Chapter Chapter 8 · Part 1 Chapter Eight

. Part 1 Chapter Eight

The château, 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

château.

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.

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,

1587.” 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 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;

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, draped to the chin, gazed

motionless on the room full of life.

Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their

glasses.

But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent

over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an

old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes

were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He

was the Marquis’s father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on

a time favourite of the Count d’Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil

hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans’, and had been, it was said,

the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Monsieur de Coigny and

Monsieur de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels,

bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his

family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the

dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Emma’s eyes

turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something

extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!

Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt

it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted

pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than

elsewhere.

The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.

Emma made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her

debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser,

and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed.

Charles’s trousers were tight across the belly.

“My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing,” he said.

“Dancing?” repeated Emma.

“Yes!”

“Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place.

Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor,” she added.

Charles was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Emma to finish

dressing.

He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes

seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone

with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,

with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of

pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with

green.

Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.

“Let me alone!” she said; “you are tumbling me.”

One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She

went downstairs restraining herself from running.

Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.

She sat down on a form near the door.

The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up

and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line

of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling

faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed

hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh

at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets

trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms.

The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape,

bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate

blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places,

mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.

Emma’s heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the

tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and

waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,

swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight

movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate

phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other

instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis

d’or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room;

then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note,

feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted;

the same eyes falling before you met yours again.

A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here

and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished

themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their

differences in age, dress, or face.

Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair,

brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate

pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that

is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the

veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite

nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low

cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they

wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave

forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air

of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young.

In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and

through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality,

the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised

and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society

of loose women.

A few steps from Emma a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy

with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.

They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter’s, Tivoly,

Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum

by moonlight. With her other ear Emma was listening to a conversation

full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very

young man who the week before had beaten “Miss Arabella” and “Romolus,”

and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained

that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers’ errors

that had disfigured the name of his horse.

The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.

Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair

and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Bovary

turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed

against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux

came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in

a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly,

skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But

in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until

then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She

was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest.

She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand

in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her

teeth.

A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.

“Would you be so good,” said the lady, “as to pick up my fan that has

fallen behind the sofa?”

The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Emma saw

the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle,

into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady

respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began

smelling her bouquet.

After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups _à la

bisque_ and _au lait d’amandes_,[8] puddings _à la Trafalgar_, and all

sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the

carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners

of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns

glimmering through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some

card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of

their fingers on their tongues. Charles was half asleep, his back

propped against a door.

[8] With almond milk

At three o’clock the cotillion began. Emma did not know how to waltz.

Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers herself and the

Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a

dozen persons.

One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and

whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time

to ask Madame Bovary to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and

that she would get through it very well.

They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them

was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like

a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Emma’s dress

caught against his trousers.

Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to

his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a

more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with

her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for

a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but

more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the

wall and covered her eyes with her hands.

When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three

waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.

She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.

Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body,

her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved,

his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to

waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.

Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or

rather good mornings, the guests of the château retired to bed.

Charles dragged himself up by the balusters. His “knees were going

up into his body.” He had spent five consecutive hours standing

bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without

understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief

that he pulled off his boots.

Emma threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.

The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the

damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still

murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to

prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to

give up.

Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the château,

trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the

evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated,

blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and

cowered down between the sheets against Charles, who was asleep.

There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten

minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.

Next, Mademoiselle d’Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a

small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and

they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling

with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from

over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.

The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the

outhouses of the château. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took

her to see the stables.

Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the

horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when

anyone went near and said “Tchk! tchk!” The boards of the harness room

shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was

piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the

whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.

Charles, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The

dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels

being crammed in, the Bovarys paid their respects to the Marquis and

Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.

Emma watched the turning wheels in silence. Charles, on the extreme edge

of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little

horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose

reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened

on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.

They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen

with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Emma thought she

recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the

movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the

trot or gallop.

A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces

that had broken.

But Charles, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the

ground between his horse’s legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with

a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a

carriage.

“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.”

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, looking with amazement at all these things

of once-on-a-time 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.