الفصل الفصل 13 · Part 2 Chapter Four

. Part 2 Chapter Four

When the first cold days set in Emma left her bedroom for the

sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was

on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the

looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see

the villagers pass along the pavement.

Twice a day Léon went from his office to the Lion d’Or. Emma could hear

him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man

glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without

turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her

left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she

often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past.

She would get up and order the table to be laid.

Monsieur Homais called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on

tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase,

“Good evening, everybody.” Then, when he had taken his seat at the table

between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter

consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked

of “what was in the paper.”

Homais by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end

to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories

of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But

the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some

remarks on the dishes before him.

Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the

tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the

manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning.

He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner.

Moreover, Homais, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars,

excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs;

he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with

the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.

At eight o’clock Justin came to fetch him to shut up the shop.

Then Monsieur Homais gave him a sly look, especially if Félicité was

there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor’s

house.

“The young dog,” he said, “is beginning to have ideas, and the devil

take me if I don’t believe he’s in love with your servant!”

But a more serious fault with which he reproached Justin was his

constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could

not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Homais had called

him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs,

and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too

large.

Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist’s, his

scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated

various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be

there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Bovary, took

her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that

she wore over her boots when there was snow.

First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Monsieur Homais

played ecarte with Emma; Léon behind her gave her advice.

Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of

her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made

to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her

turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually

paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell

on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the

ground. When Léon occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it,

he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.

When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played

dominoes, and Emma, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table,

turning over the leaves of “L’Illustration”. She had brought her ladies’

journal with her. Léon sat down near her; they looked at the engravings

together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She

often begged him to read her the verses; Léon declaimed them in a

languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love

passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Monsieur Homais

was strong at the game; he could beat Charles and give him a double-six.

Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in

front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the

cinders; the teapot was empty, Léon was still reading.

Emma listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the

gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances

with their balancing-poles. Léon stopped, pointing with a gesture to his

sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation

seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard.

Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce

of books and of romances. Monsieur Bovary, little given to jealousy, did

not trouble himself about it.

On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked

with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of

the clerk’s. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him

at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses

fashionable, Léon bought some for Madame Bovary, bringing them back on

his knees in the “Hirondelle,” pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.

She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the

pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other

tending their flowers at their windows.

Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for

on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was

bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of

Monsieur Binet bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be

heard at the Lion d’Or.

One evening on coming home Léon found in his room a rug in velvet and

wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Homais, Monsieur

Homais, Justin, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief;

every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor’s wife give the

clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his

lover.

He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and

of her wit; so much so, that Binet once roughly answered him--

“What does it matter to me since I’m not in her set?”

He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to

her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the

shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire.

Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put

it off to times that he again deferred.

Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution

soon deserted him in Emma’s presence, and when Charles, dropping in,

invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient

in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went

out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Emma,

she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come

suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies,

which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf,

and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on

the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she

would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a

rent in the wall of it.