kiss for me! Goodbye! … You’re a good fellow! And never fear, I’ll not forget,” he said, slapping his thigh. “You’ll still get your turkey.”

But when he reached the top of the hill, he turned around, as he had turned around once before on the road to Saint-Victor, when he was leaving her. The windows of the village were all on fire under the slanting rays of the sun, which was setting beyond the meadow. He shaded his eyes with his hand; and on the horizon he saw a walled enclosure where trees stood in dark clumps here and there among the white stones; then he continued on his way, at a slow trot, for his nag was limping.

Charles and his mother remained together for a very long time talking, that night, despite their fatigue. They spoke about the old days and about the future. She would come live in Yonville, she would keep house for him, they would never again be parted. She was clever and ingratiating, and rejoiced at winning back an affection that had been denied her for so many years. Midnight struck. The village, as usual, was silent, and Charles, awake, was still thinking of
her.

Rodolphe, who had been hunting in the woods all day by way of distraction, was sleeping peacefully in his château; and Léon, far away, was asleep too.

One other person, at that hour, was not sleeping.

On the grave among the pine trees, a boy knelt weeping, his chest,
racked by sobs, heaving in the darkness, oppressed by an immense grief gentler than the moon and more unfathomable than the night. Suddenly the gate creaked. It was Lestiboudois; he had come in search of his spade, which he had forgotten earlier. He recognized Justin scaling the wall, and then he knew the truth about the scoundrel who had been stealing his potatoes.

The next day, Charles had the child brought back. She asked for her mama. They answered that she was away, that she would bring back some toys for her. Berthe talked about her again several times; then at length she stopped thinking about her. The child’s gaiety cut Bovary to the heart, and in addition he had to submit to the pharmacist’s intolerable commiserations.

Money troubles soon began again, Monsieur Lheureux urging on his friend Vinçart as before, and Charles signed for some exorbitant sums; for he would never consent to selling the least of the things that had belonged to
her.
His mother was incensed by this. He became angrier than she. He had changed completely. She left the house for good.

Then everyone set out to
profit
from him. Mademoiselle Lempereur claimed six months of lessons, even though Emma had never taken a single one (despite the receipted bill she had shown Bovary): the two women had had an agreement; the lending library claimed three years’ subscription fees; Mère Rolet claimed postage on some twenty letters; and when Charles asked for an explanation, she had the discretion to answer:

“Ah! I know nothing about it! It was business.”

With every debt he paid, Charles thought he had come to the end of them. Others kept coming in, constantly.

He tried to collect long-outstanding payments for professional visits. He was shown the letters his wife had sent. Then he had to apologize.

Félicité was now wearing Madame’s dresses; not all of them, for he had kept a few, and he would go look at them in her dressing room, locking himself in; she was more or less her size, and often when he saw her from behind, Charles would be prey to an illusion and would cry out:

“Oh! stay! stay!”

But at Pentecost, she absconded from Yonville, carried off by Théodore and stealing all that was left of the wardrobe.

It was at about this time that the Widow Dupuis had the honor to inform him of “the marriage of Monsieur Léon Dupuis, her son, notary at Yvetot, to Mademoiselle Léocadie Leboeuf, of Bondeville.” Charles, among the congratulations that he addressed to her, wrote this sentence:

“How happy my poor wife would have been!”

One day, when, wandering aimlessly through the house, he had gone up to the attic, he felt under his slipper a little wad of thin paper. He opened it and read: “Be brave, Emma! Be brave! I don’t want to ruin your life.” It was Rodolphe’s letter, which had fallen to the floor among some boxes and remained there, and which the wind from the attic window had just blown toward the door. And Charles stood there openmouthed, without moving, in that same spot where once, even paler than he, Emma, in despair, had longed to die. At last, he discovered a small
R
at the bottom of the second page. Who was it? He recalled Rodolphe’s constant attentions, his sudden disappearance, and his constrained manner when meeting her afterward two or three times. But he was deceived by the respectful tone of the letter.

“Perhaps they loved each other platonically,” he said to himself.

In any case, Charles was not one who liked to get to the bottom of things: he recoiled before the proofs, and his tentative jealousy vanished in the immensity of his grief.

They must have adored her, he thought. Surely all men had coveted her. Now she seemed to him all the more beautiful; and this thought awakened in him a constant, raging desire that inflamed his despair and had no limits because now it could never be satisfied.

To please her, as though she were still alive, he adopted her tastes, her ideas; he bought himself patent-leather boots, he took up the habit of wearing white cravats. He put brilliantine on his mustache; like her, he wrote promissory notes. She was corrupting him from beyond the grave.

He was obliged to sell the silver, piece by piece; then he sold the parlor furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom, her room,
remained as it used to be. After dinner, Charles would go up there. He would push the round table up to the fire, and he would pull forward
her
armchair. He would sit opposite. A candle burned in one of the gilt candlesticks. Berthe sat beside him coloring printed pictures.

It pained the poor man to see her so shabbily dressed, her ankle boots missing their laces and the armholes of her smocks torn down to the hips—because the woman who came in to clean hardly took any notice of her. But she was so gentle, so sweet, and she bent her little head so gracefully, letting her lovely blond hair fall over her pink cheeks, that he was filled with an infinite pleasure, a delight permeated with bitterness like those badly made wines that smell of resin. He would mend her playthings, make jumping jacks for her out of cardboard, or sew up the torn stomachs of her dolls. Then, if his eye fell on the sewing box, on a trailing ribbon or even a pin caught in a crack in the table, he would sink into a reverie, and he looked so sad that she, too, like him, would grow sad.

No one came to see them now; for Justin had fled to Rouen, where he became a grocery boy, and the apothecary’s children visited the little girl less and less often, since Monsieur Homais preferred, given the difference in their social status, that the association not be prolonged.

The Blind Man, whom he had not been able to cure with his salve, had returned to the hill at Bois-Guillaume, where he told travelers the story of the pharmacist’s vain attempt, with the result that Homais, when he went to the city, would conceal himself behind the curtains of the
Hirondelle
to avoid encountering him. He loathed him; and wanting, in the interests of his own reputation, to be rid of him at all costs, he launched against him a hidden campaign that revealed both the depth of his intelligence and the wickedness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one could read in
Le Fanal de Rouen
paragraphs like the following:

“Anyone wending his way toward the fertile fields of Picardy will no doubt have noticed, on the hill at Bois-Guillaume, a wretched individual afflicted with a horrible lesion of the face. He importunes every traveler, persecutes him, and exacts a veritable tax on him. Are we still living in the monstrous days of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds were permitted to
display, in our public places, the leprosy and scrofula they brought back from the Crusades?”

Or:

“Despite the laws against vagrancy, the approaches to our large cities continue to be infested by gangs of paupers. Some, too, are seen going about on their own, and these, perhaps, are not the least dangerous. What can our magistrates be thinking?”

Then Homais began inventing anecdotes:

“Yesterday, on the hill at Bois-Guillaume, a skittish horse …” And there followed the tale of an accident occasioned by the presence of the Blind Man.

He was so effective that the Blind Man was incarcerated. But they released him. He started up again, and Homais, too, started up again. It was a battle. The victory went to Homais; for his enemy was condemned for life to an asylum.

This success emboldened him; and from then on, whenever a dog was run over in the district, or a barn burned down, or a woman got beaten, he immediately let the public know about it, guided always by a love of progress and a hatred of priests. He drew comparisons between the primary schools and the Ignorantine friars, to the detriment of the latter, recalled Saint Bartholemew’s Day in connection with an allocation of a hundred francs to the church, denounced abuses, and hurled witticisms. That was his word for it. Homais was undermining the foundations; he was becoming dangerous.

Yet he was suffocating within the narrow limits of journalism, and soon he felt the need to produce a book, a “work”! And so he composed a
General Statistics of the Canton of Yonville, Followed by Some Climatological Observations
, and statistics led him to philosophy. He became preoccupied by major questions: social reform, inculcating morality in the poor, fish breeding, rubber, railroads, and so forth. He now blushed at being a bourgeois. He affected the manners of the
artistic type;
he smoked! He bought himself two
chic
Pompadour statuettes to decorate his parlor.