Kabanata Kabanata 12 · Part 2 Chapter Three

. Part 2 Chapter Three

The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She

had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and

reclosed the window.

Léon waited all day for six o’clock in the evening to come, but on going

to the inn, he found no one but Monsieur Binet, already at table. The

dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he

had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a “lady.” How

then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of

things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually

shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and

dissimulation.

At Yonville he was considered “well-bred.” He listened to the arguments

of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable

thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in

water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature

after dinner when he did not play cards. Monsieur Homais respected him

for his education; Madame Homais liked him for his good-nature, for

he often took the little Homais into the garden--little brats who were

always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their

mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Justin, the

chemist’s apprentice, a second cousin of Monsieur Homais, who had been

taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time

as a servant.

The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Bovary

information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider

merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly

placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a

supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the

sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked

after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year,

according to the taste of the customers.

The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the

chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it

all.

He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which

forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that,

after certain anonymous denunciations, Homais had been summoned to Rouen

to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate

receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was

in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard

the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise

great locks that were shut. The druggist’s ears tingled as if he were

about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons,

his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was

obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover

his spirits.

Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and

he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his

back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous,

everything was to be feared; gaining over Monsieur Bovary by his

attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later

on, should he notice anything. So every morning Homais brought him “the

paper,” and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to

have a chat with the Doctor.

Charles was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours

without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched

his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a

workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been

left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had

spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame’s toilette, and for the

moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped

away in two years.

Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from

Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out

of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand

fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came

to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her

confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of

the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment

of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and

her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one

another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her

armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her,

passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to

make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of

caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having

begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human

life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.

Emma at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be

delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not

being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a

swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit

of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the

whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing

anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that

stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the

very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.

As Charles, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to

think of him more consecutively.

She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him

George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected

revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he

may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste

of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once

inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and

legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a

string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws

her, some conventionality that restrains.

She was confined on a Sunday at about six o’clock, as the sun was

rising.

“It is a girl!” said Charles.

She turned her head away and fainted.

Madame Homais, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d’Or, almost

immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of

discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the

half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made.

Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a

name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian

endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde

pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better.

Charles wanted the child to be called after her mother; Emma opposed

this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted

outsiders.

“Monsieur Léon,” said the chemist, “with whom I was talking about it

the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in

fashion just now.”

But Madame Bovary, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a

sinner. As to Monsieur Homais, he had a preference for all those that

recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it

was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon

represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to

romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the

French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere

with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of

sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination

and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the

ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded

all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic

over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported,

but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for

their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in

which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with

both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour.

At last Emma remembered that at the château of Vaubyessard she had heard

the Marchioness call a young lady Berthe; from that moment this name was

chosen; and as old Rouault could not come, Monsieur Homais was requested

to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment,

to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of

marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that

he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there

was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement.

Monsieur Homais towards liqueur-time began singing “Le Dieu des bonnes

gens.” Monsieur Léon sang a barcarolle, and Madame Bovary, senior, who

was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Bovary,

senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing

it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery

of the first of the sacraments made the Abbe Bournisien angry; old

Bovary replied by a quotation from “La Guerre des Dieux”; the cure

wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Homais interfered; and they

succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on

with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.

Monsieur Bovary, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the

natives by a superb policeman’s cap with silver tassels that he wore

in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the

habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant

to the Lion d’Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his

son’s account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his

daughter-in-law’s whole supply of eau-de-cologne.

The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the

world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier

times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had

partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs,

or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, “Charles, look

out for yourself.”

Then Madame Bovary, senior, became alarmed for her son’s happiness, and

fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence

upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure.

Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Monsieur Bovary was

not the man to respect anything.

One day Emma was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little

girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter’s wife, and, without

looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were

yet passed, she set out for the Rollets’ house, situated at the extreme

end of the village, between the highroad and the fields.

It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate

roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to

strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing;

Emma felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she

was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to

rest.

At this moment Monsieur Léon came out from a neighbouring door with a

bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the

shade in front of the Lheureux’s shop under the projecting grey awning.

Madame Bovary said she was going to see her baby, but that she was

beginning to grow tired.

“If--” said Léon, not daring to go on.

“Have you any business to attend to?” she asked.

And on the clerk’s answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same

evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor’s

wife, declared in the presence of her servant that “Madame Bovary was

compromising herself.”

To get to the nurse’s it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving

the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little

houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were

in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the

sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in

the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or

tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two,

side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining

his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges

fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.

They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it.

Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the

dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright

against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of

lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here

and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags,

knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse

linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared

with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was

pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula,

the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their

business, left in the country.

“Go in,” she said; “your little one is there asleep.”

The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its

farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a

kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which

was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door,

shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand,

near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu

Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and

bits of amadou.

Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a “Fame” blowing her

trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer’s prospectus

and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.

Emma’s child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the

wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked

herself to and fro.

Léon walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this

beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty.

Madam Bovary reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been

an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who

had just been sick over her collar.

The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn’t show.

“She gives me other doses,” she said: “I am always a-washing of her. If

you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have

a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn’t

trouble you then.”

“Very well! very well!” said Emma. “Good morning, Madame Rollet,” and

she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.

The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the

time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.

“I’m that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I’m sure you

might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that’d last me a

month, and I’d take it of a morning with some milk.”

After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Bovary left. She had gone a

little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned

round. It was the nurse.

“What is it?”

Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began

talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year

that the captain--

“Oh, be quick!” said Emma.

“Well,” the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, “I’m afraid

he’ll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--”

“But you are to have some,” Emma repeated; “I will give you some. You

bother me!”

“Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he

has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him.”

“Do make haste, Mere Rollet!”

“Well,” the latter continued, making a curtsey, “if it weren’t asking

too much,” and she curtsied once more, “if you would”--and her eyes

begged--“a jar of brandy,” she said at last, “and I’d rub your little

one’s feet with it; they’re as tender as one’s tongue.”

Once rid of the nurse, Emma again took Monsieur Léon’s arm. She walked

fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of

her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat

had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and

carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one

wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk’s chief occupations to

trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing

desk.

They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the

bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls

whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift,

and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the

current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like

streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a

water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced

with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed

each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in

the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the

dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard

nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the

path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Emma’s dress rustling round

her.

The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were

hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up

between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary,

as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow

dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its

fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.

They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected

shortly at the Rouen theatre.

“Are you going?” she asked.

“If I can,” he answered.

Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full

of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial

phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the

whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices.

Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of

speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like

tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn

softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication

without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.

In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to

step on large green stones put here and there in the mud.

She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and

tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent

forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling

into the puddles of water.

When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Bovary opened the

little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.

Léon returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the

briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went

out.

He went to La Pâture at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of

the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched

the sky through his fingers.

“How bored I am!” he said to himself, “how bored I am!”

He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Homais

for a friend and Monsieur Guillaumin for master. The latter, entirely

absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red

whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements,

although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had

impressed the clerk.

As to the chemist’s spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle

as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins,

weeping for other’s woes, letting everything go in her household, and

detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so

common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although

she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each

other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a

woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than

the gown.

And what else was there? Binet, a few shopkeepers, two or three

publicans, the cure, and finally, Monsieur Tuvache, the mayor, with his

two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands

and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable

companions.

But from the general background of all these human faces Emma’s stood

out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to

see a vague abyss.

In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the

druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him

again, and Léon did not know what to do between his fear of being

indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.