Chương Chương 17 · Part 2 Chapter Eight

. Part 2 Chapter Eight

At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the

solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the

preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands

of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the

middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was

to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful

farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was

none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Binet

was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and,

tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless

that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into

his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement.

As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel,

both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One

saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass

alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again.

There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had

scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from

half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely

weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured

neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved

with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue

smocks. The neighbouring farmers’ wives, when they got off their horses,

pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned

up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save

their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner

between their teeth.

The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village.

People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time

to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women

with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most

admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a

platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were

against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles,

each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with

inscriptions in gold letters.

On one was written, “To Commerce”; on the other, “To Agriculture”; on

the third, “To Industry”; and on the fourth, “To the Fine Arts.”

But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of

Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she

muttered to herself, “What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas

booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under

a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place!

Then it wasn’t worth while sending to Neufchâtel for the keeper of a

cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!”

The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers,

beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.

“Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry.” And as the fat widow asked

where he was going--

“It seems odd to you, doesn’t it, I who am always more cooped up in my

laboratory than the man’s rat in his cheese.”

“What cheese?” asked the landlady.

“Oh, nothing! nothing!” Homais continued. “I merely wished to convey

to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse.

To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--”

“Oh, you’re going down there!” she said contemptuously.

“Yes, I am going,” replied the druggist, astonished. “Am I not a member

of the consulting commission?”

Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying

with a smile--

“That’s another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you?

Do you understand anything about it?”

“Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say,

a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the

knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies,

it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in

fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the

analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is

all this, if it isn’t chemistry, pure and simple?”

The landlady did not answer. Homais went on--

“Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled

the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the

composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the

atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters,

the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not.

And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to

direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals,

the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know

botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are

the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive

and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them

there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace

with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the

alert to find out improvements.”

The landlady never took her eyes off the “Cafe Francois” and the chemist

went on--

“Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they

would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I

myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages,

entitled, ‘Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some

New Reflections on the Subject,’ that I sent to the Agricultural Society

of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among

its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my

work had been given to the public--” But the druggist stopped, Madame

Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.

“Just look at them!” she said. “It’s past comprehension! Such a cookshop

as that!” And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her

breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands

at her rival’s inn, whence songs were heard issuing. “Well, it won’t

last long,” she added. “It’ll be over before a week.”

Homais drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and

whispered in his ear--

“What! you didn’t know it? There is to be an execution in next week.

It’s Lheureux who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills.”

“What a terrible catastrophe!” cried the druggist, who always found

expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.

Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from

Theodore, Monsieur Guillaumin’s servant, and although she detested

Tellier, she blamed Lheureux. He was “a wheedler, a sneak.”

“There!” she said. “Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to

Madame Bovary, who’s got on a green bonnet. Why, she’s taking Monsieur

Boulanger’s arm.”

“Madame Bovary!” exclaimed Homais. “I must go at once and pay her my

respects. Perhaps she’ll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure

under the peristyle.” And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was

calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off

rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously

to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his

frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.

Rodolphe, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame

Bovary lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her,

said in a rough tone--

“It’s only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist.”

She pressed his elbow.

“What’s the meaning of that?” he asked himself. And he looked at her out

of the corner of his eyes.

Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood

out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it

like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked

straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered

by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the

delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils.

Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white

teeth were seen between her lips.

“Is she making fun of me?” thought Rodolphe.

Emma’s gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Monsieur

Lheureux was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter

into the conversation.

“What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!”

And neither Madame Bovary nor Rodolphe answered him, whilst at the

slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, “I beg your

pardon!” and raised his hat.

When they reached the farrier’s house, instead of following the road

up to the fence, Rodolphe suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him

Madame Bovary. He called out--

“Good evening, Monsieur Lheureux! See you again presently.”

“How you got rid of him!” she said, laughing.

“Why,” he went on, “allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as

to-day I have the happiness of being with you--”

Emma blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine

weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had

sprung up again.

“Here are some pretty Easter daisies,” he said, “and enough of them to

furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place.”

He added, “Shall I pick some? What do you think?”

“Are you in love?” she asked, coughing a little.

“H’m, h’m! who knows?” answered Rodolphe.

The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their

great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get

out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue

stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one

passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand,

and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to

the banquet tent.

But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other

entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks.

The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a

confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in

the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the

cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass,

slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats

that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the

halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking

towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and

flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then

came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded

animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some

sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart,

outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull,

muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than

if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.

Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps,

examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One

who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he

walked along. This was the president of the jury, Monsieur Derozerays de

la Panville. As soon as he recognised Rodolphe he came forward quickly,

and smiling amiably, said--

“What! Monsieur Boulanger, you are deserting us?”

Rodolphe protested that he was just coming. But when the president had

disappeared--

“_Ma foi!_”[12] said he, “I shall not go. Your company is better than

his.”

[12] Upon my word!

And while poking fun at the show, Rodolphe, to move about more easily,

showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in

front of some fine beast, which Madame Bovary did not at all admire.

He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their

dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that

incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think

they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations

of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for

social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric

shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his

waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at

the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.

These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on

horses’s dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his

straw hat on one side.

“Besides,” added he, “when one lives in the country--”

“It’s waste of time,” said Emma.

“That is true,” replied Rodolphe. “To think that not one of these people

is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!”

Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed,

the illusions lost there.

“And I too,” said Rodolphe, “am drifting into depression.”

“You!” she said in astonishment; “I thought you very light-hearted.”

“Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to

wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the

sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were

not better to join those sleeping there!”

“Oh! and your friends?” she said. “You do not think of them.”

“My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?” And he

accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.

But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great

pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen

with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the

ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger,

who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to

all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning

the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew

which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for

these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the

thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.

Madame Bovary again took Rodolphe’s arm; he went on as if speaking to

himself--

“Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim

in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would

have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything,

overcome everything!”

“Yet it seems to me,” said Emma, “that you are not to be pitied.”

“Ah! you think so?” said Rodolphe.

“For, after all,” she went on, “you are free--” she hesitated, “rich--”

“Do not mock me,” he replied.

And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a

cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell

towards the village.

It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the

members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to

begin the meeting or still wait.

At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by

two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily.

Binet had only just time to shout, “Present arms!” and the colonel to

imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A

few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed

to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their

harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town

hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed,

beating drums and marking time.

“Present!” shouted Binet.

“Halt!” shouted the colonel. “Left about, march.”

And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting

loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns

were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman

in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft

of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most

benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were

half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his

sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the

mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able

to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added

a few apologies. Monsieur Tuvache answered them with compliments; the

other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face,

their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round,

the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and

the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his

breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled,

stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the

monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville.

Hippolyte, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the

coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door

of the “Lion d’Or”, where a number of peasants collected to look at the

carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one

by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet

arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.

All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned

by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers

emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows.

All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches

had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone

rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of

their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than

the leather of their heavy boots.

The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between

the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting

on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all

those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back

every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion

with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to

the small steps of the platform.

“I think,” said Monsieur Lheureux to the chemist, who was passing to his

place, “that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something

rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty

effect.”

“To be sure,” replied Homais; “but what can you expect? The mayor took

everything on his own shoulders. He hasn’t much taste. Poor Tuvache! and

he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art.”

Rodolphe, meanwhile, with Madame Bovary, had gone up to the first

floor of the town hall, to the “council-room,” and, as it was empty,

he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He

fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch,

and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each

other.

There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying.

At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain,

and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had

collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began--

“Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on

the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be

shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the

higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our

sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private

prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at

once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils

of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well

as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?”

“I ought,” said Rodolphe, “to get back a little further.”

“Why?” said Emma.

But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary

pitch. He declaimed--

“This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined

our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man

himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled

lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins,

when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations.”

“Well, someone down there might see me,” Rodolphe resumed, “then

I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad

reputation--”

“Oh, you are slandering yourself,” said Emma.

“No! It is dreadful, I assure you.”

“But, gentlemen,” continued the councillor, “if, banishing from my

memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back

to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there?

Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means

of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state,

establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have

recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in

all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France

breathes once more!”

“Besides,” added Rodolphe, “perhaps from the world’s point of view they

are right.”

“How so?” she asked.

“What!” said he. “Do you not know that there are souls constantly

tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions

and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all

sorts of fantasies, of follies.”

Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over

strange lands, and went on--

“We have not even this distraction, we poor women!”

“A sad distraction, for happiness isn’t found in it.”

“But is it ever found?” she asked.

“Yes; one day it comes,” he answered.

“And this is what you have understood,” said the councillor.

“You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work

that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality,

you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more

redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!”

“It comes one day,” repeated Rodolphe, “one day suddenly, and when

one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice

cried, ‘It is here!’ You feel the need of confiding the whole of your

life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There

is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen

each other in dreams!”

(And he looked at her.) “In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought

after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts,

one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from

darkness into light.”

And as he ended Rodolphe suited the action to the word. He passed his

hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it

fall on Emma’s. She took hers away.

“And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind,

so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices

of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural

populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the

country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a

word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence,

vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced

intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus

contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to

the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of

duty--”

“Ah! again!” said Rodolphe. “Always ‘duty.’ I am sick of the word.

They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with

foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears ‘Duty,

duty!’ Ah! by Jove! one’s duty is to feel what is great, cherish the

beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the

ignominy that it imposes upon us.”

“Yet--yet--” objected Madame Bovary.

“No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one

beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of

poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?”

“But one must,” said Emma, “to some extent bow to the opinion of the

world and accept its moral code.”

“Ah! but there are two,” he replied. “The small, the conventional, that

of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that

makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass

of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is

about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue

heavens that give us light.”

Monsieur Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief.

He continued--

“And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses

of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of

subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen,

who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country,

brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by

means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour,

and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the

baker’s, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it

not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant

flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish

ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even

necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected

on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the

ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow

for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should

never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different

products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother,

lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple

tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let

us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and

to which I will more particularly call your attention.”

He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide

open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him

with staring eyes. Monsieur Derozerays from time to time softly closed

his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between

his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable.

The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in

their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the

platform rested on their bayonets; and Binet, motionless, stood with

out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could

hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his

helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of

Monsieur Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on

his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled

beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little

face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and

sleepiness.

The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk

leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors,

and Justin, in front of the chemist’s shop, seemed quite transfixed by

the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Monsieur

Lieuvain’s voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of

phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the

crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the

bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In

fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and

these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down

some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.

Rodolphe had drawn nearer to Emma, and said to her in a low voice,

speaking rapidly--

“Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single

sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest

sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do

meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will

make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon

each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years,

they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they

are born one for the other.”

His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards

Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes

small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the

perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.

Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had

waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an

odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes

the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant

back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the

horizon, the old diligence, the “Hirondelle,” that was slowly descending

the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this

yellow carriage that Léon had so often come back to her, and by this

route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him

opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it

seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of

the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Léon was not far away,

that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent

of Rodolphe’s head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced

through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust

of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which

suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink

in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves,

she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while

athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the

crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He

said--“Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of

routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.

“Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good

manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine

races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in

leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise

with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble

domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into

consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues,

and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it

encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just

demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful

sacrifices.”

Monsieur Lieuvain then sat down; Monsieur Derozerays got up, beginning

another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor,

but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by

more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise

of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture

more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had

always contributed to civilisation. Rodolphe with Madame Bovary was

talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of

society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns

in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had

put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and

in this discovery was there not more of injury than of gain? Monsieur

Derozerays set himself this problem. From magnetism little by little

Rodolphe had come to affinities, and while the president was citing

Cincinnatus and his plough, Diocletian, planting his cabbages, and the

Emperors of China inaugurating the year by the sowing of seed, the

young man was explaining to the young woman that these irresistible

attractions find their cause in some previous state of existence.

“Thus we,” he said, “why did we come to know one another? What chance

willed it? It was because across the infinite, like two streams that

flow but to unite; our special bents of mind had driven us towards each

other.”

And he seized her hand; she did not withdraw it.

“For good farming generally!” cried the president.

“Just now, for example, when I went to your house.”

“To Monsieur Bizat of Quincampoix.”

“Did I know I should accompany you?”

“Seventy francs.”

“A hundred times I wished to go; and I followed you--I remained.”

“Manures!”

“And I shall remain to-night, to-morrow, all other days, all my life!”

“To Monsieur Caron of Argueil, a gold medal!”

“For I have never in the society of any other person found so complete a

charm.”

“To Monsieur Bain of Givry-Saint-Martin.”

“And I shall carry away with me the remembrance of you.”

“For a merino ram!”

“But you will forget me; I shall pass away like a shadow.”

“To Monsieur Belot of Notre-Dame.”

“Oh, no! I shall be something in your thought, in your life, shall I

not?”

“Porcine race; prizes--equal, to Messrs. Leherisse and Cullembourg,

sixty francs!”

Rodolphe was pressing her hand, and he felt it all warm and quivering

like a captive dove that wants to fly away; but, whether she was trying

to take it away or whether she was answering his pressure; she made a

movement with her fingers. He exclaimed--

“Oh, I thank you! You do not repulse me! You are good! You understand

that I am yours! Let me look at you; let me contemplate you!”

A gust of wind that blew in at the window ruffled the cloth on the

table, and in the square below all the great caps of the peasant women

were uplifted by it like the wings of white butterflies fluttering.

“Use of oil-cakes,” continued the president. He was hurrying on:

“Flemish manure-flax-growing-drainage-long leases-domestic service.”

Rodolphe was no longer speaking. They looked at one another. A supreme

desire made their dry lips tremble, and wearily, without an effort,

their fingers intertwined.

“Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux, of Sassetot-la-Guerriere, for

fifty-four years of service at the same farm, a silver medal--value,

twenty-five francs!”

“Where is Catherine Leroux?” repeated the councillor.

She did not present herself, and one could hear voices whispering--

“Go up!”

“Don’t be afraid!”

“Oh, how stupid she is!”

“Well, is she there?” cried Tuvache.

“Yes; here she is.”

“Then let her come up!”

Then there came forward on the platform a little old woman with timid

bearing, who seemed to shrink within her poor clothes. On her feet she

wore heavy wooden clogs, and from her hips hung a large blue apron. Her

pale face framed in a borderless cap was more wrinkled than a withered

russet apple. And from the sleeves of her red jacket looked out two

large hands with knotty joints, the dust of barns, the potash of washing

the grease of wools had so encrusted, roughened, hardened these that

they seemed dirty, although they had been rinsed in clear water; and

by dint of long service they remained half open, as if to bear humble

witness for themselves of so much suffering endured. Something of

monastic rigidity dignified her face. Nothing of sadness or of emotion

weakened that pale look. In her constant living with animals she had

caught their dumbness and their calm. It was the first time that she

found herself in the midst of so large a company, and inwardly scared by

the flags, the drums, the gentlemen in frock-coats, and the order of the

councillor, she stood motionless, not knowing whether to advance or run

away, nor why the crowd was pushing her and the jury were smiling at

her.

Thus stood before these radiant bourgeois this half-century of

servitude.

“Approach, venerable Catherine Nicaise Elizabeth Leroux!” said the

councillor, who had taken the list of prize-winners from the president;

and, looking at the piece of paper and the old woman by turns, he

repeated in a fatherly tone--“Approach! approach!”

“Are you deaf?” said Tuvache, fidgeting in his armchair; and he began

shouting in her ear, “Fifty-four years of service. A silver medal!

Twenty-five francs! For you!”

Then, when she had her medal, she looked at it, and a smile of beatitude

spread over her face; and as she walked away they could hear her

muttering “I’ll give it to our cure up home, to say some masses for me!”

“What fanaticism!” exclaimed the chemist, leaning across to the notary.

The meeting was over, the crowd dispersed, and now that the speeches had

been read, each one fell back into his place again, and everything into

the old grooves; the masters bullied the servants, and these struck the

animals, indolent victors, going back to the stalls, a green-crown on

their horns.

The National Guards, however, had gone up to the first floor of the

town hall with buns spitted on their bayonets, and the drummer of the

battalion carried a basket with bottles. Madame Bovary took Rodolphe’s

arm; he saw her home; they separated at her door; then he walked about

alone in the meadow while he waited for the time of the banquet.

The feast was long, noisy, ill served; the guests were so crowded that

they could hardly move their elbows; and the narrow planks used for

forms almost broke down under their weight. They ate hugely. Each one

stuffed himself on his own account. Sweat stood on every brow, and a

whitish steam, like the vapour of a stream on an autumn morning, floated

above the table between the hanging lamps. Rodolphe, leaning against

the calico of the tent was thinking so earnestly of Emma that he heard

nothing. Behind him on the grass the servants were piling up the dirty

plates, his neighbours were talking; he did not answer them; they filled

his glass, and there was silence in his thoughts in spite of the growing

noise. He was dreaming of what she had said, of the line of her lips;

her face, as in a magic mirror, shone on the plates of the shakos, the

folds of her gown fell along the walls, and days of love unrolled to all

infinity before him in the vistas of the future.

He saw her again in the evening during the fireworks, but she was with

her husband, Madame Homais, and the druggist, who was worrying about the

danger of stray rockets, and every moment he left the company to go and

give some advice to Binet.

The pyrotechnic pieces sent to Monsieur Tuvache had, through an excess

of caution, been shut up in his cellar, and so the damp powder would

not light, and the principal set piece, that was to represent a dragon

biting his tail, failed completely. Now and then a meagre Roman-candle

went off; then the gaping crowd sent up a shout that mingled with the

cry of the women, whose waists were being squeezed in the darkness. Emma

silently nestled against Charles’s shoulder; then, raising her chin, she

watched the luminous rays of the rockets against the dark sky. Rodolphe

gazed at her in the light of the burning lanterns.

They went out one by one. The stars shone out. A few crops of rain began

to fall. She knotted her fichu round her bare head.

At this moment the councillor’s carriage came out from the inn.

His coachman, who was drunk, suddenly dozed off, and one could see from

the distance, above the hood, between the two lanterns, the mass of his

body, that swayed from right to left with the giving of the traces.

“Truly,” said the druggist, “one ought to proceed most rigorously

against drunkenness! I should like to see written up weekly at the door

of the town hall on a board _ad hoc_[13] the names of all those who

during the week got intoxicated on alcohol. Besides, with regard to

statistics, one would thus have, as it were, public records that one

could refer to in case of need. But excuse me!”

[13] Specifically for that.

And he once more ran off to the captain. The latter was going back to

see his lathe again.

“Perhaps you would not do ill,” Homais said to him, “to send one of your

men, or to go yourself--”

“Leave me alone!” answered the tax-collector. “It’s all right!”

“Do not be uneasy,” said the druggist, when he returned to his friends.

“Monsieur Binet has assured me that all precautions have been taken. No

sparks have fallen; the pumps are full. Let us go to rest.”

“Ma foi! I want it,” said Madame Homais, yawning at large. “But never

mind; we’ve had a beautiful day for our fete.”

Rodolphe repeated in a low voice, and with a tender look, “Oh, yes! very

beautiful!”

And having bowed to one another, they separated.

Two days later, in the “Final de Rouen,” there was a long article on the

show. Homais had composed it with verve the very next morning.

“Why these festoons, these flowers, these garlands? Whither hurries this

crowd like the waves of a furious sea under the torrents of a tropical

sun pouring its heat upon our heads?”

Then he spoke of the condition of the peasants. Certainly the Government

was doing much, but not enough. “Courage!” he cried to it; “a thousand

reforms are indispensable; let us accomplish them!” Then touching on

the entry of the councillor, he did not forget “the martial air of our

militia;” nor “our most merry village maidens;” nor the “bald-headed old

men like patriarchs who were there, and of whom some, the remnants of

our phalanxes, still felt their hearts beat at the manly sound of the

drums.” He cited himself among the first of the members of the jury,

and he even called attention in a note to the fact that Monsieur Homais,

chemist, had sent a memoir on cider to the agricultural society.

When he came to the distribution of the prizes, he painted the joy of

the prize-winners in dithyrambic strophes. “The father embraced the son,

the brother the brother, the husband his consort. More than one showed

his humble medal with pride; and no doubt when he got home to his good

housewife, he hung it up weeping on the modest walls of his cot.

“About six o’clock a banquet prepared in the meadow of Monsieur Leigeard

brought together the principal personages of the fete. The greatest

cordiality reigned here. Divers toasts were proposed: Monsieur

Lieuvain, the King; Monsieur Tuvache, the Prefect; Monsieur Derozerays,

Agriculture; Monsieur Homais, Industry and the Fine Arts, those twin

sisters; Monsieur Leplichey, Progress. In the evening some brilliant

fireworks on a sudden illumined the air. One would have called it a

veritable kaleidoscope, a real operatic scene; and for a moment our

little locality might have thought itself transported into the midst of

a dream of the ‘Thousand and One Nights.’ Let us state that no untoward

event disturbed this family meeting.” And he added “Only the absence

of the clergy was remarked. No doubt the priests understand progress in

another fashion. Just as you please, messieurs the followers of Loyola!”